Jim Finley:

Greetings, I’m Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates:

And I’m Kirsten Oates.

Jim Finley:

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates:

Welcome everyone to season 12 of Turning to the Mystics, where we’re turning to Brother Lawrence and his teachings in Practice of the Presence, and I’m here with Jim to discuss his third session. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yes, as always it’s a grace to be sharing these reflections.

Kirsten Oates:

I loved this third session where you reflected on Brother Lawrence, along with Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, and I’m looking forward to going deeper into it with you. I wanted to start with something that really struck me, you said that the awakenings the mystics talk about are very personal and unique for each of us, but we can be helped by the mystic teachers because it’s subtle and hard to recognize. So this is kind of a paradox for me, Jim, where it’s unique and personal, and yet we can learn from others who have had their own unique and personal experience.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, here’s the way I see it. Let’s say if we fall in love with someone and we love someone very, very much, it’s always unique. It’s our love for this love. But the thing about it is we’re participating in the unity of love, and that’s why we recognize each other, we recognize love. Same way each poet is utterly unique when you read their poetry, but also you get into the stream of the poetic. So it’s an utterly unique experience of the universality of the path.

Kirsten Oates:

Lovely. I found this session so powerful because you put these three mystics together that were in directly the same lineage that was originated by Teresa of Ávila. And so you looked at Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and Brother Lawrence, and they were all members of the Discalced Carmelites that was started by Teresa of Ávila in 1562. We have looked at Teresa and John in previous seasons, but I love the way these three came together as part of the same lineage.

Jim Finley:

And another thing, if we look at the whole Turning to the Mystics podcast, we see a polyphony of voices, like a chorus of voices that helps us to see that we’re participating in that chorus by the very fact that we’re touched by these teachings. So that’s how the lineage is handed on.

Kirsten Oates:

So in this session we’re going to look at the life, and the awakening, and the teaching of these three mystics, beginning with Teresa, followed by John and then Brother Lawrence. And what’s interesting to note is Teresa was born in 1514 and she was the one that originated this order, the Discalced Carmelites. John of the Cross was born in 1542, and then Brother Lawrence came 100 years later, and he would’ve learned from these two previous mystics just like we’re learning from him now. So it’s a beautiful way to see how a lineage unfolds and how each teacher builds on or draws from the teachers before them.

Jim Finley:

That’s right, and so now it’s our turn. The lineage lives in us and it goes on, and on, and on that way.

Kirsten Oates:

So in your talk you went over particular aspects for each of these mystics. So you looked at their life and times, the quickenings or awakenings that they experienced, how that translated into a path, and then also how they took action in the world, what the path led them to do in the world. So I thought we’d go again through those headings and I could ask you a few questions, we can go a little deeper on each. You did it in a beautiful poetic way, so it’s fun to be able to dialogue and dig a little deeper.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Teresa was born in Ávila, this medieval kind of walled city in Spain. And as a young woman felt called to enter the convent, the Carmelite Order, which is a large convent outside the walls of the city. There and living this life as a nun there were already some touches of the awakening for her. She tells a story that once the Sisters in the community were all caught up in some argument over something, changing their schedule or something, and while she was in prayer she heard a voice, she heard God speaking inside of her saying, “Teresa, why are you concerned about such things? Seek me.” So you can kind of see these touches happening. And for her, as it lays out in the interior castle also, is where it really starts to happen for her is in prayer. And so she says she imagined that the soul is like a castle made of diamond or crystal, and by the soul she means the interiority of ourself, or even deeper it’s who we are as persons created by God in the image and likeness of God.

And then in the soul then are mansions or dwelling places like concentric circles, and each mansion is the incremental degree to which we realize God’s oneness with us in the mystery of our soul. So she says some people don’t even know they have a soul. They’re all caught up in the external world. Then there’s an event like love found, love lost, whatever it is. If my life has an outside, it must have an inside. So the first three mansions, incremental degrees of mansions, are really degrees of psychological-spiritual maturity. And the door that leads to each state has three hinges on it. One is the door of experiential self-knowledge, the other is prayer, and the third is humility. She said in the third mansion psychological-spiritual maturity, “Efficacious unto holiness.” The fourth mansion begins, she said, “The thing about the third mansion, it is a gift to be grounded in psychological-spiritual maturity.” She said, “But the thing about the third mansion is that reason has not yet been conquered by love. It’s entirely too reasonable.”

And she said also about third mansion people, “They do go sailing, but they’re always careful to keep the shore in view. They’re always circling back around to check in with their understanding of where they are in the path.” So the fourth mansion begins, and this is for the mystical awakening that starts for her. She says she’s sitting in prayer, in Lectio Divina meditation and prayer, devotional sincerity, and she uses the example that she compares the presence of God to be like water, like flowing water. And she gets this feeling that it’s coming in from afar, like God’s in heaven far off. And also it flows through her own effort. She has to deal with distraction, she has to deal with half-heartedness, she’s dealing with effort this way.

And she says while she’s sitting there there a subtle amazing shift starts to happen, and she explains it, “Imagine a basin filling with water until it overflows. But what if the basin didn’t overflow but kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger? And you’re sitting there and you realize that the love of God is flowing into you without effort from some unseen deep place within and beyond your soul. And as it’s flowing into you your heart’s being enlarged to divine proportions, that is your heart’s being enlarged to the proportions of the infinite love that’s flowing into you.” And that’s the awakening. That’s the awakening. And so the path for her then is how to follow the path to keep leaning into these deeper mansions, like the deepening of the path to divine union.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yeah. She’s so brilliant, Teresa. Just a couple of additional things about her life, she grew up wealthy, so she had some choices in her life, didn’t she? And she decided she didn’t want to get married, she wanted to enter the convent, and I think she was age 20 when she entered the convent. But she’s obviously a brilliant person and paid a lot of attention to the interior life of herself and others to come up with this pathway of reaching psychological and spiritual maturity for her to even be able to articulate a pathway towards that.

