Opportunities to practice activism abound these days. In fact, we probably wish there weren’t such a need for our activism in service to collective liberation. Couldn’t we just get a little break from the injustices, the wrongs, the hurt? Sadly, the call for our activism is deadly serious, and we simply can’t ignore it. As we continue to promote collective liberation locally and nationally, I’d like to draw your attention to an often-overlooked form of liberative practice: mystic activism.

There is no substitute for Horizontal change for the Good; i.e., transformation that makes life better for Our Relations (humans and non-humans alike) in concrete ways. Then again, there’s also no substitute for Vertical change for the Good; i.e., transformation that makes life better for Our Relations (humans and non-humans alike) in spiritual, mystic, or esoteric ways. If the Horizontal were all that matters, we could be exclusively concerned with material life. But what about wellness for Our Relations that pertains to the soul, psyche, and so on? What about spiritual health and wellness for All Our Relations?

In her short and accessible book, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People, Evelyn Underhill aims to promote a brass tacks, mystic way of life. Her book was originally published in 1914, and it bears a romanticism common in late 19th and early 20th century English spiritual thought. But maybe these days we need a bit more romanticism to inspire our struggle against “the banality of evil” (à la Hannah Arendt). Maybe we need more practical mysticism to counteract the soul-deadening effects of capitalism and the idolatry of exclusivist privilege.
Underhill lays out our collective calling as follows:

So here is your vocation set out: a vocation so various in its opportunities, that you can hardly fail to find something to do. It is your business to actualise within the world of time and space—perhaps by great endeavors in the field of heroic action, perhaps only by small ones in field and market, tram and tube, office and drawing-room, in the perpetual give-and-take of the common life—that more real life, that holy creative energy, which this world manifests as a whole but indifferently. You shall work for mercy, order, beauty, significance: shall mend where you find things broken. 1

Underhill urges us to recognize that the material world may be our field of play, but manifesting “that more real life, that holy creative energy” is the vocation for a well-integrated Vertical and Horizontal human life. Our Transcendentalist forebears—like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody—understood that our holistic health requires us to live as beings who participate in Being (the sacred Whole, the Holy, the transcendent). To put it simply, our mystic activism is to be co-creators of a Good reality. Yes, advocate for Goodness on the Horizontal level, but don’t forget that the Vertical dimension of life also warrants our mystic activism: at the grocery store, in your neighborhood, “in field and market, tram and tube, office and drawing-room, in the perpetual give-and-take of the common life.”

The motto of Mount Tamalpais College—the two-year liberal arts college program for inmates of San Quentin State Prison—is Discamus Ut Mundum Reparemus: “Let Us Learn So That We May Repair the World.” That, Beloveds, is mystic activism in a nutshell! I taught philosophy at Mount Tamalpais College, and my students “on the inside” deeply understood the practicality of mystic activism. They grasped the vitality and power of spiritual wellness in service to collective liberation. We read Octavia Butler, Dostoevsky, Foucault, Vine Deloria Jr., and Paolo Freire. For them, studying Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed or Foucault’s Discipline and Punish wasn’t “just an academic exercise”—it was the sublime practice of spiritual resistance and the mystical praxis of wellness for the Whole.

Friends, mystic activism is an invaluable complement to the genuine transformation of our material world. Typically I would now provide you with a list of “spiritual things” you could do to practice mystic activism. You don’t need a list. Try something you think might be mystic activism. Or use your intuition. Or ask a kindred spirit what mystic activism might mean to them. Experiment. If you do this, you will be practicing mystic activism. It’s that easy…and sublime.

Matt Farris, Ministerial Intern