Hadewijch

Hadewijch was one of the mystics not profiled in the book "Mystics" by William Harmless. However, I'd come across her in some other reading, and thought she was very interesting. She belonged to the Beguines, a group of women who took vows of chastity, poverty, and service, but were not cloistered. Many notable women mystics come from the Beguines.

Hadewijch had some interesting philosophies-- she embraced "unfaith," proclaimed that the height of love was the depths of hell, and asserted that despair was better than hope. This topsy-turvy understanding of faith and spirituality reminds one of 1984, but makes sense when put in context. In a world where women were second-class citizens, an overturn of the natural order of things would put women on top.

Hadewijch was also renowned for her poetry. Here is "All Things":

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there
Personally, this poem gives me chills. In the beginning of his book, William Harmless talks about how his undergrad class on the same subject brought up the idea that everyone is a mystic, at least to some extent. Hadewijch's poem reminds me so much of some of my own experiences-- perhaps not with the divine, but with the infinite prison of my own mind. I'll certainly be reading more of her works in the future.