Jim Finley:

It’s really true. I love too where she says, “Sisters,” she said about the castle of your own soul, “You don’t need to get anyone’s permission, you can go there as often as you want.” How to move deeply into the interiority of ourself in the presence of God. And so she’s offering guidance, what is that deepening fidelity to that?

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, she had a real brilliance. It’s almost like, Jim, do you feel like there was a quickening in the way she was given this gift of the interior castle, the gift of how to explain it, how to experience it, how to see it?

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Another big thing I think is so interesting about her, she’s writing this as a seventh mansion mystic, so she’s a real, toward the end of her life. And she’s been asked write this book on prayer and she starts out by saying, “I don’t feel up to doing this.” She said, “I also feel I already said it all already.” She said, “Also, my head is spinning with duties, and chores, and so on.” So here’s a seventh, whatever it means to be a seventh mansion mystic, it doesn’t mean you’re not bored, it doesn’t mean you’re not overwhelmed. You know what I mean? So it’s in the midst of the ongoing unfolding of fragility that the light shines. I think it’s a big lesson for all of us this way.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s so helpful to see, yeah.

Jim Finley:

And then she says a lovely little line, she says, “But sense obedience has a way of simplifying things. How do you obey in your heart what God’s asking you to do? And it’s by that obedience it simplifies the path that moves right through in the midst of unresolved things.” It’s a deep insight for us too, I think this way.

Kirsten Oates:

And it very much reminds me of Brother Lawrence’s approach to the pots and the pans.

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right. And in prayer then it overflows into all of life. So it’s like a consistency.

Kirsten Oates:

And that sense of obedience. He had a task to do in the monastery to support the community, so under obedience that was his opportunity to find the presence.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, to do God’s will. Jesus said, “My bread is to do the will of the one who sent me, what’s God’s will for me, which is really what his love asked out of me and how can I obey the promptings of love?” Another major turning point for her is in the fifth mansion, and she says, “What happens in the fifth mansion is you’re sitting there in this reflective state of the fourth mansion,” and she says, “That the presence of God’s oneness with you become so delicate, so ethereal and delicate you lose yourself in reflective consciousness. That it isn’t just that we know that we’re here, but we know that we know that we’re here,” like I’m sitting here in my living room. So you’re sitting there in the chapel or wherever it is you’re praying. She talks about the prayer of quiet, “It’s a quiet like an eternal silence,” where she talks about effective prayer like a love, “And here the love is the effectus, it’s God’s love merging and giving itself to us with such delicacy we disappear.”

And the image she uses, she said, “And then when you come back into reflective consciousness, you don’t know if anything happened because you weren’t there. And really it’s death.” See, really it’s crossing over into death. And she uses the example of a silkworm, and she says, “A silk worm spins its cocoon and it disappears. And then who would believe it, it comes out as a butterfly.” So you don’t know if anything happened, but when you come out you’re like that silkworm. You come out, you return to yourself, something did happen. She says, this is in the fifth mansion, “And now let us see what becomes of this little silkworm, for all that we have been seeing is leading up to this. When it is in this state of prayer,” meaning not her soul, “It is dead to the world and comes out a white butterfly. Oh, the greatness of God, that a soul should come out like this after being hidden in the greatness of God, and closely united to him for such a short time. Never, I think, for as long as a half an hour. I tell you truly that the very soul does not know itself.” See, you lose yourself in yourself.

“I think of the difference between the ugly worm and the butterfly. It is just the same here. The soul cannot think of how it has merited such a blessing, since such a blessing could have come to it. I meant to say, for it knows quite well that it’s not merited at all.” And so you wake up utterly beyond yourself, and which she’s really saying, you wake up beyond yourself because you wake up in God identified with you in love. It’s this unitive state where you and God mutually disappear as dualistically other than each other, kind of a trans-objective communion where you’re non-distinguished from each other, unexplainably forever. So this is not to say that we’re God, rather it’s to creation is an ongoing process. We’re absolutely nothing without God, but it’s the very nothingness without God that makes our presence to be the presence of God, and that’s the truth of ourself.

What happens here, it starts flowing into consciousness. First in reflective consciousness, Lectio meditation and prayer, but now in a unit to state transcending reflection, transcending affect, transcending, just God in all directions. “So you see then the restlessness of this little butterfly, who has never been quieter or more at rest. Here is something to praise God for, namely that it knows not where to settle and make it’s abode.” And she goes on to say, “You don’t know where to settle because wherever you land, anything less than God you realize this is not the beloved. This is infinitely less than the infinite love that is transforming me into itself.” And then she goes on to say, “But it’s in the acceptance of its nothingness without God we discover the presence of God shining out from its nothingness.” So everything has a certain sacred divine quality and the simplicity, like intimately realized. And so that’s Teresa, this is the path.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. I wanted to link up just what you’ve shared so far, so this sense of prayer in the fourth mansion. So one question I have around Teresa’s hinges, so she’s saying prayer, self-reflection, and humility. So self-reflection is obviously getting to know your own interior world, and your reactivity, and what gets in the way of an open-hearted prayerful stance.

