The mystic and the material

Andrew Sullivan quotes the notable Oliver Sachs on combining atheism with mysticism.

He strongly dislikes the idea that transcendent music and the like has anything to do with 'fictious' supernatural realities. He also says: The non-representational but indescribably vivid emotional quality is such as to make one think of an immaterial or spiritual world. I dislike both of those words, because for me, the so-called immaterial and spiritual is always vested in the fleshly — in "the holy and glorious flesh," as Dante said.

Oddly enough I find that view pretty cogenial. (And I do remember C.S. Lewis warning about the Materialist Mystic.) The whole incarnational, sacramental aspect of Christianity, the whole startling paradox of the divine reality glimpsed only in the flesh and blood of a suffering and dying (and risen!) man, leads me in that very physical direction. It's not surprising he quotes Dante. On the other hand, while Christianity has strong resources with which to criticize notion of 'the spiritual' I don't think doing that necessarily leads to ruling out the existence of God as some encompassing being/reality underlying (or overarching) ordinary nature as we know it (I realize this leans towards panentheism, but so be it.) Salvation, revelation, indeed any divine manifestation can be seen as taking place in the material: salvation of the world by re-creation and resurrection, not by rapturing souls out of the world.

Let me once again highly recommend Take This Bread, which continues to move me deeply and stimulates my thinking about the sacramental and incarnational nature of food, relationships and faith. There's one bit where Miles recounts being trapped near a violent government crackdown in Mexico. She goes on to say that the incident was completely suppressed in the media and that the only people who knew about it, knew it 'in their own meat,' which is apparently a Spanish phrase - I don't have the book with me but I think it was en (something) carne? The book includes many varied experiences but she's tied them together with this powerful recurring incarnational motif, and the act of giving and receiving food. "Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you."