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“This Loving, Uniting Embrace”: the Holy Ordinary

“This Loving, Uniting Embrace”: the Holy Ordinary

Last updated on: February 7, 2025 at 12:44 pm by Guest Contributor

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“This Loving, Uniting Embrace”: the Holy Ordinary 2025-02-07T12:44:11-04:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Today’s guest post is by Mark Longhurst, author of The Holy Ordinary: A Way to God

I feel drawn to a life of spiritual depth, inspired by the mystics, but I’m not a monk, nun, or even a professional pastor serving a church anymore. I’m just an ordinary dude working a job I am privileged to love, raising boys who play soccer. I go to my local art cinema, read spirituality books and occasionally science fiction, spend time with my wife, and go on hikes with my dog. I am also, frankly, not very good at slowing down and appreciating the holiness of the ordinary. I have an anxious and task-oriented psyche that leads me into obsessive thought patterns more than it does a trusting posture of enjoying the moment.

But as I say in The Holy Ordinary, I’m convinced that “underneath the rhythmic contours of each day are deepening roots that sip from mystical streams.” I sit in silent meditation or chant morning psalms—which is something monks and nuns have been doing for centuries—and I’m reminded at some level that my true life is not found in the things that I’m doing and that my belonging lies in a deeper, divine love in which I am invited to participate.

Here’s the thing: once you know that there’s a deeper love pulsing behind and through all things, you can’t unknow it. It doesn’t mean I’m special; I’ve just glimpsed something beautiful that I believe is true, and I know I’m not the only one. I meet so many people who are living regular lives on the surface, who are perfectly ordinary in our wounds and failures, many of whom do not go to church or find belonging in traditional religious structures but who have glimpsed something deeply loving about reality—and can’t unsee it.

This is the call that the “mystic” has traditionally responded to. For about 1,500 years, the “mystical” meant *monastic—*but we’re living in a time where this is no longer true. In our ecumenical era, the divisions that once caused wars between Protestants and Catholics are no longer ultimate. Lots of people are leaving Christianity altogether, and often with good reason—but lots of people are also realizing that there are treasures hidden in Christianity and that they don’t need to belong to one denominational group or the other to enjoy. So, in today’s religious landscape, I’ve run into evangelical Christians praying Psalms like monks and liberal Protestants singing songs from the French monastery Taizé. Thousands of people who don’t belong to any tradition hike a former medieval pilgrimage path—the Camino de Santiago. Christians practice silent meditation and yoga now, practices traditionally reserved for Christian monks, Buddhists, and Hindu renunciates.

What if mysticism is for everybody? What if it’s not for those special people but for me—for us? And what if following a path of deep spirituality in this way helps us discover the radical holiness of ordinary life?

So, what is the holy ordinary? What is mysticism, and how do you begin talking about the ineffable? I don’t have a specific answer, but I can tell you what I’ve learned from others. One medieval scholar, Jean Gerson, described it as “the experiential knowledge that comes from God through the embrace of unitive love.” So, it’s experiential and not something we learn from reading books. That’s extremely difficult for someone like me who loves reading theology and spirituality books. I often can trick myself into believing that because I’ve read or thought something, I’ve experienced it fully—but that’s decidedly not the case. Mysticism comes from God, or ultimate reality, whatever word you want to use, through an embrace of love. It has everything to do with knowing, feeling, and trusting that an embrace of love is at the heart of it all. But it’s also “unitive,” meaning that it unites us and connects us to God, each other, and the earth. It’s a love that heals, brings together and does not separate. I’m convinced that that’s what we most need today.

This loving, uniting embrace is available to us in all our ordinary moments, from standing waiting at the bus stop to doing the dishes to working on a deadline for our jobs. It’s available when we’re cooking, walking in nature, or playing with our kids. This loving, uniting embrace is also available as a resource to me and each of us in the hard moments. It’s available when we’re mad, sad, and hurting. It holds us in the grief of our heartbreaks, diagnoses, and deaths, ever prompting us to solidarity with those who are most suffering and are marginalized. Discovering the “holy” ordinary means living a life that trusts this loving embrace.

About Mark Longhurst: Writer, author of The Holy Ordinary, and ordinary mystic, Mark is a member of the new monastic Community of the Incarnation and works as the Publications Manager at the Center for Action and Contemplation. A former pastor, he served United Church of Christ churches for ten years and worked as a faith-based social justice activist in the Boston area for ten more. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a longtime yoga practitioner, Mark lives in western Massachusetts with his family. You can follow him on Substack at marklonghurst.substack.com and Instagram @ordinary.mystic.

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