Mysticism with Boots On (Mindfulness Part 4)
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 11, 2026
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning I am continuing my series on Mindfulness. The scripture text I have chosen to support my message is from 1 Corinthians 2:9-13 from the New International Version.
However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
When I lived in Oregon, I often worked from one of the local coffee shops in our town. One day I was sitting in one of these crowded, bustling coffee shops. The espresso machine was blasting steam, a child was crying unconsolably two tables over, and the person next to me was having a deeply stressful, high-volume conversation on their speakerphone. I sat there with my phone buzzing in my hand, my mind racing through my daily to-do list, the struggles in our shattering yearly meeting, feeling completely disconnected from myself, let alone from anything Divine.
In the middle of the noise, a fellow pastor-friend walked in. When our eyes met, they didn’t offer a wave or a hurried "How are you?" Instead, they walked over, pulled out the chair across from me, sat down, and just looked at me with this profound, quiet warmth. They took a deep breath, reached across the table, and said, "Hey. I see you. Let's just sit here together for a second."
We didn't talk for the next two minutes. We just sat there, holding space for each other amid the clattering dishes and shouting voices while taking slow sips of our coffee. And in that brief, shared quiet, the chaos of the room and life seemed to evaporate. I felt my shoulders drop. I felt my breathing slow down. I remembered who I was.
When we think of the word "mystic," our minds usually drift far away from a morning coffee shop meet-up. We think of ancient desert monastics, ascetic hermits on mountaintops, or cloistered saints caught in ecstatic visions. We think of mysticism as something reserved for the spiritual elite—a rare, overwhelming experience far removed from the clutter of our messy, modern lives.
But the early Friends – the radical seekers who birthed the Quaker movement – brought mysticism down to earth. They discovered that the deepest spiritual connection doesn't require escaping to a monastery. It happens when we pull up a chair, quiet our internal noise, and realize that the Divine is already sitting across the table from us, saying, “I see you. Let's just sit here together.”
Quakerism is, at its absolute core, a form of practical, corporate mysticism, and I believe mysticism is yet another aspect of our corporate and personal mindfulness.
It is the lived conviction that the Divine is not a distant historical figure locked inside old books or church hierarchy. Instead, the Divine is a living, breathing, immediate presence available to each of us right here, right now, in the very middle of our ordinary lives.
At the center of Quaker mysticism is the understanding of the Inward Light—sometimes called the Light of Christ within, the Seed, or "that of God" in every person.
Early Quaker leader George Fox suffered immense spiritual despair, wandering from priest to preacher, seeking answers to the darkness he saw in the world and in himself. No one could help him. But in his lowest moment, he heard a voice that changed everything: “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.”
Fox didn’t hear this voice from an altar or a pulpit. He heard it within his own heart, as intimately as a friend speaking across a table.
Friends, this is the first great truth of Quaker mysticism: Revelation has not ceased.
God did not stop speaking when the final book of the Bible was bound. Divine wisdom continues to flow into the world, moving directly into human consciousness. We do not need a priest to mediate for us (for that matter you don’t need me or Beth). We do not need a complex theology, set of dogmas, or creeds to decode the Divine. We only need the willingness to listen.
But how do we listen to a God who speaks without words?
We do it by entering a mindful state that we have been talking about the last several weeks called, silent worship.
It is in this stillness, we begin to peel back the layers of our lives.
Just to review, the silence helps us,
move past the surface noise of our daily anxieties.
quiet the ego that constantly demands our attention.
sink down deep, past our thoughts, into the bedrock of our being.
In this deep ocean of quiet, the mystic encounter occurs. We find ourselves gathered—not just as individuals sitting in a room, but bound together by an invisible, unifying Spirit. In the silence, the Inward Teacher gently shows us our flaws, heals our wounds, and breathes comfort into our fears.
But this is where Quaker mysticism differs from many other mystical traditions: It never stays in this quiet room.
True Quaker mysticism is not an escape from the world; it is a preparation to transform it.
It is a "mysticism with boots on."
When you truly encounter "that of God" within yourself during the silence, your eyes are opened. When you walk out of this meetinghouse and look at your neighbor, your enemy, the poor, or the prisoner, you cannot help but see "that of God" in them, too.
Because early Quakers were mystics, they became fierce advocates for justice.
Because they saw the Divine Light in all people, they recognized the absolute equality of women and men.
Because they believed the Spirit dwelt in everyone, they refused to participate in the slaughter of war.
Because they knew Christ was present in the oppressed, they became some of the earliest voices against human slavery.
Our activism, our service, and our drive for peace are not just political choices they are mindful ones. They are the direct, inevitable overflow of our mystical encounters with the Living God. Action is the fruit; the Light is the root.
Friends, as I have said numerous times in this series, we live in a world that is profoundly noisy, deeply fractured, and exhausting. We are constantly bombarded by voices telling us who to be, what to buy, and who to hate.
Embracing the Quaker mystic tradition offers a gentle, radical alternative.
You do not need to travel across the world to find peace. You do not need to master complex spiritual disciplines. You only need to turn inward. The Light is already there, shining in your darkness, waiting to guide you, waiting to comfort you.am I answering and
Let us close our time by stepping out of the noise of words and into the sacrament of the stillness. As we sink down to the Seed, let us carry these queries into our worship, letting them settle in our hearts:
What is the deepest, quietest part of myself trying to say to me right now that I have been too busy or too anxious to hear?
Where in my life today am I choosing the comfort of distraction over the deeper, more challenging invitation to be truly still?