Jim Finley:

This is a significant, like if we were seeing her for spiritual direction. I think in a way she’s talking about something that from time to time we’re all graced with it. And that is to say you’re sitting there in kind of sincerity and simplicity, and sitting there, and it could be out walking in the midst of nature, it could be lying awake in the night listening to your breathing, it could be giving yourself over to the smell of a blood-red rose. And what it is, it’s like a transformative deepening of a subtle immediacy of presence. It’s not happening out here, you can’t show this to anybody, you don’t even see it yourself. But you’re interiorly quickened. It isn’t that you’re still, but you’re still. It can be very intense and sometimes it is intense, rapture, but usually it’s the opposite.

So subtle, we’re trying to calibrate our heart to fine enough scale that we begin to pick up that delicate moment of this kind of resting in God, resting in us beyond feeling, beyond words, beyond this. And then is the insight, that in these moments of utter simplicity, like the touch, you get the insight that it isn’t as if something more is given, but rather a curtain parts and the infinite generosity of God is being poured out in the simplicity of ourself is being poured out in every moment of our life. It’s happening right now. So now the path for her is how can I be healed from what hinders me from habitually abiding in this love that habitually is giving itself to me? And that’s Teresa.

Kirsten Oates:

I see. And so the self-reflective part is being able to look at what hinders me in my life?

Jim Finley:

That’s right. And I also think this with her, because her book is so full of these beautiful one-liners, it does flow into reflection because she’s speaking, she’s using language, but it’s a reflection of a certain, all these mystics this way, they have a kind of poetic transparency in the thing, the way they talk. They’re talking, but it’s not conceptualizable. But it’s unexplainably realizing that we cannot comprehend, and the rhythm and cadence of their voice, it communicates and gives itself to us. And I think it’s like that I think too.

Kirsten Oates:

And then you talked about in this fourth mansion that there’s this sense of the heart being enlarged but you’re not instigating it, that it’s God’s presence operating inside of you, flowing infinite love into you but also enlarging your heart to be able to receive it at the same time.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. And look ahead just for a moment to Brother Lawrence and that 12th letter where she asked, “Would you please tell how did you get here?” And he starts out by saying, “The friend put me here.” So it’s just like you didn’t do it, God’s generosity gives it to you. But notice your very existence, you didn’t bring yourself into existence either. The friend gave you your existence, being poured out as your very existence. So it has that quality to it of gratitude for the flow of this giftedness.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. And I guess the prayerful stance that she talks about for us in our lives is that openness to God’s presence in any moment, kind of the invitation for God’s presence to reveal itself or expand our heart in any moment.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. She says, “Sister,” she says, “If anyone with claim to be in this state that I’m speaking of, and claim that because they’re in this state they’re beyond the troubles of day-by-day life, I would doubt if they’re really in that state at all. Because it’s in the troubles of day-by-day life sustained by God the word became flesh and dwelt among us that it shines bright in the midst of the details of the day, of the ups and downs of it all.” She’s so concrete that way.

Kirsten Oates:

I love that, yes. So the shift from fourth to fifth mansion, so in the fourth mansion, you’re kind of experiencing this expansion of the heart, that God’s expanding your heart to divine proportions. And then there’s a moment in the fifth mansion where you disappear into that union, into that expanding heart. You kind of disappear into God’s work of expansion.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Another way she puts it in a way, think in Meister Eckhart looked at the rim of eternity, in the fourth mansion you’re at the cusp between two realms. You’re still in psychological spiritual maturity illumined by grace, Lectio meditation, and yet you’re not there anymore. And we were mentioning I think in the previous talk, I don’t remember, where medieval philosophy class in the monastery, Dan Walsh, who was quoting Thomas Aquinas, he said, “When it comes to spiritual matters where should we begin?” He said, “We should begin where we are.” He said, “But where are we?” And that’s what she’s phrasing. In one sense I’m right here, I got my Bible open, and yet I’m not even in my reflective self anymore.

\And the fifth mansion tips over into this divinity this way where you kind of disappear from yourself, and then when you return, like butterfly with tattered wings, this is not the beloved. And accepting that it’s infinitely less than beloved, it is the presence of the love presencing itself as a sip of water. We’re standing up, we’re sitting down, we’re looking out the window as presencing itself, as the flowing of the immediacy of what was happening regardless of what’s happening.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. I think all three of these mystics in that turning, there’s something that shifts about suffering as well. There’s the suffering, the not enoughness, but also the suffering itself is somehow infused with God. And so even the suffering becomes something transformative for them in their lives.

Jim Finley:

Yes, that’s a key insight really here, because you see there is suffering, and she suffered, and she describes what her suffering is. She goes, especially in the sixth mansion suffering just through difficulties and troubles and so on. But what she knows is the real suffering is that we’re suffering from the depth deprivation of being experientially grounded in the infinite presence of God pouring himself out and giving himself to us in our very presence. And what we’re really suffering from is we’re exiled from that.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

So in the interior life then we’re being healed of that suffering. And what that does then, it grounds us in the day-by-day suffering. And she says, “Just as Christ suffered in this life and the whole mystery of the Cross, that we’re participating in the mystery of the Cross, this redemptive suffering.”

Kirsten Oates:

And you really feel that traveling through her lineage, John of the Cross and Brother Lawrence have that same attitude.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. And also I think this as a therapist working with trauma and AA too, recovery is this way. It is really true when we’re traumatized that we are flooded and overwhelmed. But what is also true is when we commit ourselves to the healing process, even when we’re still in the midst of the healing we begin to experience ourself being unexplainably sustained by a presence of sustaining us in the midst of the unresolved. And so somehow even though it’s not yet resolved in terms of symptom reduction, it’s unexplainably resolved in a kind of fullness that isn’t dependent on the outcome of symptom reduction. That’s the subtlety, I think, of the depth of sobriety and so on.

