The Numinous and Worship
Good afternoon, and welcome to … Tuesday. For me, today, it’s not a particularly good Tuesday. It is, however, *A* Tuesday, and I suppose in some very small ways, I’m glad to be here for it. The temperature outside has raised significantly from the weekend’s deep freeze, and the snow was falling quite prettily in the pre-dawn light, as the world around me stretched and yawned, awakening from fitful slumber to greet the day. After dropping my kids off at daycare and the bus stop for school – and for their parenting time with their mother – I returned home and briefly enjoyed the smell of sausages cooking on the stove to break my fast with. Another fine double homemade breakfast burrito meal, if I do say so myself. Give me chorizo, and I’ll have it perfected. =) After having fed my belly, and making an attempt at waking my mind with strong, french-press brewed coffee, I sank into my chair and allowed myself to sink fully into the deep and miserable funk I have been in for the past couple of days. Ahhh, depression, a scratchy wool blanket to insulate myself in on these cold winter days, both comfortable and irritating. Life, despite my best efforts, still continues to be at the lowest I have seen it in terms of “things going my way.” You think I’d be used to that by now, but every successive soul crushing disappointment still manages to take me surprise. lol 
Somehow I keep managing to get back up. It’s surprising at times, but I do.
Among certain things I have been feeling pretty low about, is the lack of spirit and the divine making itself known to me in my life lately. After an almost overload of amazement when I started this path, I am in a definite lull, and missing it pretty hard. There are other reasons, but I won’t get into that here. After pouring out to a friend this morning, and subsiding into trembling sobs on the sofa, I determined to distract myself with a book I’ve recently started reading: “Contact” by Carl Sagan.
One of the things I’ve noticed as more time has gone on, following a path of greater spiritual awareness, is how the Divine seeks to gain my attention. And one of the most thought provoking of these ways is through synchronicity. Some little quirks here or there crop up almost daily, but from time to time I get bashed over the head with it seemingly everywhere I turn. While reading this book, I was bludgeoned most unmercilessly yet again, as I have been for almost a solid week now. I’d been waiting for some of the other sources who were providing me with this synchronatic subject matter to speak up, as they had all mentioned an interest in wanting to write about it, but so far none have… and upon getting hit with it again this morning, I realized, “Oh. Maybe *I* should write about it.” Subtlety, though used, and to a degree, understood by me, is not my strong point, and sometimes one just needs that directly literal instruction or information, to keep getting smacked upside the head with the obvious. So here I am, albeit in a very roundabout manner, to talk about ecstatic experiences and worship.
Lyon, at The Wandering Hearth, recently wrote an article about scripts and spontaniety in worship. In this article (which was excellent by the way, and I’d encourage you to read it), she mentioned wanting to write further about escstatic experiences in worship, which really got my gears going. I decided to just sit on my musings, as I hadn’t formed anything really concrete, though I had the ticklings of some ideas. A few days later, while chatting with another blogger, Treesong, of Treesong.org, the subject of ecstatic experience came up again, out of the blue. We shared some ideas on this topic, which left me considering it even more, really taking the time to think about it. He also expressed an interest of writing about the topic, and again, I decided to wait what somebody else had to say, though I was more excited now because I could feel some things beginning to click into place for myself. So that lead me up to today, the couch, and Contact. There’s a part in the book, where the main character finds herself falling in love, truly, for the very first time, which really struck a chord with me, it was if somebody was writing about how I felt, and it had my attention, I must admit. I’m a romantic, what can I say. And then BAM, like a thunderbolt from the pages, leaps a discussion on a discussion on the “numinous” and everything really clicked into place for me.
Now, the term “numinous” was first used by Rudolph Otto in a book called, “The Idea of the Holy,” back in 1923, and is used to describe the power or presense of Divinity. He thought of the numinous as thing the human response to is “absolute astonishment,” and the numinous experience is made up of two parts: mysterium tremendum, which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling; and mysterium fascinans, the tendency to attract, fascinate and compel. The numinous experience also has a personal quality to it, in that the person feels to be in communion with a wholly other. The numinous experience can lead in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent, basically, the parts of Divinity perceived to be of the most value. This ties in exactly with where I had been going in my thoughts of ecstatic experiences.
When I first … REALLY … began to seriously consider this path, I was met with many ecstatic experiences, a full helping of mysterium fascinans if you will. And I also learned, upon meeting Herne, that there was the other side as well. The mysterium tremendum is the part that always makes it hard to stay and face him. With the presage of his arrival, there often comes a galloping sense of panic and terror, though not aimed at myself personally. In the presense of the Divine, the soul trembles and quakes, and one can feel utterly insignificant. It is a feeling both of awe, fear, and respect, and it is difficult to face. But if one pulls down deep, and masters that feeling, one is able to experiences the mysterium fascinans that goes with it. And those are the experiences, that I cherish the most from this whole path, the ones that make it all worth while, when I am locked into that feeling. It’s a good one to chase, but it’s rare. Some days, the world is just business as usual, full of highs and lows, good and bad, even manic and depressive. But those rare moments… man do they really make the rest seem so much more … bearable. Even that brief glimpse, snatch of conversation, or emotion brought on from the numinous is enough to change you. I remember being told that when starting out. You can choose to touch that, to become that aware, but if you do, it’ll change you forever. And that was true. I’ve changed, forever, and I want to devote my life to emulating that feeling as closely as possible. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, and I can think no better way to worship that, than by seeking it out, and/or being enough to accept it when I’m priveleged enough to be gifted with it.
