Evelyn Underhill - total transfiguration of the created order

Here's the reflection and prayers I shared today during the lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Evelyn Underhill was born on 6th December 1875 in Wolverhampton. From an early age she described having mystical insights, and her deep interest in spiritual matters continued throughout her life. Between 1921 and 1924 her spiritual director was Baron Friedrich von Hűgel, who encouraged her to place Jesus Christ more centrally at the heart of her reflections. After his death in 1925 she began taking on a prominent role in the Church of England, leading retreats at Pleshey and elsewhere, and as a spiritual guide to many. Amongst the books she published are ‘Mysticism’ (in 1911) and ‘Worship’ (in 1936). She was one of the first women theologians to give public lectures at English universities, and was the first woman allowed officially to teach Church of England clergy.

Evelyn Underhill is one of the most important Christian mystics of the twentieth century. While not as well-known as Thomas Merton, Simone Weil or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, nevertheless her contribution to Christian spirituality is as great. Evelyn Underhill’s biographer Dana Greene has called her an Artist of the Infinite Life. For Underhill, Christian mysticism is shaped by two key characteristics: artistry and ordinariness.

Underhill was one of the first important figures to champion the humility, ordinariness, and indeed “normalcy” of the mystical life. The subtitle of one of her best books, ‘Practical Mysticism’ is “A Little Book for Normal People.” She worked hard to dispel the notion that mysticism only belonged to the super-holy, the super-religious, the super-pious. On the contrary, the contemplative life is the ordinary state for Christian maturity. (http://evelynunderhill.org/three-evelyn-underhill-anthologies/)

In her letters she describes her own mystical experiences: ‘The first thing I found out was exalted and indescribable beauty in the most squalid places. I still remember walking down the Notting Hill main road and observing the landscape [which was extremely sordid] with joy and astonishment. Even the movement of traffic had something universal and sublime about it … one sees the world at those moments so completely as “energized by the invisible” that there is no temptation to rest in mere enjoyment of the visible.’

In her book called ‘Mysticism’ she continued this understanding that mystical consciousness transforms our view of everyday existence writing that: ‘A harmony is thus set up between the mystic and Life in all its forms. Undistracted by appearance, he sees, feels, and knows it in one piercing act of loving comprehension….The heart outstrips the clumsy senses, and sees – perhaps for an instant, perhaps for long periods of bliss – an undistorted and more veritable world. All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty: for beauty is simply Reality seen with the eyes of love….For such a reverent and joyous sight the meanest accidents of life are radiant. The London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like coloured archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.’

Todd E. Johnson has written that Underhill’s writings on what we now call “spirituality” are bracketed by two works, Mysticism (1911) and The Spiritual Life (1937). Mysticism, can be understood well by reflecting on its subtitle, A Study of the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. This book described the human potential of ascent to the divine. Underhill used a five-step process of conversion, purgation, illumination, surrender, and union. The process begins with conversion, or a threshold of awareness of the ultimate reality (God) existing outside oneself. She also emphasised the fourth step, surrender, which she drew from many mystical writings, but St. John of the Cross in particular. This stage was the “dark night of the soul,” that period of dryness that tests one’s ultimate commitment to the spiritual journey. Underhill’s goal was to demonstrate the universal human capacity for mystical accent to “reality,” that is, the more real supernatural world that is the goal of human existence.

The small later volume ‘The Spiritual Life’ focused on Christian spirituality and used a threefold pattern of the spiritual life: adoration, adherence and cooperation: ‘This was an approach to the spiritual life that began with God’s initiative and resulted in a life conformed to the cruciform posture of our Lord. It also involved community and service to others.’

She writes that the Christian revelation is in its very nature historical and incarnational – ‘God coming the whole way to man, and discovered and adored within the arena of man’s life at one point in time, in and through the Humanity of Christ.’ Therefore, she writes that: ‘Arising from its incarnational character, and indeed closely connected with it, is the fact that Christian worship is always directed towards the sanctification of life. All worship has a creative aim, for it is a movement of the creature in the direction of Reality; and here, the creative aim is that total transfiguration of the created order in which the incarnation of the Logos finds its goal. Christian worship, then, is to be judged by the degree in which it tends to Holiness; since this is the response to the pressure of the Holy which is asked of the Church and of the soul. The Christian is required to use the whole of his existence as sacramental material; offer it and consecrate it at every point, so that it may contribute to the Glory of God.

