Am I boring or a mystic
With each passing year, I find my desires grow simpler. Just this week, my husband and I were offered free tickets to go to an event at the French embassy. Excited by the prospect of a cultural exchange to spice up our weekend, I decided that we should go! It was a Friday, following a long work week and hosting family. I was in the office for a day long meeting and as I hunched over my laptop in a windowless conference room, my exhaustion became palpable. I developed a nagging headache that started at the base of my skull and worked its way up to my temples. On my train ride home, truly all I wanted was to put on my fluffiest robe, eat eggs and toast, sit on the couch with my husband, talk about our days, and go to bed at 9pm.
This feeling keeps creeping up in me again and again. At the opportunity to see a show or take a trip, my anxiety and ambition say yes and the depths of me say no. I’ve become more comfortable admitting that my favorite things in life are so accessible, mundane even. A night at home with a good book and some herbal tea, a potluck, the farmer’s market on a Saturday morning, coffee with a friend, a long walk. These things keep my soul tethered to itself. They keep my mind steady, my desires aligned with my capacity.
This is infinitely true when it comes to my experience with the divine. The presence of God finds me in the quiet of my morning coffee, the robins in the park behind my house, the smell of soil after rain, the sound of my mom’s laugh, my husband’s hugs. It is the simple sensory experiences of being alive that are pathways to encounter. It’s both the living and the participation in the flow of love. In the buying a coffee for my un-housed neighbors, in calling a friend, painting, or cooking tortilla soup for new parents. This is what I’ve come to understand as everyday mysticism.
Theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) demystified mystics as people who have a personal religious experience or an encounter with God. This is radically unembellished and implies anyone can be a mystic if they are open to the experience. Mystics know how to quiet the surface noise enough to hear divine presence coursing below daily life. In this way, simplicity as a practice requires the cultivation of an inner stillness. To quiet the chatter. Then the sameness and plainness of life suddenly becomes profound. The bush will burn as you learn to walk in the mysticism of everyday.