1 4 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 4 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 8 that belongs to it, Hadewych says. Here the problem is raised that so many mystics put into words, namely the impossibility to bring the experience of God into words. It is also for this reason that Hadewych in the beginning of this Letter wishes that God himself will make her readers understand what she intended to say. She realizes that she cannot put into words what happened to her, only God himself can give the right insight into this. Hadewych knows that this insight can only grow by getting involved with Minne. Minne herself will entrain her readers to the insight that has happened to her. Yet she tries to articulate what she can’t articulate; an inner force drives her to do so. After all, as it says in Rule 7 and 8: “This I wished long since to tell you, for it lies heavy on my heart”. Hadewych can no longer hold it back. Because she would like to bring her readers to this insight, or because her heart is full of what she has experienced and urges her to communicate herself? Probably it’s a mixture of both, although we only find confirmation for the first option in this Letter. After all, she writes, “[t]herefore I desire in my turn to order you the same things, because they belong perfectly to the perfection of Love, and because they belong perfectly and wholly in the Divinity.” (13–14). The impossibility to give a precise expression to her experience did not cause mutism to Hadewych but a flood of words to circumscribe what happened to her, aware of the fact that the actual experience can never be grasped. Rule 123–135: Postcript Although I forbid you some works and command the others, you will in either case have to serve much. But lack of discrimination regarding the things I have said, this I forbid you as those works were forbidden me by God’s will. But you must still labor at the works of Love, as I long did, and as his friends did and still do. For my part I am devoted to these works at any hour and still perform them at all times: to seek after nothing but Love, work nothing but Love, protect nothing but Love, and advance nothing but Love. How you are to do or omit each of these things, may God, our Beloved, teach you. In this passage, Hadewych focuses directly on her readers. She reminds them that before they come to the experience of Unity, they will still have to serve much. However, she directly infuses again the insights she communicated in this Letter. She says: “Although I forbid you some works and command the others”. Here it becomes clear that the poem of the beginning of this Letter indeed consisted of orders and prohibitions, as was previously noted in the analysis of this Letter. Hadewych here again appeals to the divine authority of these orders and prohibitions. Her readers must endeavor as she has done, and the friends of Jesus are still doing. But they must also do what she does since she has gained the understanding of the essence of Deity: “[T]o seek after nothing but Love, work nothing but Love, protect nothing but Love, and advance nothing but Love. How you are to do or omit each of these things, may God, our Beloved, teach you.” How these things are done and should be left, for that understanding Hadewych does an appeal to God, their Beloved. Again, Hadewych hints here that she cannot put into words what the actual experience has been. Only in Minne itself the human soul comes to insight. 6 Conclusions The Letter XVII provides a first entry to the imaginary field that Hadewych uses in relation to the triune God. It distinguishes between God in his essence (Unity) and in his Persons (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit): • God in his essence is first experienced by her as a principle of Unity (“keeping back”); • The Person’s own activity (“pouring out”) forms a mirror for human action; • The activity of the Persons (“pouring out”) is mirrored in man by working the virtues and serving God; • However, from the divine Unity, every moment a call is made to man to enjoy the Unity (at Divine level “keeping back”). The new understanding that is given to Hadewych includes the understanding that the most perfect life one can attain on Earth not exists in only activity (at Divine level “pouring out”) or only fruition (at Divine level “keeping back”), and also not in the alternation of these, but in the simultaneous existence of these two, action and test (contemplation). As the Deity at the same time is “pouring out” and “keeping back”, so a man is called to preserve rest in action and in rest always be prepared for action.
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