Kirsten Oates:

And it’s the hope that when we die the ultimate overwhelm that we’re transformed then into this unitive experience.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. So if in this life we experience God’s wonder as veiled through the faculties of the soul, our mind, our will, our memory, illumined by grace, efficacious unto holiness. So this is our faith. The measure of that faith is love, God is love. And we live by hope that when we die we’re not annihilated but consummated, and we move into eternal unveiled union. What happens with the mystic is that God doesn’t wait until we’re dead to give us unveiled union, but the unveiled union, which is mystical union, is given to us an veiled way because the reflective self that’s transcended in it, we can’t explain it.

Kirsten Oates:

And that’s what you were describing in the fifth mansion, that experience.

Jim Finley:

That’s right. How do you walk away? It’s like there’s a kind of a clarity about it. Another major turning point in all this too is where she goes to the sixth mansion, which is all these sufferings that we go through, and really it’s being unraveled by love until nothing’s left for us but love. And then in the seventh mansion it’s mystical marriage. And she said, “Here’s the difference between the sixth mansion and the seventh mansion.” She said, “In the sixth mansion it’s this kind of nuptial mysticism like you’re engaged to God, you and God are engaged.”

In this engagement she said, “Imagine two candles burning, and you touch their flames together it becomes one flame in betrothal. But then when you’re distracted you’re two flames again.” So you’re absorbed in the oneness, your cell phone goes off, it’s gone. She said it’s like that, you keep returning it. She said, “What happens in the seventh mansion, the two flames become one and remain one. Even in the midst of the difficulties of life itself it never separates. It burns with a oneness that permeates the ups and downs of the day,” and that’s the seventh mansion.

Kirsten Oates:

Amazing. I love that, the two candles finally burning together as one.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Another big thing, I think this is true for all these mystic teachers really, notice because that burning beyond God we might be saying, the mystic might be tempted to say I’m a mystic in the making, I’m out of here. And some people do that, by the way. It can be as a flight they seek certain experiences. But what it really does is it radicalizes our presence to the world that God is so loved he sent his only-begotten son, and that’s why they’re writing this. They’re writing this as a love offering because this is their offering, like a sharing. And to this day we’re grateful for it. So in the seventh mansion it is beyond the darkness of this world, but it radicalizes this. So she says, “In the seventh mansion there’s only one question left for this person, is how can I be helpful? And that’s doing love’s work.” And so there’s a lovely kind of incarnate humble day-by-day divinity to things.

Kirsten Oates:

And her work was the writing and then the reform of the order

Jim Finley:

That’s right, yeah. And the reform of the order was her obedience where she felt called by God to reform the Carmelite Order to return to simplicity, poverty, and prayer. And that’s the Discalced Carmelite reform that she founded. I’d also like to say this, sometimes we get the feeling that this unfolding within us is incarnate in life’s work that we’re in the midst of, that we’re in the midst of something. But what we’re in the midst of of a form of service of the community or whatever that is, is somehow the way we’re present to the day’s task. It’s a self-incarnate fidelity to this thing incarnate in the living out of our life.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, that’s a beautiful invitation to look at that

Jim Finley:

Turning to the Mystics will continue in a moment.

Kirsten Oates:

One last thing I wanted to talk about with Teresa that I think helps all of us in looking at our own experience is for Teresa it seemed like she had many quickenings throughout her life. She recognized a number of quickenings and she describes all different kinds, some with voices, some with visions, some with physical expression. That’s interesting about her that she had a number of quickenings, because for Brother Lawrence it was that one big quickening that-

Jim Finley:

Yeah, but then habituated into the pots and pans. So she had many quickenings, and she talks about them to locutions, and she talks about different kinds of voices, and likewise visions. So she was an ecstatic mystic, a visionary. When I was in Ávila, we were in Ávila together, when I was there years ago with Carolyn Mays you can go into the room that she lived in in the convent, into her cell. And she tells a story, she writes about this in her life, that she’s in her cell and a child comes walking right up to her in her own room. And her name in religion was Sister Teresa of Jesus. And she looks at the child and she says to the child, “Who are you?” And he says to her, “Who are you?” She said, “I’m Teresa, the child of Jesus.” And he said, “I’m Jesus of Teresa.” That’s that bond.

Kirsten Oates:

Wow.

Jim Finley:

So she had a lot of lovely little moments like that. Then she says something very important, she says, “Some people have a lot of these,” she did, “But there’s some people who don’t have any, and they’re holier than those who have a lot. It’s a charism, it’s like a calling. It’s given as it’s given.” That’s an important, that’s a key point really.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. Like you said at the beginning, it’s unique and personal how it happens to all of us.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

And also with Teresa, so she entered the convent when she was 20, she was having these quickenings I think even before she entered the convent. And she didn’t start her reform work until she was around 46, 47. So I think like Brother Lawrence, a period to stabilize.

