Mark Longhurst will be a new name to you unless you subscribe to one of his Substack newsletters or you’re involved with Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC). Longhurst is the publications manager at the CAC. He’s also a former Protestant pastor and a social justice activist.
Longhurst wants to show you why and how mysticism can be an everyday reality. You may have seen our review of Mirabai Starr’s new book on a similar subject. Their books are complementary; in fact, Starr endorses this one by Longhurst. The primary difference is that Longhurst is speaking specifically to Christians — the disaffected kind, the Nones and Dones, and those that perhaps grew up in traditions of Christianity that were almost anti-mystical.
Speaking to his intended reader, Longhurst writes in the introduction about how mysticism should be ordinary and real: “We are not ones who flee from reality — but see it, face and transform it. To paraphrase a famous story by Jesus, a mystic cannot cross to the other side when the homeless, the undocumented immigrant, or the refugee, is lying in the road. Union with God means union with each other, the most marginalized, and the planet. Otherwise we’re not in union at all.”
Five parts organize short chapters into these subjects: Contemplation, Connections, Liberations, Embodiment, and Transformations. Practices of contemplative prayer, sacred spaces, saying yes to the sacred in one’s heart and life, and recognizing God in ordinary places receive a lot of attention.
The final part’s transformations include “be happy with enough,” “prepare for death,” and “live from the true self,” which by book’s end the reader feels is possible. Longhurst summarizes:
“Knowing who we are is far more than discovering the tastes and preferences of this individual ‘me.’ My likes and dislikes are rather particular, but they’re not interesting. I’m discovering who I am in relationship with divine presence. As [Thomas] Merton puts it, ‘The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.’ The divine presence is showing itself to me through me, but I rarely attune to it. Still, I am on my way.”
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