In a world of noise and distraction, it’s easy to lose sight of who we are. In this extract from her new book, The Daily Mystic, Ann Rennie invites you to pause, breathe and come back to what truly matters.
Awaken your own mysticism
When we listen and learn from modern wisdom-keepers, we nurture our own daily mystics. Slowly and generatively, their ideas become embedded into our own thinking and are reshaped in the immediacy and context of our own lives. We begin to appreciate the depth of their observations and how this articulates something we yearn for.
Sometimes, it is the words and actions of others that can rearrange our hearts and move us into new places of compassion and courage. Sometimes, there is a phrase or a simple dot point that speaks to us particularly, makes us listen and asks that we bring it into the world. This is the soul journey in progress. Here we begin to awaken our own mysticism, learning from the past, recreating the present, gifting the future. One or two of the key lessons and quotes may resonate immediately. Over the next few weeks, choose one of these as a point of entry as you grow your own daily mystic.
For me, the night sky is a constant source of awe and humility, especially when viewed from the countryside without the dimming layer of urban lighting. In the city, from my balcony, I can pick out the brightest stars and the moon in its night-time journey. However, this view is compromised by artificial light and a layer of smoke, dust and chemical particles that is the result of living in a large urban conurbation. When I visit my brother in Bendigo in regional Victoria and wander outside at night, the hymn and hum of creation wraps around me in starlight. It is a heavenly evensong lit by the brilliance of stars.
The Daily Mystic: Garratt Publishing.
I look up and feel like a tiny earthling in the vastness of space and time and its infinite expansion. I think of those who have gazed upwards since the beginning of time under the constancy of the constellations. Ordinary women like me and the great women of history, Cleopatra, Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, saints and sinners, rich and poor, plebian and potentate. Under this twinkling thicket of stars, I feel at home in the world, enveloped in a strange sort of cosmic citizenship, a benevolent democracy where all can gaze and pray and imagine and be at peace, one with the pulse of the universe. This is mystery and mysticism, brewed in an inky celestial cauldron, the elixir of existence.
Much as we seek the wisdom of elders, we are also becoming our own wisdom-keepers as we pass on our knowledge and experience and offer advice and guidance to younger generations. Occasionally, I have had the great pleasure of being told that something I have written has struck a chord or has been cut out to be put on the fridge door. We can always go back to the Bible for wisdom, or you may wish to read one of the works by the wisdom-keepers mentioned previously. You may have another source that speaks profoundly to you, a book to cherish and revisit over the years. Poetry is a perennial fount of gathered wisdom.
One of the beautiful sayings from Proverbs 31:26 is: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Our daily wisdom means that we do not judge by a first impression but remember the dignity and worth of all people. Our first prompt, as a daily mystic, is kindness. Take three minutes to listen to Glen Campbell’s country pop song from 1969, Try a Little Kindness, an anthem to the goodness kindness does when it is showered on others, the brothers and sisters we meet along the road of life.
In the classic Beatles’ song Let It Be, a modern secular hymn, we hear the line about speaking words of wisdom to let it be. Paul McCartney invokes Mother Mary, which may refer to Our Lady as wisdom woman of compassion, but also his own mother, Mary, who died when he was 14 years old. Let It Be is not so far away from Julian of Norwich’s All will be well. It is about patience and surrender, waiting for things to change, knowing that the sun will shine again, that God is waiting for us to find him in the mess and mayhem, the marvelous and miraculous times of our lives.
Sophia, the ancient Greek word for “wisdom”, is personified in various spiritual traditions as a feminine figure of deep insight and divine presence. Sophia is portrayed not merely as intelligence but as the living spirit of discernment, justice and cosmic harmony.
Thus, we have a history of wisdom-keepers from the medieval and modern traditions who understand that the wisdom-seat of the soul enables soul-seekers to perceive life with clarity, compassion and purpose.
As you grow your own daily mystic, you will find that some things come more easily than others. That is natural because we are all wired differently. Find those ways in, and later experiment with, a new way that may at first feel difficult but could open great torrents of love and understanding.
The daily mystic does not stand still but has the courage to expand their spiritual opportunities, to build themselves into better, to strive for the soulful satisfaction that marks their lives as blessed.
Excerpt from The Daily Mystic, Ann Rennie (Garratt Publishing, 2026). To order your copy, click here.
