Chapter 2: A beautiful bowl, a letter in the mail, a gift in shiny paper

    What I like about Thomas Moore is that he believes that everyday moments are infused with "the spiritual."  Some people (like his famous friend, the late James Hillman) and his revered old uncle are "allergic" to formal religion, yet they live almost monk-like lives, attuned to nature or farming or a particular vocation.  Others, like Thomas Moore himself, are still connected to a traditional faith, though not in rigid ways.

   A mystic is one who devotes his or her life to the mysteries, someone who seems to get the Big Picture every day.

   "Ordinary mystics" are people who gets flashes of the Big Picture through doing something that softens their boundaries with other people or with work.  He suggests ways that we can have a more mystical awareness of beauty--and that while doing the things that bring beauty, we can "get lost" in it and feel more connected to the divine aspects of ourselves and other people:

   To make a salad in a pretty wooden bowl and appreciate the beauty of the vegetables and the wood.
   To write a letter and send it to someone in the mail.
   To read poetry and look at paintings--or make them ourselves.
   To wrap a present in beautiful paper and deliver it to someone on an ordinary day.
   To offer hospitality to others and to enjoy their ways of being hospitable to you.
   To plant flowers in a garden.
   To volunteer your time to teach other people.
 
   The list could go on and on--but the point is: to find something you love and do it with your whole heart, thereby participating in "the divine" part of yourself, the creative part.

    Many mystics say "that you have divinity inside you; it is not only on the outside.  If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against the mysterious creative forces.  You can't know yourself completely, and you may realize... that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality.  If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become?  The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self."