We Belong to God: Mysticism of Heartbreak and Grief
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” – St. Augustine
A compelling example of human heartbreak is Lena Horne’s singing the song “Stormy Weather” (“since my man and I ain’t together”) in the movie titled appropriately Stormy Weather. There are also many instances and stories of human grief resulting not only in depression, and even physical illness and death, over the passing of a lover or spouse. Today Ukrainians are faced with everything they have being destroyed by a Russian leader whose sanity is being questioned. And we can also now fear the threat of nuclear war and even the destruction of our planet by global warming. These are all experiences of separation. Anyone who has lived long enough can relate to these experiences. And anyone who has had one knows that they’re like time standing still. There can even be a sense that we will never be the same.
From a mystical point of view there is also something to be said about experiences of separation. Mysticism has everything to do with our relationship with God for Jews and Christians – or for others, with something that has a transcendent meaning for them. Christian mystics experience an inner deep and abiding relationship with God that brings them to contemplative prayer and a deep sense of union with God. But if it were possible for us to be separated from God, the loss would be a deeper one than any other loss or separation. Perhaps a separation from God could even be described as a spiritual death. But such a loss is impossible if God is an indwelling presence in us as promised in Scripture.
Yet many people believe we are separate from God because of a perspective that God is in heaven and we are not. I will suggest that this is an unfortunate misunderstanding. A separation from God, if it were real, would be even more than heartbreaking if it weren’t so widely accepted as normal. Sadly, a union with God seems unthinkable, if not heretical, to many believers. So it’s hard to say how deep such a loss would be in our Jewish and Christian hearts if we are not even aware of the indwelling God. But Christians can take heart from Paul’s teaching in Romans 8:38 that nothing can separate us from God’s love, and also from the psalmist’s teaching in Psalm 46 that mountains and nations may fall but the Lord is still with us. If all this were not true and we were separate from God, our situation would indeed be calamitous. When we lack awareness of God’s closeness to us, we’re like children who have run away from home.
The truth is that we are never really satisfied in this world. We have pacifiers of extraordinary variety, but if we are true to ourselves they will ultimately fail to make us happy. But our union with God, if we accept it, can sustain us in our other experiences of separation. As St. Augustine stated: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” It’s a great error if we Jews and Christians accept a separation from God as part of our nature. The restlessness in the deepest part of ourselves would be inaccessible by us due to a self-imposed no trespassing sign denying access to the place within us where God resides.
When people have mystical or conversion experiences, they often report experiencing God for the first time in that sacred place deep within them.
John Hayes, Adult Spiritual Development Commission