So here we go, off and running on this blogging adventure. Little did I know, nearly a quarter of a century ago, when a broken man, I made my first faltering steps into the spiritual life, that one day, far off in the future, I would write about spirituality. But such are the vagaries that accompany the spiritual journey, you can seldom see the wonders that lay ahead.
Radically inclusive love, is the only thing that really counts.
So what on earth do I mean by bottom up spirituality? Without doubt, I will variously define this in my future blogs. But it certainly includes the realm of the mystic, the Spirit imbued humble space, where hierarchy crumbles on its own decrepit exclusivity, and radically inclusive love, is the only thing that really counts.
I write within the Ignatian mystic tradition, founded by a wacky, out there, little Spanish mystic, five hundred years ago. However, it is just one of ‘many ways,’ in a multitude of meditative practice that is now sweeping the world.
This blog is first and foremost about that stuff, mystic stuff, a game that may initially seem remote; the strange pastime of even stranger participants. But actually, it is the most inclusive game in town. Open to anyone willing to give it a go, even a fella like me.
Mystics are now emerging all over the place. Some are spiritual and not religious, a distinction that is important to them. Others are following traditions that have stood the test of time within a wide range of diverse cultural and religious settings. While others still are overtly and purposefully secular, like the mindfulness folk.
All this hankers well for what one of my mystic teachers used to call “this beautiful but broken world.” My blogging will be in this vast inclusive realm, unrestrained in range. by religious rules, or doctrinal constraint. For, if I have learned anything at all, it is that the mystic dwells blissfully in the gray, not the strictly black or white, wrong or right, way of seeing the world.
The bumping along the bottom, out on the margin exile places.
Every great mystics past and present, at least the ones that seriously get my attention, all look for the lowly spaces, the bumping along the bottom, out on the margin exile places, because that’s where the Spirit is alive and active in the now.
During the following posts I’ll get into some serious blogging about the little snip bits I have gleaned along the way, on my long, often stumbling, bumpy exile journey toward the light. I’ll do my best to share with you the treasure that has been so freely gifted to me.
In the end, this blog is all about the heart, the heart, the damn heart, comrades, that finds its roots in bottom up spirituality. For it is deep down in depths, in the practice of spirituality from below, where all the mighty heart stuff comes to light. Every great mystic that has ever lived, ultimately it seems to me, arrives at this self-same place. It’s all about the heart and the language of the heart because for the mystic, it’s all about radically other-centered love.
Love your work!!