When God Gets Strange: Mystics, Visions & Other Ways of Knowing

They saw things. Heard things. Fell into ecstasy. Talked to God. Argued with God. Found the sacred in hazelnuts, gardens, music, illness, desire, darkness, and the human body.

And six hundred years later, we’re still trying to figure out what happened to them.

What if we stopped trying to explain them?

Over four weeks, we’ll encounter four remarkable people whose experiences stretched—and sometimes shattered—the religious language available to them: Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, and Meister Eckhart.

This isn’t a metaphysical interpretation of the mystics. We won’t translate their experiences into contemporary spiritual language, turn their visions into symbols to decode, or make them early versions of what we already believe.

We’ll let Hildegard be Hildegard.

Julian gets to remain medieval, Christian, brilliant, and strange.

Teresa doesn’t need us to explain what really happened to her.

And Eckhart may leave us with fewer adequate words for God than we had when we began.

Instead, we’ll enter their worlds. We’ll listen to their music. Look at their art and manuscripts. Read their own words. Hold some of the ordinary things that populated their extraordinary accounts. Explore the historical, religious, political, and bodily worlds in which their experiences occurred.

And we’ll pay attention.

You don’t have to believe any of it.

You don’t have to explain any of it away, either.