Mysticism – Lavish Wisdom

Ecumenical Saturday sessions in Divine Wisdom and Practical Mysticism

As many of you are aware I will be running a series of monthly sessions on Divine Wisdom and Practical Mysticism at Prinknash Abbey.

There will be three sessions this year as follows:

21st October, 11th November and 9th December. All sessions will be in the meeting room at Prinknash Abbey which is next to the Abbey Cafe, if you are struggling to find it just ask a member of staff in the Cafe. The sessions will begin at 10.30 and will finish as 12.00 noon latest.

These first three will be introductory where we will be getting to know the territory” such as how the sessions will be structured, the range of topics that will be covering, the tools we will be developing and suggested reading. From January 2024 all sessions will be on the 1st Saturday of the month.

We will follow the stream of Divine Wisdom through a variety of faiths and in particular explore our own encounter with the Wisdom Tradition from the perspective of Christian Mysticism. These are practical sessions where we will focus on the contemplative ‘tools’ that will help us to engage with this tradition.

This is an ecumenical venture, all are welcome.

Reverend Jayne E. Webb Obl. OSB, Methodist Minister – Gloucestershire Circuit, Spiritual Mentor

The Silent Encounter

Learning to be silent is an important part of experiencing the subtle movement of God in the soul, or of listening for the ‘still small voice’ we might say (metaphorically speaking). Inner silence helps us to develop an interior ability to perceive, intuit or experience God in the depths of our being. This ability does not derive from the faculties we normally use to navigate the external world. Such faculties are more to do with the earthly aspect of ourselves rather than the deepest part of the soul which, according to Meister Eckhart, is where our ground and God’s ground is one.

Our union with God then is already a present reality within us all – there is no separation, but we are generally not awake to this in our ‘fallen’ state. Our faculties of will, intellect and senses are so geared towards the noise of the external world, grasping after that which would make us whole, we have failed to see that there is nothing missing in the first place.

Theresa of Avia would have us understand that we cannot think our way to enlightenment (union). Reason has its place of course but to enter into the bliss which is God’s ground within the soul we must learn to recollect our faculties, bringing them to stillness. From here we can begin to discover a silence that draws us into the pure presence of God where even a moment of merging with such bliss will bring us to a wholeness we never could have deemed possible. Truly a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

Erroneously we have been taught that such encounter with God is not possible on this side of the curtain which divides life from death. The mystics would tell us otherwise and advise that to taste this for ourselves we should let go of our rational, cerebral search for knowledge of God and give the intellect a rest; none of this will take us to the direct encounter. Develop a practice of inner silence and stillness and in this you will find the portal to awakening to an encounter with the God who was there all along.

Such an encounter will change you, in some ways beyond recognition and will almost certainly, in time call you to service, activism and work in the world that previously you may not even have imagined would be yours to do (contemplation and activism are two sides of the same coin) – and yes, this can be the scary part of such encounter. Yet that direct touch, no matter how brief, emboldens and carries us through whatever the path ahead might hold.

To discover more about developing the practice of inner silence please get in touch through our contact page.

Blessings, Jayne

Contemplating Nature

For me, days off are definitely days to immerse oneself in nature. Indeed my earliest ‘mystic’ experiences came to me in the stunning surroundings of remotest Forest of Dean where I have spent a good deal of my life from around the age of 4 years. All these years on I remain very connected with ‘the forest’ in my work and I am very fortunate that it is a mere stones throw from my home.

So, having learnt to be still in nature and to find myself refreshed and renewed just about anywhere that forests and streams co exist, well, such places are oases for me in my work as a busy minister.

Most devastating to me is our attitude towards nature. We misinterpret scripture which tells us that we were given dominion over creation to mean that we must subdue, control and use it for our own benefit. We have long since put paid to pre-Christian and indigenous wisdom that respected creation, understood it to be enspirited and understood that human survival depended on our good guardianship of this great gift. Sadly the developing institutional church saw such animism as a great threat and ensured that the god made in the image of the human ego was remote from nature rather than immanent and in so doing opened the portal to the abuse of creation.

As we grow in our contemplative practice so does our awareness of the immanence of God flowing through all things, this is why mystics are passionate nature lovers and activists. Consider this quote from Thomas Merton

“Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory.” ~ Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable

So yes I am a lover of the divine which I sense in all nature, I am a fierce guardian and make no apologies for the relationship I share with animals and plants of all varieties.

Anyway, to return to my day off which was today; I spent most of it in this well hidden, secret oasis which I discovered when curiosity got the better of me and I simply had to explore what lay behind this secluded and seemingly forgotten gate.

Practical Contemplation

My intention with this site is not to especially write essays on mystic theology nor to wax lyrical on metaphysics. There are many excellent books, blogs and you tube video’s out there that will do this extremely well.

