Today is the feast of the great German mystic Henry Suso. I have German blood in me, and I'm glad: they're passionate but controlled, dramatic but methodical, mystical but scientific, dark but clean. The French hate them and they SAY they hate them back, but they really don't. They admire and misunderstand the French. They've stolen a lot of words from them; and when they speak them, they sound so sophisticated!
Suso's real last name is "Seuse" so it's entirely appropriate that he has "vividly imaginative . . . writing." But dark, as I indicated above. God is experienced as "the Nothing" and "the deep abyss" and you can't get much darker than that! And like a real (German) psychiatrist, he calls the soul's return to God a "breakthrough." Oh, and I see our time is up!
I like him because he was sincere, conscientious and misunderstood. He was a follower of Meister (first name "John") Eckhart -- "disciple" is not too strong a word -- who was also misunderstood, to the point of being actually condemned (by the Church). Henry, no slouch, wrote a treatise to defend him, "The Little Book of Truth" (nice name, if unimaginative) which started his life of fame and authorship. He was a poor Dominican and shunned the spotlight, but he trusted and believed in his friend. He was also accused, in his turn, of heresy . . . but also of theft, sacrilege, adultery, and even murder by poisoning! He was exonerated of all these charges, but at the height of the controversy, his sister left the sisterhood and renounced her former way of life. He went after her, remonstrated with her and actually got her to return to the monastery.
His later -- and more famous work -- was entitled "The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom" (also known as "The Clock of Wisdom"). In it he talks about the importance of recognizing human nature itself. He criticized the so-called "Brethren of the Free Spirit" because they taught that 1) the truly spiritual person cannot sin; and 2) that one can actually become God. He always maintained an ontological distinction between the creature and the creator, even in the highest, or "unitive", way of prayer and mystical experience. And he maintained a healthy sense of sin. He was a great ascetic, but he criticized the overzealous ascetics who view Christ "only from without and not from within." The Brethren of the Free Spirit went too far one way, the ascetics too far the other: he challenged them both. It couldn't have won him many friends!
He actually had many platonic female friends, and one of them, Elizabet Stagel, wrote his autobiography. Think on that for awhile. He died in exile in Ulm, Germany, in 1366.
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