Mystics and Masters

Miyamoto Musashi

Pastor’s Epistle—January 2020

When it comes to modern matters of faith, the maxim “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual” has become so well worn as to sound cliché. Yet we need not pit the one against the other. A person can, and indeed should, be both spiritual and religious.

I am of the (qualified) opinion that spirituality tends to be a deeper and a richer thing than religion—if by the former we mean a mystical and intimate encounter with the divine, and by the latter we mean a fairly strict set of practices and rituals. The personal outdoes the pro forma; that’s why Luther continually stresses who Christ must be “for you.”

But here’s my qualifier. When I was a kid, I had an excellent piano teacher. I wasn’t a terribly dedicated student, with my mind ever elsewhere, but she was still an excellent teacher. And she would always be after me to mind my form, to “curve your fingers.” It was practically her mantra.

Then one day she showed me a video recording of a master pianist, that I might be instructed and inspired by his example. And I immediately pointed out to her that the fellow on the screen wasn’t curving his fingers at all. What was the deal with that?

“When you can play like him,” she replied curtly, “you won’t have to curve your fingers either.”

That lesson has always stuck with me. The master, she showed me, has the right to improvise, to bend or break the rules, precisely because he has internalized and transcended those basic skills which are foundational to his craft. The novice does not, because he has not. The former surpasses pedagogy; the latter, if he eschews his lessons, seeks to avoid education and discipline altogether.

This holds true in other art forms as well. Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest samurai in Japanese history, was infamous for breaking all the established rules and norms of single combat. Yet he practiced his swordsmanship skills for hours every day, precisely so that when it came to a duel—to the real thing—his mind could remain open, blank, and unpredictable. He didn’t have to think about what he was doing, because the training had seeped deep into his bones. He could fight purely by instinct and inspiration.

I believe that at some point every serious seeker for truth finds him- or herself wandering, perhaps inadvertently, into the forests of the mystics. We want, quite rightly, a relationship with God that we experience as meaningful and real. Yet save perhaps for a select few, we first must have a firm foundation. We need to master the basics, to internalize them, so that they become part of us, truly second nature. And even then, spirituality (so defined above) does not abolish religion, but brings it to new life.

Religion indeed is a spiral. We keep going out from it and coming back to it: returning to the center, having grown. The ancient and familiar practices expand in our understanding. They become strange and new, not because they have changed, but because we have. Real religion grows with you, so that it seems bigger the bigger we get.

To paraphrase Thomas Merton: if the you of five years ago wouldn’t consider the you of today at least a bit of a heretic, then we aren’t growing in our faith. And for true growth we need both the concrete and the abstract, the communal and the personal, the ritual and the mystic, the old and the new. It’s a matter of both/and, not either/or. We need religion and spirituality together.

But then, what else would you expect a cleric to say?