Jim Finley:

Here’s how I put it, it helps me to see, in an open-ended freewheeling way everything’s right on schedule. And so you can’t push the river. It isn’t as if she is going to go, I’m going to go do this, it ripened within her, and as it ripened and unfolded she listened to it and obeyed it. So likewise, everyone listening to this, me, you, all of us, we’re in the midst of what’s unfolding. But look where you are today with all of this and look how different it is than maybe you were five years ago, 10 years ago. It’s qualitatively different, and God’s not done with this yet, there’s more unfoldings ahead. So we’re always being at the crest of the wave of how do I be responsive to what’s given to me now? So if I’m touched by these teachings, the very fact I’m touched by these teachings, in some way I’m on the path of which the mystics speak. And so what’s it asking out of me today in the midst of my day-by-day life as I walk my walk? I think that’s key really.

Kirsten Oates:

You’re really helping us attune ourselves to that question, and also just to the confidence of being able to recognize and embrace our own sense of being quickened and awakened.

Jim Finley:

Another thing that helps me is this union that we seek is never other than the intimate immediacy of where we presently are in seeking it, it’s right there. It isn’t as if God’s waiting for us to get somewhere to give us a big hug, the big hug is being unexplainably given in the middle of where we are in the midst of our longings. And I think there’s reassurance in that.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. I think that invites taking a breath and a pause, and just embracing our life where it is. A lot of people with suffering, a lot of people with joy, but you’re giving us confidence that God’s presence is woven through all of it.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Another thing that helps me with all of this is what if tonight when we go to bed, what if tonight we’re going to die in our sleep? We’re not going to wake up tomorrow, and our daytimer was there with unfinished chores. We also had spiritual goals we were seeking, but it was unexplainably infinitely more than okay, because death is the gate of heaven, an eternal life. And so I think it’s living in that sensitivity of the divinity of the unfolding of things.

Kirsten Oates:

Beautiful. Well that’s the perfect segue to start to look at the life of John of the Cross. So Teresa was given permission to set up two houses for men who wished to adopt her reforms, and so she met and obviously found a kindred spirit in John of the Cross and she asked him to help her with the reforms, and that’s how they got started together.

Jim Finley:

Yes, that’s exactly right. And at the time he was just newly ordained. She was in her 50s, she’s quite a lot older than he is, he was just a newly ordained priest. But she recognized the holiness in him. She realized that he was already living which she wanted to be embodied in this reformed order.

Kirsten Oates:

And I wonder if his different upbringing may have got him to that place at such a young age, because while she grew up quite wealthy he grew up very, very poor. And his father died when he was young, and his brother may have died of malnourishment, I think I read. So he experienced a lot of suffering growing up.

Jim Finley:

My understanding is this, is that our upbringing, the leading up to the awakening is God leading us in our upbringing. So if you’re wealthy, God’s leading you in your wealth. And Teresa was wealthy and lived in all of this business. Another thing about Teresa, what’s interesting is that this was during, in the Catholic Church in Spain was just very intense anti-Semitism, to the point that anyone who was a Jew had to leave Spain or become a Christian. And Teresa’s, I think it was her mother, was Jewish.

Kirsten Oates:

It was her father.

Jim Finley:

But she never mentions it. She had her own, she’s privileged, but it wasn’t without its own burdens, its own. But I think our path up until now is providentially the path in which we have been brought to this place. And so for him it was like Brother Lawrence, his was poverty. And in extreme poverty what’s interesting, he went to Jesuit school that taught poor children. And when he felt called to the priesthood he didn’t feel God was calling him to the Jesuits, he felt called to the Carmelite Order. Like a discernment, a spirit. And that providential discernment as the Carmelite that he was ordained and Teresa goes to him that way.

Kirsten Oates:

Is it true that he also thought of being a hermit?

Jim Finley:

He did. He was thinking of being a Carthusian, it’s a cloistered order of hermits founded by Saint Bruno. It’s still there in the Church of the Cloistered Order. And Thomas Merton wanted to go to the Carthusians for while, Abbott stopped it. So you can see where he was headed. He wanted to go to the solitary mystical, like the early Desert Fathers, and so on. But he thought God was calling him to the Carmelite Order. But she said, “You don’t need to go to Carthusians, why not turn Carmel into that?” And so the nuns were cloistered, but the priests were committed to a deep life of prayer, but they had ministry, parishes working with the poor and so on. And so he accepted the reform, he said, “I’ll help you with this.”

Kirsten Oates:

And then where Teresa talks about many different quickenings, with John of the Cross there’s more like this one very, very deep experience.

Jim Finley:

I would say let’s do the main experience first.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

Okay, the main one. But he also had many quickenings, because in his collected works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle, it’s all these unfolding things. But let’s start with this initiating one. So like with Teresa, she’s sitting there with this fourth mansion begins. What happened with John of the Cross is he felt called to this reform. So he told the priests, and they were the ones who taught him scripture, one who taught him theology, about the reform to return. They didn’t appreciate the implications that they needed a reform. And so they said, “Look, you’re just newly ordained, back off.” He said, “I can’t back off.”

So they arrested him and put him in a little cell in the monastery, and it was cold in the winter, he was there for nine months to repent and give up the reform. And it was dark, there was just a little bit of light coming in through an opening at the top. He was given very poor food and for a long time he wasn’t given anything to read or write, just in the dark. And they would bring him out on a regular basis, strip him to the waist, and whip him.

Kirsten Oates:

It just shows you how powerful the church was at the time too, right? It had its own rule.

Jim Finley:

Oh, not only was it powerful, it was diabolical. Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? Anthony Padovano says, “The only two worthwhile things to come out of Rome are the mafia and the Roman Catholic Church because they make you an offer you can’t refuse.” So they were giving him an offer, he couldn’t make it. But here’s what happened to John of the Cross, it’s what happens when we place our faith in those who represent God rather than in God. He lost refuge in the church, these are his professors, the priests that he looked up to. And he fell into a lost state, utterly like a darkness. And it’s in that darkness that the light shined, “Oh night lovelier than the dawn.” And that’s where the poetry comes from. This poetry started flowing out of him this way, this beautiful love poetry about the love of God.

