Mystic Mondays—Mysticism and Politics
“Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”
Charles Peguy, French poet, essayist and editor
Photo by Jon Tyson@jontyson
I had dreams of being a U.S. Senator just after I finished high school. I was working for a U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado as a precinct coordinator and had the unexpected privilege of sitting in on a press conference with then California governor, Ronald Reagan. He had been asked to travel to Colorado to speak at one of those expensive $100/plate (things have changed since 1979!) fundraisers for my candidate.
When I entered college a few months later I immediately declared my major as political science. It was the natural choice for a young man trying to prepare for a political life of leadership. But then something happened. I took a couple of religion courses and made a life-altering discovery. Religion and politics basically are concerned with the exact same questions:
How ought we to treat each other?”
How do we organize ourselves in a way that reflects our deepest held values?”
“What is and should be our essential connection to each other and to our physical environment?”
Photo by Brian Heron, Northern Lights, Minnesota, 2025
The only difference I discovered is that religion tends to look at those questions through the lens of spiritual universe while politics is often rooted in materialistic frameworks. The discovery surprised me. I had been dead set on getting a political science degree and following my dream of a career in politics. But I could not resist the magnetic appeal of dealing with the same questions that politics deals with, but with the assumption that we live in a world imbued with spiritual meaning and realities.
I recently came across this quote by Charles Peguy, “Everything begins in mysticism (or spiritual experience) and ends in politics.” I love it because it mirrors my long held belief that these are not two separate worlds. In fact, they are intricately intwined. In my view, politics is simply the natural outgrowth of spiritual experience.
Photo by Jonah Pettrich@jonah_jpg
It’s a little bit like falling in love. Two people first fall in love and then decide where they are going to live, who is going to do the shopping and cooking, how they are going to budget, and who gets the privilege of cleaning the bathroom.
Love is the catalyst. Organizing is the outgrowth. Said another way, mysticism gives us the reason to live. Politics tells us how to do it.
Over the coming weeks I will be using this Mystic Monday space to explore the connection and relationship between spiritual experience and political decision-making. Some believe that true spirituality should be kept separate from politics. But, in my view, that’s like falling love with someone 2,000 miles away and never getting down to the nitty gritty of creating a life together.
Religion and politics are not two separate worlds. They are more like kissing cousins.