I just googled “practical mystic” to see whether this little blog would show up to any googling seekers. It does. On page 2.
There are lots of practical mystics out there, including a woman in the UK who has made a profession of it, a number of books about practical mystics (among them, Abe Lincoln) and many how-to’s about being a mystic, bringing your mysticism to daily life, achieving Nirvana in 10 easy steps, and on and on.
I wasn’t making any claims to originality with the term—though of course I had to secure my own unique Uniform Resource Locator (that’s what URL stands for). While nobody else uses thepracticalmystic.blogspot.com, I am located, apparently, with a lot of other resources who are wearing the practical mystic uniform.
But in choosing the name I was just trying to be me. If practical mystics are a group, count me out!
I like to assume I am unique. Maybe it’s my American culture showing, wanting to be special, one of a kind, just ME. I’m so American in that way that I don’t even like to think of myself as an American.
Sometimes I identify myself as a Mennonite, partly because that group is such a weird minority that it sets me apart from other Americans.
Mennonites are Christians but I have about as much trouble identifying myself as a Christian as I do embracing my Americanness. Why is this? That is a matter I may explore in more depth than today’s post but here is a story.
I was browsing the Kiva website, the organization that links microlenders like me with microborrowers in other parts of the world. Since my son gave me a start on Kiva lending as a Christmas gift (he is the best gift giver ever), I have made 12 $25 loans, all in Africa. People pay back and you relend.
If you want, you can form or join a Kiva Lending Team and rally around shared goals. A leader board shows how the top teams are doing.
There’s a Kiva Christians Team with 6,951 members as of today, which has loaned out $2.1 million in more than 65,000 loans. But they are not the top performers. The most popular, fastest growing team by far is the one that calls itself “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.” It has 14,863 members and has loaned out $3.6 million in over 120,000 loans.
I don’t see the point of joining a team but if I did I would check out the “We loan because” statement of a group.
Kiva Christians say, “We loan because: Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (Jam. 1:27)”
That statement packs in a lot of assumptions, categories, and exclusions. What do you mean by pure and undefiled? Or religion, for that matter? And you have to believe God is Father (not mother or, or, or …), and goodness! Unstained by the world? What does that have to do with microlending? And who, for pity’s sake, is Jam.? (Not Pearl, I presume.)
The Christian group states its purpose in Christian code. You have to be a member of the in-group to figure it out. Of course I know the code. But I do not like it, not one little bit. The exclusivist, in-group/out-group self-identification that often goes with calling oneself Christian nauseates me.
The non-religious group, on the other hand, says simply, “We loan because: We care about the suffering of human beings.”
I bet I could join that group as a practical mystic or even a Mennonite.
There are lots of practical mystics out there, including a woman in the UK who has made a profession of it, a number of books about practical mystics (among them, Abe Lincoln) and many how-to’s about being a mystic, bringing your mysticism to daily life, achieving Nirvana in 10 easy steps, and on and on.
I wasn’t making any claims to originality with the term—though of course I had to secure my own unique Uniform Resource Locator (that’s what URL stands for). While nobody else uses thepracticalmystic.blogspot.com, I am located, apparently, with a lot of other resources who are wearing the practical mystic uniform.
But in choosing the name I was just trying to be me. If practical mystics are a group, count me out!
I like to assume I am unique. Maybe it’s my American culture showing, wanting to be special, one of a kind, just ME. I’m so American in that way that I don’t even like to think of myself as an American.
Sometimes I identify myself as a Mennonite, partly because that group is such a weird minority that it sets me apart from other Americans.
Mennonites are Christians but I have about as much trouble identifying myself as a Christian as I do embracing my Americanness. Why is this? That is a matter I may explore in more depth than today’s post but here is a story.
I was browsing the Kiva website, the organization that links microlenders like me with microborrowers in other parts of the world. Since my son gave me a start on Kiva lending as a Christmas gift (he is the best gift giver ever), I have made 12 $25 loans, all in Africa. People pay back and you relend.
If you want, you can form or join a Kiva Lending Team and rally around shared goals. A leader board shows how the top teams are doing.
There’s a Kiva Christians Team with 6,951 members as of today, which has loaned out $2.1 million in more than 65,000 loans. But they are not the top performers. The most popular, fastest growing team by far is the one that calls itself “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.” It has 14,863 members and has loaned out $3.6 million in over 120,000 loans.
I don’t see the point of joining a team but if I did I would check out the “We loan because” statement of a group.
Kiva Christians say, “We loan because: Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (Jam. 1:27)”
That statement packs in a lot of assumptions, categories, and exclusions. What do you mean by pure and undefiled? Or religion, for that matter? And you have to believe God is Father (not mother or, or, or …), and goodness! Unstained by the world? What does that have to do with microlending? And who, for pity’s sake, is Jam.? (Not Pearl, I presume.)
The Christian group states its purpose in Christian code. You have to be a member of the in-group to figure it out. Of course I know the code. But I do not like it, not one little bit. The exclusivist, in-group/out-group self-identification that often goes with calling oneself Christian nauseates me.
The non-religious group, on the other hand, says simply, “We loan because: We care about the suffering of human beings.”
I bet I could join that group as a practical mystic or even a Mennonite.
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