Inconsolable: The Path of the Prophet-Mystic

Our religious conditioning has carved a gulf between the prophet and the mystic, just as we have between action and contemplation and between transcendence and immanence. It’s easy to buy into the illusion that these two spiritual orientations are fundamentally and mutually exclusive. But you can, of course, be both a prophet and a mystic. You can be, and probably are, a prophet-mystic.  

Fr. Richard Rohr has often declared that the most important word in the title of the organization he founded, the Center for Action and Contemplation, is “and.” We are activists and contemplatives. We are prophets and mystics. We access momentary nondual states, especially in silence, and we carry the fruits we harvest in such moments back into the world to nourish ourselves and feed the hungry.  

The key to living as a prophet-mystic is showing up for what is, no matter how heartbreaking or laborious, how fraught with seemingly intractable conflict and how tempting it might be to meditate or pray our way out of the pain. Contemplative practices train us to befriend reality, to become intimate with all things by offering them our complete attention. In this way, the prophet and the mystic occupy the same broken-open space. The nexus is grief. The mystic has tasted the grace of direct experience of the sacred and then seemingly lost the connection. She feels the pain of separation from the divine and longs for union. The prophet has perceived the brokenness of the world and is incapable of unseeing it. He feels the pain of injustice and cannot help but protest. But the mystic cannot jump to union without spending time in the emptiness of longing. The prophet must sit in helplessness before stepping up and speaking out.  

Many years ago, my friend [Fr.] William Hart McNichols (quoting the wild woman theologian Adrienne von Speyr) told me that “the prophets are inconsolable.” I will never forget that. At the time, I still harbored a dualistic sense of political versus spiritual and fancied myself more a contemplative than an activist, even though I grew up in a family that was passionately engaged in protesting the Vietnam War.… While I was never at home in the political arena, with its absolute judgments of right and wrong and fixed delineations between victims and perpetrators, I was proud of my parents’ social conscience. But it all felt somewhat disconnected from the heart. Then, years later, Fr. Bill built that bridge for me. The prophets, like the mystics, responded from the holy ground of the broken heart. … 

A prophet cannot know that all will be well, that those in power will wake up and mend the damage they have caused, and that peace will prevail. The mystic can never be certain the union with God will be the outcome of longing for God. They must rest in unknowing. Unknowing is not always comfortable. In fact, it can feel a lot like grief.  

And yet that emptiness, that waiting, that liminal space is sacred. It’s what distinguishes a prophet-mystic from a self-righteous activist or a spiritual narcissist. It is in the interior desert, where the landscape appears barren, that patience reveals the miracle of life teeming just below the surface. The more we mindfully observe what is, the more beauty comes into focus. There is nothing broken here, nothing to fix. Rather, the prophet-mystic practices sitting with reality as it is. From that space of quiet listening, we may perceive what is ours to do and tap into the vitality we need to do it. We take up our birthright of belonging and, in the spirit of the mystical Jewish teaching of tikkun olam, we mend the broken world and restore wholeness to the web of interbeing. 

Reference:   
Mirabai Starr, “Inconsolable: The Path of the Prophet-Mystic,” ONEING 12, no. 2, The Path of the Prophet (2024): 49–50, 53. Available in print or PDF download.