This ‘double orientation to the natural and the supernatural, testifying at once to the unspeakable otherness of God transcendent and the intimate nearness of God incarnate, is felt in all the various expressions of genuine Christian worship. The monk or nun rising to recite the Night Office that the Church’s praise of God may never cease, and the Quaker waiting in silent assurance on the Spirit given at Pentecost; the ritualist, ordering with care every detail of a complicated ceremonial that God may be glorified thereby, and the old woman content to boil her potatoes in the same sacred intention; the Catholic burning a candle before the symbolic image of the Sacred Heart or confidently seeking the same Divine Presence in the tabernacle, and the Methodist or Lutheran pouring out his devotion in hymns to the Name of Jesus; the Orthodox bowed down in speechless adoration at the culminating moment of the Divine Mysteries, and the Salvationist marching to drum and tambourine behind the banner of the Cross – all these are here at one. Their worship is conditioned by a concrete fact; the stooping down of the Absolute to disclose Himself within the narrow human radius, the historical incarnation of the Eternal Logos within time.’

So, in response to Underhill’s focus on worship as preparation to find God in our ordinary lives and through acts of service in ordinary life to bless others and create signs of the kingdom of God, I invite you, using the words of Evelyn Underhill herself, to: ‘Gather yourself up’ and give your complete loving attention to something outside of yourself. ‘As to the object of contemplation,’ she says, ‘it matters little. From Alp to insect, anything will do, provided that your attitude be right: for all things in this world towards which you are stretching out are linked together, and one truly apprehended will be the gateway to rest.’

‘Then -- with attention no longer frittered amongst the petty accidents and interests of your personal life, but poised, tense, ready for the work you shall demand of it -- stretch out by a distinct act of loving will towards one of the myriad manifestations of life that surrounds you: and which, in an ordinary way, you hardly notice unless you happen to need them.’

What matters is that you ‘pour yourself out towards it in an act of loving will’ and ‘do not draw its image towards you.’ Deliberate and impassioned attentiveness of this kind is ‘an attentiveness which soon transcends all consciousness of yourself, as separate from and attending to the thing seen.’ That is how we receive the mystery of God.

So we pray, ‘Going out from the silence, teach me to be more alert, humble, expectant than I have been in the past: ever ready to encounter You in quiet, homely ways: in every appeal to my compassion, every act of unselfish love which shows up and humbles my imperfect love, may I recognize You still walking through the world. Give me that grace of simplicity which alone can receive your Mystery. Amen.

O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all your creatures: Grant that your Church, taught by your servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power, and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

‘Let our lives run to Your embrace and breathe the breath of Eternity. O God Supreme! Most secret and most present, most beautiful and strong. Constant yet Incomprehensible, changeless yet changing all! What can I say, my God, my Life, my Holy Joy. You are the only reality’ ‘Guide us with your adorable wisdom,’ ‘take possession of our souls. So fill our imaginations with pictures of Your love’ and ‘make us ready for adventure’ knowing that ‘beyond us are the hills of God, the snowfields of the Spirit, the Other Kingdom.’ Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Save us in our present crisis, from sliding down into the confusions of a world that has lost contact with God, by means of a constant adoring remembrance of the universal charity of God, overflowing all divisions and embracing all our petty loves and hates, your untouched joy redeeming our suffering, your deep tranquillity resolving our conflicts, and enable us to make a steady effort to embody something of those holy realities in our prayer and life. May the threefold rhythm of adoration, intercession and communion in which the spiritual life consists bring us into Your abiding presence and peace, as we are closely united with a world in torment; and fulfil our sacred privilege to carry that world and its sorrow with us, and submit it in our prayer to Your redeeming action. So we cry, ‘Within Your wounds, hide me!’ for all who suffer and mourn at this time. ‘Soothe our restlessness: say to our hearts “Peace be still.” Brood over us, within us, Spirit of perfect peace… enfolded in Your loving care.’ Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

In these ways, may we come to possess an extreme sensitiveness to the state and needs of souls and of the world. As those who live very close to nature become tuned to her rhythm, and can discern in solitary moments all the movements of her secret life, or as musicians distinguish each separate note in a great symphony and yet receive the music as a whole; so may we be sensitised to every note and cadence in the rich and intricate music of common life. May we, through our intercessions, stretch out over an ever wider area the filaments of love, and receive and endure in our own persons the anguish of its sorrow, its helplessness, its confusions, and its sin; suffering again and again the darkness of Gethsemane and the Cross as the price of redemptive power. For it is our awful privilege to stand in the gap between the world’s infinite need and the treasuries of the Divine Love. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Going out from this silence, teach us to be more alert, humble, expectant than we have been in the past: ever ready to encounter You in quiet, homely ways: in every appeal to our compassion, every act of unselfish love which shows up and humbles our imperfect love, may we recognize You still walking through the world. Give us that grace of simplicity which alone can receive your Mystery. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

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Van Morrison - Hymns To The Silence.