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A Mirror for Simple Souls. - book reviews
Christian Century, Feb 3, 1993 by Margaret R. Miles
The "perfect soul" experiences herself as "less than nothing" and simultaneously sees "not herself in God, but God in herself." The freedom of the perfect soul depends entirely on a state of nonwilling or "deadness to the world" in which God's will replaces human will and "you bathe in the flood waters of God's love." In this state "she needs no masses or sermons or fastings or prayers," and all desires, "even holy desires," are suspended: "Everything she has is from God, and she is what God is, and was, and what she was before God made her, in union with him."
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Porete's description of the experience of God's love suggests the inadequacy of religious training based on book learning." Destabilizing habits and dissolving securities is, she argues, fundamental to "knowing nothing, being able to do nothing by herself, and willing nothing"--requirements for experiencing "the nothingness [that] brings her everything." She testifies to a quality of life that cannot be described in the language of reason. The language of love is allusive and easily misinterpreted: mat Love says can only be said in condensed images":
Being completely free, and in
command on her sea of peace, the
soul is nonetheless drowned and
loses herself through God, and
with him and in him. She loses her
identity, as does the water from a
river ... when it flows into the sea.
it has done its work and can relax
in the arms of the sea, and the
same is true of the soul. Her work
is over and she can lose herself in
what she has become: Love. Love
is the bridegroom of her happiness
enveloping her wholly in his
love and making her part of that
which is. This is a wonder to her
and she has become a wonder.
Love is her only delight and
pleasure.
In addition to its positive agenda--a theology of love--Porete's book presents two critiques, at least one of which proved fatal to her. She questions the validity of relying on reason alone for theological knowledge, and she criticizes the institutionalization and routinization of religion in the church. Reason, she writes, is "stupid and blind"; it has ears and cannot hear. Reason looks for God "in creatures and in nature, striving to find him with [the] senses." What is inadequate is the method, not the visible objects.
People who look for God in hills
and woods and valleys see him
as bound by his sacraments and
works, and are silent and miserable
for not finding him. But
those who find him everywhere,
not just in forests and mountaintops,
through uniting their
will to his, have a happy and enjoyable
life.
The problem with reason is twofold: it is too laborious--too deliberate and complex"--to provide a fluent vehicle for the Spirit, and its self-conscious operation actually stands in the way of the "inner impulse to love." People "become so wrapped up in conscious reasoning that they cannot hear the spirit when it prompts them." In short, those whose religion is based on reason try to "do everything by [their] own efforts."
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