"Normal mysticism"
Professor Debra Blank first introduced me to the term, "normal mysticism." At the time she was a liturgy professor at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. I was fascinated by this term. It put words to an experience I had had and that I hoped, though communal art-making, might be a perspective others might share. Jewish liturgical scholar Max Kadushin coined this term in his book Worship and Ethics (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964) where he described "normal mysticism" as perspective that enables ...a person to make normal, commonplace, recurrent situations and events occasions for worship….These daily commonplace situations are not only interpreted in the act of worship as manifestations of God’s love, but they arouse in the individual…a poignant sense of the nearness of God. (168) The act of doing photography can awaken us to the gift of the everyday. The intentionality we bring to seeing something in a new way -- because we have a camera in hand -- can lead to tiny moments of worship. The commonplace is no longer common. We realize the commonplace is extraordinary, and we give thanks to the Holy One whom Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once called the "Bright Darkness." |
The great Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel, also for decades a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary, offers us another wonderful term to ponder as we do photography as a spiritual practice: "radical amazement."
In Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe (Notre Dame IN: Sorin Books, 2006), Christian spiritual writer Judy Cannato helps us appreciate what Heschel was trying to get at: "...wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of a religious attitude toward life and the proper response to our experience of the divine...Living in radical amazement brings us into the space in which [as Heschel says] 'great things happen to the soul.'" (10) The contemplative stance that flows out of radical amazement catches us up in love -- the Love that is the Creator of all that is, the Holy Mystery that never ceases to amaze, never ceases to lavish love in us, on us, around us. It is almost impossible not to stand in amazement when contemplating the grandeur that is the Grand Canyon ( a tiny bit of which is in the larger image above).
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When I stood on the South Rim of the canyon to take this photograph, I couldn't quite take in all that my eyes beheld. The vastness of the landscape before me, combined with the scientific fact that I was looking at millions of years of sediment piled up and then cut through by the Colorado River, I still can't quite absorb.
Experiencing "radical amazement" while viewing the complex landscape of the Grand Canyon is almost to be expected. Being able to see the typically overlooked beauty in an ever-present object, like this humble rocker on a porch (above), requires the vision of "normal mysticism."
This week take a "long loving look" at your every-day world. Adopt a contemplative stance when "receiving the light" in your work space or your kitchen, for example. Discover how extraordinary is your ordinary world! And be ready to being amazed... |