Moments of “ordinary mysticism” live on in our memories in Daydreaming on the Porch

There are times when I feel most connected to life in the awareness of fleeting experiences that come to me in little epiphanies during the day. It doesn’t matter where I am. They are predicated on many things, however.. The time of day, the weather — including the sky and clouds and how the air feels — and where I happen to be at those times.

Like life itself, those moments are unpredictable and yet they can be sought out and perceived consciously. It’s just that most of the time we go about our lives in busyness, not fully capable or willing to let those moments come to us in their full experiential joy and spontaneity.

For instance, I remember one summer walking across an open grassy area at midday on a July afternoon and feeling suddenly as if I was out in the country in some expansive field or meadow breathing in the hot, sweet smells of the earth. All that in the middle of a busy city full of traffic and other city noises.

At the nature preserve many years ago, I wrote about walking along the dike next to the old rice fields and wetlands and breathing in the fresh air off the marshes and woods nearby, borne on the strong breezes that always seem to be present there, and felt an awareness of deep-seated peace, as if I knew everything would be alright. Nature does that for me. It’s my source of strength — me alone with Nature: woods, streams, salt marshes, the sounds of ocean waves, indescribably beautiful sunsets.

Just the other week at the state park, walking among and under moss-hung branches and limbs of the magnificent live oak trees which are everywhere, I marveled at the quiet of the walkways, the shadows of the trees on that late afternoon with the perfect light of a waning day. And this favorite part is literally in the middle of the large Charleston suburbs where I live. Again, timeless and eternal moments, nurtured and sustained by Nature. I always marvel when I turn off from the mad stream of rushing traffic, drive through the gates to the park and immediately feel like I have been transported to one of those little quiet patches of paradise on Earth.

I’ve recorded these kinds of quietly revelatory experiences for decades. Here is a journal entry from Sept. 13, 1986, describing one of my visits to Black Creek in southern Mississippi, a scenic river I canoed, and along whose banks I often walked, enjoying to the utmost the peace and Nature sounds that always comforted me during a difficult time in graduate school at a nearby university.

I wrote:

Relaxed this afternoon in the shade of a sandbar beside Black Creek. The stream flowed by as moving leaves on the surface marked its passage. The water level was the lowest I’ve yet seen for the creek, and will get lower as the dry month of October approaches. Occasional breezes stirred the leaves overhead, cicadas droned in the trees, and yellow butterflies skipped and darted above the surface of the water. I could have fallen asleep had I perhaps been lying on a sleeping bag or thick blanket. Passed a very pleasant hour in thought. Didn’t even open the book I had brought along to read.

Recently, Eckhart Tolle said this to an interviewer:

Whatever you do, think, or feel can happen only in the present moment…If you live in such a way that you continuously deny the present moment, it means that you deny life itself, because life is inseparable from the Now… The past is a memory of a former Now; the future is a mental projection of an expected Now. Stricktly speaking, nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nor will anything happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. It sounds almost simplistic or meaningless, and yet there is a deep truth in it: that life and the Now are one.

And finally, I want to quote some words of the writer Elizabeth Carothers Herron describing what she refers to as “ordinary mysticism”. She wrote this in an essay that appeared in an issue of Orion Magazine some years back:

Late in the day I sit under the willows by the creek. The sun slants sideways through the leaves. A breeze picks up to ease the summer heat and fans through the trees. The narrow slivers of silver-gray of the willows, like a thousand tiny scimitars, catch the sun in sporadic shimmers. The mother willow’s many arms seem to spin from her gnarled and twisted trunk. She dances through the swirl of the seasons, while her roots hold fast and keep the creek bank stable through winter floods. One of her long arms wraps around behind me, low and into the ground so that if I did not follow its path I might imagine it to be a separate tree. Her sisters dance, too, up and down the creek….To live in time is what we hunger for, not to run to catch up with it, but to return to it.

What a beautiful concept. The term “ordinary mysticism” can refer to the idea that mystical experiences, or a sense of profound spiritual connection with people, objects, creatures we share the earth with, or everyday events can be had in everyday life and ordinary activities, rather than being reserved for extraordinary, supernatural, or religious experiences.

I would say that at certain times, in exactly the place I was meant to be, and with synchronicity sometimes intervening serendipitously, I can see the sacred in the mundane, the divine in everyday life. For example, two exquisitely beautiful butterflies float by just overhead as I’m walking h in the woods; I come across multicolored fungi I had never seen before or even imagined existed; or I round the bend on a path during a walk in autumn and see the sun lighting an ordinary bush with silvery finery no mere mortal could conceive of.

These kinds of encounters in Nature, or anywhere, actually, are accessible to anyone, and do not require special rituals, practices, or knowledge.

All my life I have discovered beauty, meaning, and transcendence in the simple, everyday experiences of life. Now in old age, these little miracles or wonders which surprise, delight and astonishment me no end, seem to occur with more frequency and regularity, as if I were prepared by a long life to welcome and receive those gifts, and know that in doing so I, too,am a mystic, I, too, can see deeply into the heart of things and gain fleeting awareness of secrets of the universe, even if I am not altogether aware of what is happening, but later on as I reflect on those experiences, become aware.

Magical fungi

https://flic.kr/p/2q1Y6Ho

Last updated July 03, 2024