He calls it the dark night. He said, “Really what the dark night is, our finite eyes are being blinded by an infinite light that shines unexplainably and gives itself to us.” And it’s in that he then, which he attributes to a miraculous event, he was allowed to escape. And he returned to the Carmelite, to the convent where Teresa lived. And the nuns, they read the poetry. They said, “What’s it mean?” So he takes his poetry, he takes one stanza, and takes 30 pages saying what that one stanza mean. Then he takes another one. It’s very interesting it comes out as poetry, and it’s distilled out this way into these insights, into these translations. And it’s intended to help us because the things he’s singling out are the kind of things that people experience that are being led to this.

Because he says he realizes in the beginning it’s very difficult at first to realize that such unitive language could even apply to you in the midst of your foibles. And so what’s it mean to be an amazed beginner? And he said at midpoint, you get to a place midpoint you don’t know how to go on, and you don’t know how to go back because there’s nothing to go back to. And God keeps you there at midpoint in the purgative illuminative way, and then the unitive way where it crests over into union. So he marks out this arc of deepening things. And then he says this arc then manifests itself in the way we pray. So in the first stages of the arc, it’s Lectio Divina meditation and prayer. But then what he says is what happens in prayer, and I want to read a seminal passage here in John of the Cross.

What happens in prayer is that you’re sitting there in the rendezvous with God with insights and consolations in your journaling, and God sees that you’re overly attached to the finite ways of experiencing the infinity of God. And so God then takes away your ability to be consoled by finite things so that the purification of the appetites of unconsummated longings. You go to the rendezvous with God, God doesn’t show up for the rendezvous and the solace of the consolations, the solace is gone. There’s no solace. And he said, “In the dark night of the intellect,” he says iImagine someone born blind being told about the color yellow. They would know through faith that the color yellow exists, but because they’re born blind they wouldn’t know what it is. So too we say God is eternal, God is love, but we don’t know what it means. We don’t know what any of this means. And so there’s the loss and reflective consciousness, the dark night, and so on.

So then he gives guidelines on how to discern that you’re being called into this unitive state, and he gives three signs. This is book two of The Ascent of Mount Carmel, chapter 13. The first sign, and this is spiritual direction now, discernment. “The first is the realization that one cannot make discursive meditation or receive satisfaction from it as before. Dryness is now the outcome of fixing the senses on subjects that formerly provided satisfaction.” So you open the scriptures, you light your candle, nothing there, there’s no satisfaction in it. “However, as long as one can make discursive meditation and draw satisfaction, one must not abandon this method. You must try to push your way through the mystical union. If you’re receiving satisfaction, the reason you’re receiving satisfaction is that’s where God is and that’s where your holiness is. Continue with your Lectio, continue with your prayer, continue with your life. Meditation that is discursive meditation, using thoughts and images, must be discontinued only when the soul is placed in the peace and quietude to be spoken over the third sign.”

The second sign is an awareness of a disinclination to fix the imagination, or sense faculties, or other particular objects, exterior or interior. “I’m not affirming that the imagination will cease to come and go, even in deep recollection it wanders freely, whether the person does not want to fix it purposely on extraneous things.” So you’re sitting there and it isn’t as if as you sit there isn’t thoughts, and memories, and feelings rising, but you’re not inclined to think about a thought that arises. Because if you think about the thoughts that arise the thought will carry you off into thinking. If you think about a memory you’ll be carried off into memory. If you carry off into the need for consolations or the lack of consolations, because the lack of consolations is simply the lack of what’s infinitely less than what you’re looking for. We may love the warm glow, but the infinite love of God’s infinitely more than that warm glow. And so there’s a subtle kind of shifting, you can see how delicate this is, and the need for contemplative spiritual direction because it’s hard to get your bearings what’s happening this way.

The third and surest sign is that a person likes to remain alone in loving awareness of God, without particular considerations. “An interior peace, quiet, and repose. Such one prefers to remain only in the general loving awareness and knowledge we mentioned, without any particular knowledge or understanding.” So it’s almost like you’re daydreaming but you’re not. It’s like non-thinking clarity sustained.

He said, “Actually at the beginning of this state the loving knowledge is almost unnoticeable. There are two reasons for this. First, the loving knowledge initially is likely to be extremely subtle and delicate, almost imperceptible. Second, a person who is habituated to the exercise of meditation, discursive meditation, which is wholly sensible, hardly perceives or feels this new insensible purely spiritual experience, which is wholly sensible, hardly perceives or feels this new insensible purely spiritual experience. This is especially so when through failure to understand it, one does not permit oneself to rest in it, but strives after the other more sensory experience. Although the interior peace is more abundant, the individual allows no room to experience and enjoy it. But the more habituated the person becomes to this calm, the more their experience of this general loving knowledge of God will increase. This knowledge is more enjoyable than all other things because without the soul’s labor it affords peace, rest, savor, and delight this way.” That’s John of the Cross.

Kirsten Oates:

Wow, yeah.

Jim Finley:

Beautiful.

