Ordinary Mystic

One of my favorite mystics is a woman named Caryll Houselander, she was born in 1901 and died in 1954.  Her parents separated when she was nine years old, and Caryll was sent to a convent for her education.  She left the church when she was a teen and did not return to church until she was twenty.  She loved Sydney Reilly, who was the model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel.  She had a biting sense of humor.     

Caryll was gifted with an insight for beauty and suffering.  She wrote a book titled, This War is the Passion, that spoke about the horrors of war and great suffering.  “She had great empathy for the wounded humans and such a talent for helping to rebuild their broken worlds that during the war some doctors sent patients to her for healing.  One eminent psychiatrist said; ‘She loved them back to life…she was a divine eccentric.’” (Mystics The Beauty of Prayer by Craig Larkin SM) 

What I like about her is she is an ordinary person, who lived a rather ordinary but eccentric life.  She is being re-discovered for her spiritual experiences that gave her insight to Christ’s suffering and how human suffering plays a part in redemption.  One of her writings that I really like is called The Reed…

            Emptiness is the beginning of contemplation.

It is not a fruitless emptiness, a void without a meaning; on the contrary, it has a shape, a form given to it by the purpose for which it is intended.

It is the emptiness like the hollow in the reed, the narrow riftless emptiness which can have only one destiny: to receive the piper’s breath and utter the song that is in his heart.

It is the emptiness like the hollow in the cup, shaped to receive water or wine.

It is the emptiness like that of the bird’s nest built in a round warm ring to receive the little bird.

Caryll Houselander, Emptiness

Thinking about emptiness as a purposeful void is a wonderful concept, one I often don’t think about.  When I read Caryll Houselander’s The Reed, I am reminded of the purpose of hollow spaces.  I tend to grab my Mystics books and read her writing several times a month.  I find it grounds me and centers me, exactly when I need it.     

Peace, Pastor Katrina Steingraeber