Treesong and I, had been discussing the feelings of being “swept up” in things in our lives, things we had found to be undeniable, the mysterium fascians (though I didn’t have a word for it at the time,) and he made the observation to me, that in those moments, he knew himself to be on the right track, as it was the Divine presense telling him “YES”, a feeling of blessing and amazement, that the joy was a gift of following where he needed to be. He also acknowledged that with that feeling, came a balance, in that it was almost always accompanied by a harder road ahead, intense amounts of fear and terror that went along with accepting that fully, that could be quite hard to master. Before the conversation drifted on, we both agreed however, that they were well worth sticking around for.
Herne has never been easy to accept, I’ve fought him a lot of the way, I’ve struggled and drawn back, panicked and ran, hid and pushed him away when he got close. At the same time though, I was always hoping to draw him more closely to me, the benefit of it… my how amazing. How do you explain the love for Deity? I fought against what was right in front of my face for a long time… I did. And the more I fought, the harder it was to deny, that I knew this was where I was devoted. This was where I most wanted to be. And yes, that hasn’t been easy. I don’t blame the mundane details of my life on it, though it may have contributed. It hasn’t necessarily made the rest of my life any clearer, or made my road any easier. But it has given me something amazing to embrace, and to see me through the rough times with, and to truly, honestly fully give my thanks and heart to, because it fills me up that much. It is that strong.
My worship, while not filled with the mysterium fascinans on a second by second basis, is still filled with the knowledge that it’s there, and I can touch it anytime I want, or need, because I have learned to see it behind the mysterium tremendum that comes with it, to accept that one is part of the other. It it is not always easy to open up to it in the face of that fear, but I gladly try and strive and bring myself closer to a place where I can do that, because that is what my worship is about. Giving thanks for that, and embracing it with all my heart. This is worship. This is life. This is why I believe, this is what I believe, and this is what I want. These are the sorts of moments that make life worth living for, and these are the moments I wish for the most. I give thanks, that I am here, that I am aware, and that I have been blessed enough to be given moments like this.
So mote it be.
Related posts:
Tags: depression, ecstatic experience, food, Herne, life, love, numinous, worship
Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 6:38 PM
OK, first things first – wow. I had to read this a couple of times to really take it all in, and I am absolutely blown away. Not just by the topic and what it entails, but also by the way you presented it. Very impressive, Ryan.
Moving on. You already know how concerned I’ve been about you, and I’ve got an ear for you whenever you need to bend it. Yes, things are tough (all right, all right, I’m the Mistress of the Understatement), but I also know that, despite the periods of thinking you can’t keep going, you’re much stronger than what’s in front of you, and you will make it.
We’ve had a few brief conversations about how Deity interacts with us, and given the differences between our respective patrons, that interaction is pretty different. I’m not entirely certain how I’d handle something like what you’ve experienced with Herne, but maybe that’s why he hasn’t called to me. Not to say that I don’t get my share of ‘tough love’ from my patroness, and that’s enough to (generally) get me back on track. That feeling of wanting to bring it closer and pushing it away at the same time, I do understand, though. I’d never really expressed it, either on paper or to myself, that fully, so thank you for spelling it out.
Much as we look for those moments of mysterium fascinans, I don’t think we could handle them if they came all the time; certainly, we wouldn’t value them as highly. Each time it occurs, it reminds me why I am on this path and why I do the work to stay there. But I also believe that people are put in our path by Deity for certain reasons. Most of the time, it’s up to us to figure out why we are meant to interact with them, but it’s always there if we take the time to figure it out. As time goes on, the pattern I see is that after getting rattled from a ’scolding’, someone always appears who can help me get to where I need to be, if I let them. Maybe it doesn’t work that way for everyone, but that’s part of the tools I’m given.
Didn’t mean to write a mini-novel here, but I also didn’t want to just leave a couple of words. I know what this took to write and am very glad that you’ve shared these concepts with us. *HUGS*
Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 9:01 PM
Interesting take on the numinous. I’m glad to see that our conversation helped to inspire a blog post!
One aspect of an ecstatic path that most new people miss out on is strongly related to the ‘mysterium tremendum’. Put more broadly, it’s any form of powerful mystical experience available to an ecstatic that an outside observer would perceive as very difficult or negative.
When we open ourselves up to experiences of profound bliss and awe and connectedness, we also open ourselves to the possibility of profound despair and terror and alienation. Once you’ve opened yourself to the tremendous beauty and raw power of a deeper experience of the world, anything which leaves you feeling separate or distant from that beauty will inspire feelings far more powerful and devastating than anything you felt before setting out on an ecstatic path.
Really, I think that’s why people shut themselves off from the flow as much as they do. They like a bit of spark every now and then, but they’re afraid that if they let too much of that fire into their lives, they’re going to get burned.
For me, though, it’s well worth it. Even the moments of sorrow and despair are a form of communion with the divine. That may sound paradoxical at first — but feeling deep sorrow in the presence of something truly sorrowful is one of the most profound and moving experiences that love has to offer.
Posted on January 10th, 2010 at 12:00 AM
Wow Ryan this post gives me a lot to think about, personally. Thanks for the food for thought (and sorry for the late comments, I’m trying to catch up!)
Posted on January 10th, 2010 at 12:57 AM
@Erin: Yeah, I agree. If we were inundated with the mysterium fascinans constantly, it wouldn’t really be that at all, it would be the mundane at that point. Still, the more the merrier!
@Treesong: You may be on to something there, the fear of getting burned. I tend to look at that fire more like the flame from a forge, in that it helps shape and mold us, into something greater.
@Jupiter: I’d be interested to hear more about what you come up with in your musings. And no need to apologize for the comments, I’m always happy to get any, late or not!