What isn’t so accessible is the the ‘how to’ of contemplative practice. This is really my great passion, enabling people to find their way, along this strange and somewhat hidden path. I find this is particularly tricky for those brought up in the protestant church as contemplative practice was not really recognised as a path to spiritual growth in this tradition. Indeed this was the very reason I left the church as a young adult. What I didn’t know then was that my various mystical experiences and the sense of a longing, unfulfilled by church going, was a calling to the interior path but back then I neither had the language, the understanding nor the direction to find my way at that time.

So back to my point, though I will spend a little time exploring contemplative theology the real point of my mission is to get down the the practicalities of the way of the mystic. Teresa of Avila reminds us that while discursive reason has its place, you cannot think your self to enlightenment.

The way that I like to think of it is that we all naturally have ‘spiritual senses’ which are designed to enable us to make our way on the inner path, just as we have our 5 senses that help us make our way through the external world. For many though the external facing senses are so dominant the the inner ones lie dormant. Even so there are some whose interior senses are naturally awake…particularly if your upbringing allowed for this to be so (more of this in another post), such people are often drawn to a metaphysical view of life and if they are also lead a religious life will quite likely find there way to the inner contemplative path.

I believe that the awakening of these inner senses is part of the practical ‘work’ of the budding contemplative. Again, as Theresa of Avila would say, we have to learn to recollect our faculties, ie; our will, our intellect, our senses, and as we bring these to a place of stillness we begin to discover the subtle movement of God in the soul.

Anyway, what I am really getting to is that first and foremost my teaching is practical because at some point we have to stop reading about our the contemplative life and start living it.

If you are interested in finding out more about this approach, please read my post ‘something new’ and do consider joining us.

Blessings, Jayne

Where is God

Earth is crammed with heaven. Every bush is aflame with the fire of God, but only those who see take off their shoes. The rest just pick the berries.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

One of the issues we come across in mysticism is to do with where we find God. Classical Theism would say God is separate from creation, transcendent and beyond all things. This God, often depicted as the sky god and usually male is yet, in his remoteness, all seeing and all knowing, a view of God that leads often to guilt and shame and does not necessarily fill us with a great longing to seek to be close.

An opposite view from Classical Theism is that of Pantheism this holds that God is everything and that everything is God. This is a view that has been held in philosophy and many religions throughout the world, particularly the eastern traditions and often indigenous traditions. For the Pantheist, the divine is closer to us than our own breathing, is in and through everything and often this view denies that there is a separate God, especially one who is given an identity as a personal, anthropomorphic being.

So this is seemingly problematic for the Christian mystic then who discovers that God is indeed closer to us that our own being, who is the great lover of the soul and yet who is also transcendent and beyond knowing. To solve this conundrum we would use the term Pan-en-theism. This term refers to God who is both in (as opposed to is ) all creation and beyond; that God is both immanent and transcendent. We see both the immanence and the transcendence of God in and through scripture. In essence though the dualism is illusory and in those moments when the sweet spot of union is discovered the boundary between the transcendent and the immanent becomes decidedly fuzzy.

As we journey along the mystic way we will find our selves coming across these questions concerning who we are in relation to God and the more our contemplative prayer deepens so does our knowing; paradoxically though such knowing has no words or fancy theological terms, it is simply known in the silence of being.

Blessings, Jayne

Something New

I wanted to share with you something of a new venture that will be starting this autumn. Before I do, perhaps I should first introduce myself for those who do not know me. I am Reverend Jayne Webb, Methodist Minister and I am also an Oblate of Prinknash Abbey, a path I chose to follow when I knew I needed to find a place where my contemplative nature could find spiritual nourishment.

I have had a natural inclination towards contemplative spirituality for as long as I can remember though understanding it’s unfolding has been a somewhat convoluted journey until I discovered the mystics and the desert mothers and fathers whilst undertaking an MA in Theology and Spirituality. This discovery, around 25 years, gave me a great sense of homecoming and relief that this way of experiencing God was actually ‘a thing’. Since then I have dedicated both my academic studies and my practical ministry to enabling those who have a similar inclination to discover the path of contemplation.

It is in this light that I would like to share news of a new venture at Prinknash Abbey starting on October 21st at 10.30 in the conference room . This will be a monthly gathering which will focus on practical mysticism. Each session will be in three parts. Part one will explore the writings of the mystics, part two will explore contemplative practice and part three will comprise a time of silence. If you are interested in coming along, do get in touch and if there is a particular reading from the mystics that you would like us to explore then let me know.

This is intended to be an interactive session; and so if this is your thing then your input is most welcome.

The venture is an ecumenical project so a good opportunity for us to discus contemplative practice from a variety of different angles.

Jayne