About my book

An Ordinary Mystic is a work-in-progress, a spiritual autobiography shaped by a bond with God formed in early childhood. This is not God as some abstract notion, or God as described by those who study him*, or God as he figures in the systems of philosophers. It is not the God denied by atheists, for whom, perhaps, he is more real than for some believers. This is the God who spoke from the burning bush and wrestled with Jacob, the God who knows us in the person of Jesus, the God who touches the mystics with love and fire.

The sudden experience of God, loosely referred to as mysticism or a variety of it, has been part of my life since the age of five. It is absolutely real to me, yet it is also a subject open to much doubt and speculation. Autobiography is my genre of choice for a variety of reasons. This particular autobiography

• makes use of documents, artifacts, research, and timelines to place individual mystical events in context;
• allows readers to see how these mystical events affected my life over time;
• presents a mystic’s life in a frame of reference that includes both theology and science; and
• makes it clear that the experience of mystical events is a capacity of humans in general, rather than the privilege of good, gifted, or particularly holy people.

Although An Ordinary Mystic encompasses my life and origins, the framework of the book comes from the four years I spent at the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University, earning a combined honours degree in Religious Studies and German. [I chose to study German to have easier access to the work of modern German theologians.]

What I learned in those four years, both at university and through my spiritual director, friends, and priests who were members of faculty, helped me to better understand mystical experience as recorded throughout history. It normalized something I had viewed as deeply treasured and personal, my sole possession, yet perhaps nothing more than an individual psychological quirk. Below is a glimpse into the book.

The book, about spiritual mystery and discovery, is divided into three parts:

Childhood’s Hour: This is my life up until my professional working years began, within the framework of the first year or so at university. The first draft, close to 100,000 words, is completed. (I expect to cut down the manuscript length considerably in the second draft.)

Childhood’s Passage: My professional life up until a conversion to Christianity in its Anglican form is covered in the longest section of the book, now in its early stages. The framework takes me to the end of my third year in university.

Childhood’s End: The final section of the book includes my life and work in the church, the influence of spiritual directors, evolving spiritual development, and solution to some of the mysteries of human mystical experiences, my own and others, which have occurred throughout history. Its framework is the final year of university and the summer preceding it, when I began to read the works of Christian mystics as well as works on the subject of Christian and other forms of mysticism.

It’s an ambitious project, but one I was well prepared for by experience as a writer and producer of radio documentaries for public broadcasting. I estimate that every minute of broadcast was backed up by at least 60 minutes of taped material, and weeks, sometimes months, of research. In other words, I’m used to taking large amounts of information and converting it into an easily absorbed iteration of a large and complex story.

It’s a story that needs to be told, because the sudden, direct experience of God is a subject about which much has been written, but little understood. Not only that, but writers both secular and religious have often projected onto the subject their own opinions and prejudices, or, in earlier historical times, been limited by their understanding of science. More than that, it is a story of redemption, and shows just how much we risk losing by failing to nurture a divinely given and innate human dimension.

* Why I use the male pronoun to refer to God

How we speak or write about God is a deeply personal matter, rooted in tradition, emotion, upbringing, and any number of other factors. My choice is affected by all these things, but most of all it springs from the relationship itself, that is, how I relate to God.

When I was growing up, it was customary to refer to God by the male pronoun. The main reason I use it, however, is that my relationship with God is grounded primarily in love. This is the love that comes from God alone, the love Jesus speaks of when he tells us to 

• love one another “as I have loved you,”
• love your enemies, and
• love your neighbour as yourself.

Writers will often define the love Jesus spoke of in human terms, equated to different human relationships. The love Jesus speaks about, though, is what we experience when we know the love of God from within and without. It is more than all our purest human loves together, combined in a simple unity.

God has no gender, because he is not a biological being. Being human, my sense of self is very much rooted not only in gender, but also in biology and psychology. As a cis-gender female, I experience God’s love through those limitations. To me, it feels tender and  selfless, yet passionate, so it is natural to respond to it as the beloved responds to the lover. For me, that means as female to male.