Contents. ix xiii xv xvi. vii

Transcription

1 Contents Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition Introduction Note Lucy Menzies: A Memoir 1. Childhood and Girlhood 1 2. I Entered Italy Years of Discovery Vocation and Marriage Early Married Years Her Book Called Mysticism The Years before the War The War Years Choice of a Director In We Are, and On We Must Called Out and Settled A Tremendous Year In Torment and Effort 134 to Serve the Brethren 14. Speaking to the Clergy 143 ix xiii xv xvi vii

2 viii CONTENTS 15. The Revision of the Prayer Book 148 and Matters of Reunion 16. Religious Editor Chiefly about Retreats The Golden Sequence and a 173 Visit to Norway 19. The Last Retreats and Worship Laying Down Tools The Sword Outwears the Sheath Doctor of Divinity and Pacifist The Prayer Group The Last Years 229 Epilogue 245 Acknowledgements 250 Notes 251 Index 253 About SkyLight Paths 260

3 Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition Acclaimed in her own Edwardian era, Evelyn Underhill was then briefly forgotten only to emerge again today as one of the foremothers of contemporary spirituality. The passage of time burned away the inessential, leaving the core of her insight to finally be appreciated. A lucid and prolific writer, in her novels, poetry, biographies, text editions, analytical pieces, and devotional writing, she serves as a mediator of God s reality in the world. She is best known for her groundbreaking book Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man s Spiritual Consciousness, published in 1911 and continuously in print since then. In this big book she did what no one writing in the English language had ever done before, that is, examine the elements of mystic experience and track its developmental stages. In this, and in all her work, she was not theological but anthropological, exploring the human quest for the divine. It was Underhill s experience of the mystics those she defined as claiming to know for certain the love of God which first inspired her. But at mid-life in 1921 she moved away from a scholarly consideration of mysticism and set out on a new course to help normal people, those who would not call themselves mystics, deepen their experience of the love of God. This care of souls was largely unknown amongst Christians. Self-trained and with no ecclesiastical or academic standing, she begin to give retreats and serve as a spiritual guide. Her friend T. S. Eliot claimed that her genius was that she understood the grievous need of her contemporaries for the contemplative element in their lives. Through her writing, which was both elegant and accessible, ix

4 x FOREWORD TO THE SKYLIGHT LIVES EDITION Underhill compelled her readers to go to their center where they are anchored in God. In all of her efforts she held up not so much institutional religion, but human holiness, those models of sanctity who radiate God because God is within them. For Underhill, to be human was to be born with a capacity for God, but only the holy ones, the saints, became pure capacities for God. Underhill s vocation was to bring these great souls before her contemporaries, reminding them that they were kin, different only from themselves in degree, not kind. Underhill s torrent of writing poured from what has been described as her quiet life, a stable, married existence in London s charming Kensington section. But this barrister s wife lived her life in the company of what she called the great pioneers of humanity, the mystics. And it was that company which made all the difference in her life and work. Margaret Cropper, friend and fellow author, captures Underhill s quiet life and its inner adventure in her biography published in 1958, seventeen years after Underhill s death. In 1945, Charles Williams had gathered up much of Underhill s correspondence and published The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, but Cropper s was the first biography. Her Evelyn Underhill is testimony to friendship and the kind of knowing and insight it provides. Based on manuscript sources and an unfinished biography by Lucy Menzies, another of Underhill s intimate colleagues, Cropper illuminates the center of Underhill s personality. She weaves a life that captures both the discipline and constraint of a prolific writer and the abandon of one who knows there is a splendor burning in the heart of things. Through Cropper s prism we see a life which points beyond itself.there are first the early days as a lonely child and Underhill s beginning efforts as a writer.there are her travels to the continent, especially Italy, a place she called the holy land of Europe, the only place left that is really medicinal to the soul. It was there through art and architecture that she came to what she called a gradual unconscious growing into an understanding of things. We see her

5 FOREWORD TO THE SKYLIGHT LIVES EDITION xi pursuit of the mystics, her scholarly efforts to preserve their insights and then her own personal torment during the first world war. She emerges with a new vocation to bring the mystic insights to ordinary people through years of retreat work and sustaining the inner life of others. As World War II began she made a final vocational decision to embrace pacifism.this was her darkest moment, yet it followed from her life a free and unconditional response to that spirit s pressure and call whatever the cost may be. Margaret Cropper was the first to capture this life, which now in this new century can continue to inspire, challenge and point the way for those on the ancient quest for the holy. Dana Greene August 2002 Oxford, Georgia