Kirsten Oates:

It seems to contrast with Teresa’s path a little way, and I love you going back to that where we started this whole discussion around it being very personal and unique, because where she talked about the water coming in and expanding the heart from divine proportions, he starts on the opposite side where everything’s kind of drying up and you’re not having any good experiences.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, that’s a good insight. I want to say it back, this is a big insight with them and you can see it in different mystics too. See, for her the mystical awakening is a quiet enrichment of the prayer, like water flowing and your heart’s being enlarged. And you surrender, you let it have its way with you. For John of the Cross it doesn’t begin with an enrichment, it begins with a deprivation. But notice, I think it begins with the deprivation because it was in the deprivation in prison that he was awakened. And so God leads us as God leads us, and yet their paths merge. I mean they had a deep bonding affinity with each other.

Kirsten Oates:

It’s almost like two sides of the same experience because, well one side is being enriched, the other side is being deprived, it’s just which side are you focusing on?

Jim Finley:

That’s exactly right. And by the way, The Dark Night of the Soul and Teresa, you really see it in the sixth mansion. It goes on and on about troubles, and trials, and sicknesses, and difficulties with the church, and politics. She went through her own dark night. So I think we each have our share of each, the interplay of light and dark, birth and death, and we kind of trust the interplay as that uniquely is folding out in us.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, that’s really helpful, Jim, because I was going to ask if John’s path is more for people who suffer, go through deep suffering, but yeah.

Jim Finley:

Here’s another way I think also to look at it too, it isn’t that you suffer, but it’s a path in which the well runs dry. He also says this, he further elaborates on this, he said, “Maybe you’re not being consoled in prayer because of things going on in your life. If you’re pushing old ladies down the stairs, no wonder you can’t pray.”

Kirsten Oates:

Oh, God.

Jim Finley:

So he gives signs, you check in. You go, no, no more sinful than usual, I don’t think that’s it. Another thing he says about psychology, he said, “Maybe you have a humor in your bile or in your brain.” He would say, “Maybe you’re clinically depressed.” I used to give a talk every year to training spiritual directors here on the interface of clinical depression and The Dark Night of the Soul, because depression is a response to loss. And if you lose the solace of God, you could see how the solace of God, if you’re clung to depression they’re quite distinct from each other, but they need to be teased out, and discerned, and each dealt with in its own right. It’s part of the incarnational delicacy of all this, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, amazing that these mystics in the 16th century understood those aspects and said it in their own way, at the level they understood it.

Jim Finley:

It’s interesting as we look at these mystics, and really down through the centuries, just the stunning brilliance of the people in ages past. So it isn’t like we’re brighter than we used to be, we’re always starting all over again. But there’s a certain kind of, this kind of brightness, it’s subtle and perennial. That’s what we’re doing in these talks and these sessions this way, we’re honoring the flow of this clarity in our life.

Kirsten Oates:

The depth of that wisdom that is given and how it shines through even in the context and the level of education of the person.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. You know what else I think too helps me with this is that I think contemplative spiritual direction is two people sitting together talking what neither one can comprehend. And so what it is really, it isn’t that you comprehend it, but when you listen to these teachings it touches you, it bears witness to your own awakening heart. The reason you’re touched is you’re drawn to it because you’re being led along this path in your own unique way.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, beautiful. So then 100 years later comes Brother Lawrence, and he would’ve read John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. And his awakening that he speaks of in his teaching is the tree, this interaction with the tree and this sense of, I guess what Teresa’s talking about in maybe the two candles coming together for a moment, and what John of the Cross is talking about also.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, I want to reflect on this. One difference between Brother Lawrence and John of the Cross and Teresa is that they offer the light and then they give examples of the kind of things that happen in that light.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Brother Lawrence offers a light, doesn’t give any examples. In a way he’s like T. S. Eliot Four Quartets when he did that, or Julian of Norwich is this way. But he’s so succinct in the intuitive clarity, it’s like a resonance about the intimate simplicity of what he’s saying, and we sit with it. And the very fact that we sit with it, we’re being led that way.

And I’d like to make one more distinction on what you said, the two candles burning. That’s a very good way to put it too, it could be that with Teresa, the mansion, what happens is the two candles burn as one momentarily. You’re like a momentary mystic. But the point is once you’ve had a taste of it, I think everyone has a taste of it, but then there’s the desire to abide there, and that’s the path. So he has the presence of God, but to practice the presence of God. So Teresa has her awakening, but how do you live in fidelity to keep surrendering to the awakening that it might have its way with you transforming you into itself forever? And that’s the affinity, I think, between them.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. And so after this experience, like you said, maybe the sixth mansion the candles come together but they separate, and then you see the years of Brother Lawrence trying to find his place in the world and trying to find his path for his life. And then he finally lands in the monastery in the lineage of Teresa and John of the Cross, and he translates his longing for that sense of God’s presence or his fidelity to what he was given with the tree into this practice of the presence. It manifests that way in him.

Jim Finley:

It really does. And again, the point being is for each person listening to this, that lesson in their life, how has it come to pass that you’ve become the person who’s able to be touched by these? Is it not so therefore it wasn’t always like this for you? You’re on a path not of your own making. And maybe it’s a path with a lot of cul-de-sacs in it, a lot of places that didn’t go, but everyone had a lesson, every little misstep was part of the path itself that has brought you right to this place. Yeah, it has that feel to it.

