I am on retreat this week so the post today is a quote from something I’ve been reading from John Ruysbroec, a Christian spiritual writer who lived from 1293 – 1381. He had deep experiences of intimacy with God. Below is a quote of his description of what he felt. The second paragraph is a description of what we will experience in the next life. They are both from his book The Sparkling Stone, chapter 3. The love and joy he describes are encouraging and inspirational. He stated in other places that he did not believe in a merger of essence with God, so he was not heretical. His vocabulary may seem strange but he was looking for words to describe something that seemed beyond words. [Note: the “spirit” refers to our human spirit.] For students of church history it is interesting that Ruysbroec uses fire language similar to that used later by Richard Rolle and John of the Cross.
“[Those who experience this] feel nothing else but a burning up of themselves in the simple Unity of God. This simple Unity of God none can feel or possess save he who maintains himself in the immeasurable radiance, and in the love which is above reason and wayless. In this transcendent state the spirit feels in itself the eternal fire of love; and in this fire of love it finds neither beginning nor end, and it feels itself one with this fire of love. The spirit for ever continues to burn in itself, for its love is eternal; and it feels itself ever more and more to be burnt up in love, for it is drawn and transformed into the Unity of God, where the spirit burns in love.
And in this Love we shall burn and be burnt up without end, throughout eternity; for herein lies the blessedness of all spirits. And therefore we must all found our lives upon a fathomless abyss; that we may eternally plunge into Love, and sink down in the fathomless Depth. And with that same Love, we shall ascend, and transcend ourselves, in the incomprehensible Height. And in that Love which is wayless, we shall wander and stray, and it shall lead us and lose us in the immeasurable Breadth of the Love of God. And herein we shall flee forth and flee out of ourselves, into the unknown raptures of the Goodness and Riches of God.”
