The Mystics Would Like a Word

Discover a rich legacy of audacious women who forged a spirituality that is more inclusive, surprising, and empowering than we ever imagined.

Is there a Christian spirituality that embraces the entire reality of womanhood?

The answer, Shannon K. Evans suggests, is an emphatic yes. There is a spirituality that meets us in every part of our lives, developed by the women who came before us. Six mystics—Teresa of Ávila, Margery Kempe, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, and Thérèse of Lisieux—revealed a faith big enough to hold the female experiences of sex and desire, the yearning for bodily autonomy, the challenges of motherhood and identity, as well as life with male authority and—sometimes—violence. These women, self-determining, stubborn, and unapologetically themselves, asked questions in their time that are startlingly prescient today, and fought for women’s experiences to be heard, understood, respected, and recognized as holy.

In <The Mystics Would Like a Word,< readers will discover the story of Christian faith and spirituality as told by these extraordinary and wise women, one that speaks directly to today&rsquo;s unique experiences, and leads to wholeness, healing, and spiritual vitality.

Autorentext

Shannon K. Evans is the spirituality and culture editor at the National Catholic Reporter. She is the author of Feminist Prayers for My Daughter, Rewilding Motherhood, Luminous, and Embracing Weakness. She and her family make their home in Iowa.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

Trusting Yourself Doesn’t Make You a Heretic

I read the words on the screen with a tightening in my chest. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get criticism from fundamentalists on my Instagram, but their words were usually at least coated in something resembling civility. On this day one particular woman had come with claws out. “Stop pretending to be Christian,” she rebuked me in the comments on my post. “You are purposefully deceiving people. It’s obvious to all of us that you are Wiccan.”

Spoiler alert: Gentle reader, I am not Wiccan. I don’t think I even know any Wiccans. The extent of my familiarity with Wicca comes from the character Willow in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series that I watched as a teenager, which is to say, less than exhaustive but pretty witty.

And yet, in that moment, my heart raced and my cheeks burned as though I had been found out. I felt publicly exposed and vulnerable, not because I was being correctly outed as a pagan but because, as incorrect as her diagnosis was, this commenter had picked up on something true: I had transgressed the laws of Christian womanhood.

My crime? I had written a post that put language to the wild, raw, hungry spirits inside of women, the places in us that marvel at—and sometimes fear—the power of the mysteries within. The last sentence I wrote was “We will never be satisfied with a small God or a small inner flame. We know in our bodies there is more.”

It was simple, this call to listen to and honor the deepest stirrings within. But the prospect of self-honesty, of attending to the desire to live untamed, terrified this woman. Her terror turned itself onto me, a conflict-averse person for whom that was difficult. But it wasn’t about me at all. It was about her consciousness and her cages warring against each other. From behind the bars of patriarchy, women can be downright cruel to those who wander free.

This is an extreme example, of course. Most of us are not leaving hateful comments on other women’s social media posts. (If you are . . . please stop.) For most of us, the battle is internal. Do we acknowledge the rumbling in our guts or do we continue reading from the script we’ve been given?

Too often, certain issues feel unwelcome in our faith spaces, while our faith might feel unwelcome in spaces of important social critique. When I say, for example, that I am Christian and feminist, I find the Christian part scares the feminists and the feminism part scares the Christians. Like many women today, I have felt pressured to choose between religious fidelity and progressive thinking. I have been there before—and I have no intention of going back.

A handful of years ago I was a much-lauded writer for a prominent Catholic women’s ministry, where I enjoyed a sense of belonging and friendship. Community has always been an integral part of my spiritual life, and the women in this ministry were my primary community at the time; these were individuals with a spectrum of social, political, and theological beliefs but whose group identity leaned more conservative than my own. Still, I was convinced there was a place for me with them, especially since my writing was so well received. So I censored my more controversial opinions and convictions in order to fit in with the group. Worse, I performed serious mental gymnastics to lie to myself about being okay with some of the things said, done, and taught in the ministry. I didn’t feel full permission to trust myself, my own conscience, or the way I understood the Spirit inside me, so I deferred to others instead.

Gradually, I began to wake up. Prompted by trials in my personal life that forced me to confront honestly the extent to which I had disconnected from my authentic self, I found the courage to return to my own instincts and voice. I employed small critiques of patriarchy in my writing and advocated for serious leadership positions, including ordination, for women in religious institutions. I criticized the blending of church and state for politicians’ personal gain. I spoke openly about my love of yoga and the Enneagram. Even though I expressed these opinions only on my personal blog and social media accounts, my status within the ministry began to crumble. Complaints were lodged against me by longtime readers, which felt as humiliating as it was infuriating. A priest and a bishop worked to shut me up, which opened my eyes to the subtleties of clericalism’s harm. When I was told by ministry leadership that I would be required to hide my personal convictions entirely if I wanted to stay on staff, I resigned in what I hoped would be a gracious and amicable fashion. To my shock, the vast majority of women I once counted as friends never spoke to me again. The feeling of having been used and then abandoned hurt more than the censorship.

The grief went deep. I lost friendships I had assumed were real. I lost my largest writing platform. I lost my spiritual community and sense of belonging. I mourned this all for months—and, if I’m honest, a part of me still mourns it. And yet, I learned what it felt like to be true to myself. I learned that I could trust myself. It was more than worth it.

I know I am not alone in having gone through an experience like this. When you consider how common these pressures are, it’s no wonder women are plagued by anxiety and depression. For the sake of maintaining our sense of belonging, we discipline ourselves into staying within the received boundaries of what we are allowed to think, believe, or practice rather than what we actually think, believe, or want to practice. We look to spouses, family members, pastors, and news anchors to tell us what parameters we ought to stay within. We trust the authority of outside voices far more than we trust the guidance of our own souls. In fact, the very idea of trusting ourselves elicits unease: isn’t that the very thing the Bible tells us not to do?

It’s true, there are places in the Bible that discourage us from putting trust in ourselves. When I was a good Baptist kid growing up in Bible Drill competi…