The first post of a 40-year-old Substack page

Where I hope to take us...

This is only the first posting, and yet this Substack page is about forty years old. Or, to put the matter differently, its roots go back that far and even to a few years before that.

Let me explain. In 1982 I was asked by the head of the Religious Studies Department (yes, there was such a thing in those days) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) to give a fully credited course on the subject of comparative contemplative religious traditions. Evidently, I had acquired something of a reputation among my professors for being predisposed to the subject. It was quite an honor for me to be asked to teach — I was twenty-six at the time, had only a Bachelor’s degree (I wouldn’t leave for Harvard Divinity School and eventually seminary until the following fall), and quite obviously I had never taught a college-level course before. But I was young and willing to take on a challenge, and so I taught the course to a handful of interested students (among whom was my youngest brother, David Bentley Hart, who has steadily gone from glory unto glory ever since). I called the course, rather grandiosely, “The Contemplative Quest.” In a very real sense, the page that you are now reading, “The Pragmatic Mystic,” is a late outgrowth of what was initially planted in preparation for that course at UMBC, taught by a neophyte, a long time ago.

Subsequently, I went on to become a priest and, later still, a writer of books, at least three of which come under the category of “spirituality”: The Yoke of Jesus: A School for the Soul in Solitude (2010; see here and here), The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd: Finding Christ on the Buddha’s Path (2013; see here and here), and Silent Rosary: A Contemplative, Exegetical, and Iconographic Tour Through the Mysteries (2021; see here and here; this last with twenty beautiful icons painted by my wife, Solrunn Nes). The themes I was so concerned with forty-plus years ago have remained vital to me throughout my life. My knowledge and understanding of them have grown and indeed changed a number of times over the intervening years (sometimes even in direct contradiction to beliefs I previously held), evolving within me as I’ve trekked along from the first half of my life well into the second. Those themes — the continual personal practice of cultivating a workable interior life, looking synoptically at my own Christian contemplative tradition and parallel traditions in other faiths and philosophies and learning from them, and an ever-burgeoning reflection on “the contemplative quest” and what it means universally — have remained of utmost importance for me.

Hence, this brand new forty-years-in-the-making Substack page.

At first, I was considering the prospect of writing yet another book (I have two more scheduled for publication in 2023, incidentally), the tentative subject of it being “pragmatic mysticism,” but it struck me (with some months of nudging from David to consider Substack) that possibly a more interesting project might be to create an ongoing discussion instead — one that allows for comment by others and an exchange. Ideally, it would be an ecumenical and interfaith conversation about the inner life. I would, of course, come at it with my own Anglican background fully in view (with Jung and others, I believe we are usually — though certainly not always — better off if we can remain within our own tradition, with its own deeply ingrained “way” of addressing universal archetypes). But I would want the “comparative” nature of the discussion to be at the heart, inviting others of different beliefs — or none at all — to join in (and everyone remaining respectful of all others).

Related to all the above, I have no intention of playing the role of the spiritual master (I’m hardly that), the “guru,” the accomplished spiritual guide with all the answers. That would be a pretense that no one after a few posts could take seriously anyway. Rather, I would prefer to be what Kenneth Leach (1939 - 2015; see more about him here), taking a cue from the Celtic Christian tradition, referred to as a “soul friend.” Someone, that is, who is in the same boat as everyone else, but who has some years of experience and even a bit of skill to contribute. And, although metaphysics and academic acumen are all to be prized, and what our heads know undergirds everything we practice, this isn’t the place to show off our smarts. My own efforts will be put into keeping things as simple as I can make them, without using too much “impressive” jargon, aiming to render ideas clear and — as the title suggests — concentrated on the pragmatic. The focus won’t be on grand concepts, philosophical/religious systems, or what is meaninglessly theoretical (whatever has demonstrable meaning for our lives is welcome), but on what we seek practically to accomplish in our spirituality.

I intend to offer a few posts every month. The first few will be available to everyone, without a paid subscription, and beyond that, I’ll occasionally post “free” posts, perhaps as often as once a month. I have opted for the paid subscription norm, but I’m charging less than Substack asks. (And, if anyone really can’t afford a subscription, please don’t hesitate to let me know that — email me at addhart@yahoo.com.) My two reasons for choosing the payment option are these: first and most obviously, I’m doing this project in lieu of writing a book, and writing is my source of income; second, I don’t want trolls on the page or disputes of any kind. The payment option reduces the chances of the latter occurring. Also, as a necessary aside, this won’t be a place for discussing politics. Ethics, on the other hand, are integral to spirituality — consider the Sermon on the Mount or the Dhammapada, for example. But nothing divides people so quickly or thoroughly or is so detrimental to developing a mentally healthy spiritual life as political absorption and wrangling. It drags the intellect straight down.

In the next few free posts, I will present a handful of definitions in order to give us our bearings. I want to lay some groundwork in these early articles, and that entails defining terms that will provide an overall idea of my approach (after those forty-plus years of reflection, exploration, the failures I learned from, and happy fruition) to the subject of developing the inner life — and I’ll endeavor to make it all as accessible and interesting as I possibly can. The first two terms I’ll attempt to unpack in the next post are indicated by the title of the page. These will be “pragmatism” and “mysticism,” and I’ll start with the second first — mysticism.

Stay tuned.

(Photograph by Charles Corbet, circa 1910. The title is Melancholia, but I prefer to see it as a depiction of “contemplatio.”)