Evelyn Underhill

Recently, I went on retreat to an Anglican retreat centre at Pleshey in Essex. There, I discovered Evelyn Underhill, a mystic who straddled the 19th and 20th centuries.

Here are two quotes that I gleaned from her book The Mystics of the Church, while sitting in the wonderfully atmospheric library at Pleshey.

‘We cannot say that there is a separate ‘mystical sense’ which some men have and some men have not, but rather that every human soul has a certain latent capacity for God, and that in some capacity is realised with an astonishing richness.’.

‘We might indeed call mystics the eyes of the Body of Christ. They maintain that awestruck outlook towards the infinite, and that warmly loving sense of God’s indwelling grace, without which all religious institutions quickly become mechanical and cold.’

I am trying to open my eyes, all of the time.