#mysticism in Christianity

[compassionmattersmost]

Teachings of Jesus: Reclaiming the Inclusive Message of Christ

It is said that Jesus once spoke of a way, a truth, a life so profound that it encompassed the very heart of God. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” he told his followers. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” These words, layered with mystery and spoken from love, have carried through centuries. And yet, how often they have been misunderstood, repurposed into boundaries…

[reality-nihilism]

"The Vision of the Cross"

Gustave Doré, 1832.

[psalmlover]

mary in a flower crown, st gabriel of the sorrowful mother, pennsylvania, usa

[nyxshadowhawk]

Amazing Christian mystical art from a medieval manuscript!

@cryptotheism Get a load of the colors on this one! I don’t know which one this is because I didn’t call it up myself (and I think this is one of the ones you needed special permission for, anyway), but it’s incredible.

[tending-toward-silence]

*through clenched teeth* All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Other Christians: Yeah I’m a Christian, but don’t worry, I’m normal.

Meanwhile, Christian Tumblr: I worship a triune God who emptied themself to become a human. He was born a poor teenager and grew up in poverty and at risk of homelessness. He was fully God and fully Human. He taught and lived in radical indiscriminate self giving love and subversive peaceful resistance of oppression. He fought the cause of the widow, orphan, immigrant, poor, and oppressed. He loved the sinner so much they left their sin and followed him, and reconciled both the government allying capitalist and the rebel freedom fighter to harmony in himself. He invites us to take his prescience into ourselves by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. My God then enthroned himself as the exalted king of the world by dying the death of a cursed blaspheming slave. He then rose from the dead and decided his first witnesses would be women, whose witness is worthless in court. His followers then went on to live in voluntary communism, to advocate radical generosity, to destroy ethnic barriers, to elevate the inherent humanity of women and the enslaved, to self identify as exiled and enslaved refugees and pilgrims, to equate God with Love, to diagnose the government as a necessary evil worth responding to with equal parts submission and resistance, and to make the preposterous claim that we conquer the world by giving our lives in self sacrificing love. In my faith, normalcy is heresy.

[hairtusk]

Caroline Walker Bynum, The Female Body and Religious Practices in the Later Middle Ages

[illustratus]

"Rosa Mística" Rosa Mystica (Mystical Rose) by Francisco Laporta Valor

[endocathexis]

[joanofarcs-stigmata]

not “bride of Christ” as in purity balls and promise rings but “bride of Christ” as in making out sloppy style with the Side Wound

[thurifer-at-heart]

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

[reality-nihilism]

A veiled Carmelite nun.

[psalmlover]

[teenageascetic]

“Everything will be very simple and easy if you decide to do it unto God, for God’s sake, and to the glory of God. Everything in life and in the soul will immediately come together.”

-Father Ioann Krestiankin.

[many-sparrows]

Almost started crying because I was thinking about how I'll never be able to physically kiss Jesus's hands (I would have made a superb ecstatic mystic). But my boyfriend's strong hands are right here, in mine. And I can talk to my bestfriend late into the night just like I would talk to God in a prayer and her voice will answer back. I think it's imperative that we take our love and devotion to the divine and project it outward. What is the point of devoting your life to 12 hrs of prayer a day or poverty or silence if it does not move you to enrich the lives of others? Serving the Light we find in each other is the chief way to serve the Savior. Kiss Him by kissing the hands of those you love, see His face in the ones who need you, listen when He speaks through others, and so forth

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

In this house, we do philosophy in the kitchen, theology in the bedroom, and mysticism in the garden. As God intended.