A pattern may have revealed itself to you here. I have a deep love for mystics and ecstatics of any faith. While my life has mostly exposed me to Christian mystics, I try to expand my reading so that I can experience mysticism from Islam, the Sufis, Judaism, and beyond.
Today I bring a poem from a Christian mystic and ecstatic, the English priest Thomas Traherne. The Episcopal Church is the spiritual community into which I was born, and it has its origins in the Church of England, so English mystics have a special home in my heart.
The Prospect was the Gate of Heaven, that Day The ancient Light of Eden did convey Into my Soul: I was an Adam there, A little Adam in a Sphere Of Joys! O there my Ravished sense Was entertained in Paradise, And had a Sight of Innocence. All was beyond all Bound and Price. An Antepast of Heaven sure! I on the Earth did reign. Within, without me, all was pure. I must become a Child again.
I don’t really want to say more, because this is so beautiful all on its own. The images of “the Gate of Heaven” and “the Light of Eden” and being inside “a Sphere of Joys” are lovely. There is a sense of energy and illumination, like a summer evening at sunset, where one’s own skin appears to be lit from within.
I also love the contrast between one’s “Ravished sense” and “all was pure” as well as learning to become a child again. There are so many ways we can become ravished in this world, to feel sullied and dirty by all the stuff of human daily life. To bathe in the Light of Eden is to give us that foretaste of Divinity, of purity; the only response is childlike wonder.
My wish for you today is that you will find your Sphere of Joys and be a child again, if only for a moment.