Kirsten Oates:

One thing that is similar with all three of these mystics, and I think most of the mystics we studied, is that when it came to the time of their death they were almost translucent. They were ready for their death, they were accepting of that, and in a way looking forward to it.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, let’s talk about that, because by their fruit you shall know them. And so that’s what’s touching about the 12th letter, he’s dying and it just shines with the kind of deep kind of clarity and peace. What’s interesting with John of the Cross, when he knew he was dying he had a choice of which monastery to go to. And the superior, John of the Cross was his spiritual director, and he really just had deep reverence for John of the Cross. The other one was one of the priests that used to whip him, and even years later still tried to get him out of the order, and he chose to go to that house. And when he was on his deathbed it says that he called the superior in and he said to the superior, “Whatever I’ve done to contribute to the difficulties between us, I apologize.” And said the superior came out and wept.

So you get this tranquil, the death. And why is that? I think it’s because in the mystical awakening there was an interior death to everything less than the infinity of God pouring itself out as life itself. And even with all of our brokenness we see that when love touches suffering the suffering turns love into mercy. And the mercy is oceanic, which is Jesus, it’s the gospel. And they so lived that mercy that when they died it’s like I’ve already been here for a long time actually this way, crossing over into this eternal life.

Kirsten Oates:

And Teresa died out on the road, is that correct? She was in the midst of her reform.

Jim Finley:

She did. When I was in Ávila years ago, she had to go on these long journeys on foot. She was elderly and ill, her health was fragile. And she was going to one of the foundations, when she was there she fell critically ill and died. And I got to see the room she died in, they kept the room exactly the same, the bed she died in, everything’s exactly. It was almost mysterious in a way.

Kirsten Oates:

They all died still in the midst of taking the loving action they felt called to on their path.

Jim Finley:

Yep. And I also think this with both of them too, I think they were respectful, they honored still doing the work, but they honored it by honoring their limitations. Otherwise, there’d be ego. I’m going to push ahead, there’s something about the fragility of aging that you betray the path if you don’t listen to the fragility, because the fragility of your aging is God. And if you don’t honor it you’re betraying everything that the teaching teaches. And so you go on as best you can in the midst of the increasing fragilities this way. There’s a certain holiness about that, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

And Brother Lawrence had to give up cooking and switch to fixing the sandals because he could sit down.

Jim Finley:

Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, it wasn’t as taxing. And then his leg became, he became quite disabled in the end, didn’t he? In a lot of pain.

Jim Finley:

He had the wound in his leg all of his life, the pain was always there. And notice this also when he couldn’t cook anymore because it’s arduous, notice just as he saw the presence of the God shining out from the presence of the tree he saw the presence of God shining off from the pots in the pans. So when he couldn’t do that anymore he was sitting there making sandals. He didn’t sit there going, oh crap, sandals. How can I get back to those pots and pans? Because God’s the infinity of the sandals, and God’s the infinity of the fragility that requires him to do the sandals, and that’s love. So that’s a lovely lesson there.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. And then even in the end when he was bed bound with the pain and the suffering, I think there’s something where he says, “I would rather keep this suffering and my connection to God than lose both.”

Jim Finley:

That’s right, he did say that. And notice by the way, the mystical understanding of the gospel, this is how Jesus lived, “My bread is to do the will of the one who sent me.” And on the cross greater love than this is no one, he lays down his life for his friends and the light of the transfiguration where the divinium shined out. And notice also that when he rose from the dead this way, he rose with his wounds and ascended into heaven. So it’s like the eternality of the suffering story glorified by love, that everything’s eternal, including our suffering in God, but is transformed by love. And so what the mystics are saying, even now in the midst of the suffering, it’s already transformed by love in the midst of the suffering. That’s the enigmatic subtlety of this, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Well before we close I’d just love to ask these three people, and then you brought up Jesus as well, they can be quite intimidating role models, and we might look at them and feel our lives and our paths are fairly inadequate compared to some of the things they’ve done and left behind. How would you help us see our lives in relation to that?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, I tell this story when I was in the monastery right out of high school, I was reading Teresa of Ávila Interior Castle, and I went into Thomas Merton for spiritual direction, and I had my copy with my little bookmarks. And I said to him, I said, “I’m reading The Castle,” and 18 years old and I said, “The way I see it, I think I’m in the fourth mansion.” I said, “But if you think I’m only in the third, be honest with me, I can handle it.” That’s what I said.

And he said to me, “It’s none of your damn business what mansion you’re in.” Isn’t it interesting the spiritual life should free us from a preoccupation with ourself? It just so often becomes another way of being preoccupied with ourself. He said, “But understood in the right way it’s extremely helpful to understand what’s happening to you.” So in a way it’s intimidating, but when I sat with Merton this way too, or Brother Lawrence with these people, you went to see them, I think again with all of them, I think you get this feeling you’re in the presence of a very present person.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

You also get the feeling you’re in the presence of a very present person in whom the presence of God is shining out from them. And you also get the feeling that they’re very attentive to you, because they see the presence of God, you see in them, they see it in you. And you say I’m not up to it, they’re always like, relax, just chill, it’s already unexplainably true. Relax, let’s talk. You know what I mean? It gets calibrated down to the sincerity of your longing as God, and I think it’s really true.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, beautiful. Well thank you for sharing some more insights about these three mystics that we can all consider part of our lineage as we listen to Turning to the Mystics, and an invitation to learn from them and feel the love that they shared with the world through their work and their teaching.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, very much so. Yeah, it’s beautiful. Thank you. Lovely.

Kirsten Oates:

Thanks. And thank you to Dorothy who’s in the background, and to all our listeners, and we look forward to seeing you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Turning to the Mystics, a podcast created by the Center for Action and Contemplation. We’re planning to do episodes that answer your questions, so if you have a question please email us at [email protected], or send us a voicemail. All this information can be found in the show notes. We’ll see you again soon.