How to Become a Mystic
Everyone remembers their first post-school job. When I look back, I’m sad knowing now how I mismanaged the spiritual connection my job at New Readers Press (NRP) offered. At first, I knew nothing about NRP, a small publisher of how-to-read materials for Special Ed and Adult Basic Ed programs. It was somehow related to Laubach Literacy International (LLI). I made little effort to learn about either while at NRP. I was engrossed in personal skill development so I could hop up my next career rung.
If I had paid attention, I would have learned I worked for a giant of the 20th century, a true rock star.
Fifty years earlier, founder Frank Laubach was a lonely missionary in the Philippines. He developed his first how-to-read materials in the local Moro dialect and in weeks the community was reading. His materials were eventually translated into 313 languages, printed by NRP, and distributed in 103 countries where 100+ million disadvantaged adults were taught to read though Laubach’s Each One Teach One method. The world press lauded him as the “Apostle to the Illiterates” and “Mr. Literacy”. He was honored on a US postage stamp in 1984.
I learned all this last week as I searched online for the name of the Laubach reading program in the hope of using the materials with our ten-year-old illiterate, autistic grandson. In Frank Laubach’s Wikipedia’s profile, his literacy program’s amazing success took center stage. But his characterization as a mystic is what caught my attention. So Laubach, who taught millions to read, also spoke with or saw God? Really? I forgot about the reading program and dug in to learn more.
Despite being out of print, I was able to locate a copy of Letters by a Modern Mystic (Frank C. Laubach, Purposeful Design Publications, 121 pp, 2007, ISBN 978-1-58331-091-5)
It’s a pint-sized book of excerpts from his 1930-32 letters to his father. He describes how he came into mystical communion with God by trying to live each minute abiding in God’s will. As he finds himself talking and walking with God, Laubach’s life and mission transform. He recognizes the beauty of the world and the Moro people around him. In his letters he shares the method he used to reach this profound relationship with God and presses readers to do the same.
If you have ever gotten lost in St. Teresa of Avila’s “mansions”, St. John of the Cross’s deep prose, or St. Faustina’s thousand-page diary, you’ll appreciate this easy-reading, encouraging book about deepening one’s spirituality.
Enjoy Laubach’s authentic (almost child-like) awe and delight over his mystical connection to the Father:
Worries have faded away like ugly clouds, and my soul rests in the sunshine of perpetual peace. I can lie down anywhere in this universe, bathed around by my own Father’s spirit. The very universe has come to seem so homey! I know only a little more about it than before, but that little is all! It is vibrant with the electric ecstasy of God! I know what it means to be “God intoxicated.”
From Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank C. Laubach p. 56, letter dated Oct. 12, 1930
May we all find our spirits equally intoxicated in ‘24!
