This book contains a selection of journal entries beginning with a powerful experience of unity with God, which took place on 1 January 2003. All written ‘as it arose spontaneously in me; I have changed nothing in there, just added some commas and periods’, says the writer, who experienced from her early youth unity with God. What and how she writes about this, reads totally authentic.
Review by Frans Berkelmans O.S.B. in Benedictijns Tijdschrift [Benedictine Magazine], 2013/3, p. 144
Prose and poetry alternate eachother, but the bound passages make a powerfull spontaneous impression; there is no dedication to fine writing; the medium of language doesn’t appear to play any role in the mystical experience. That reinforces once more the authenticity of what was put into this book. That impression is shared by others who have met her. For instance journalist Peter Henk Steenhuis, who is with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, and who published an interview with her (Trouw dated 31 Jan. 2007), which is reprinted in this anthology. Also Professor Blommestijn, who, having met her, added a Commentary to this anthology (pp 319-329); he also conducted an interview with the mystic that is recorded on a DVD added to the book. All these “testimonies” ensure the impression of authenticity that the reader gets at the first brush with this work. Some (albeit sparse) autobiographical passages such as the paragraph which goes from p. 159 to page 160, confirm that impression once more. Having said this, I prefer to let the mystic speak for herself in a passage which I’ve borrowed from the Introduction that precedes this publication (pp. 13-16).
“This book is my diary. But it’s not about me and my life with all its daily events, or about my own experiences. It is about the workings of God as I experience them in ‘my’ life: my life which in fact is not ‘mine’ but His.
In essence my life and the person I am are of no importance. They are no more than the river bed in which this mystical process can unfold. It happens in me, but it’s not mine, nor is it for me. It flows through me, outwards to others. It seems to me that that is what it’s meant to do.
Being connected with God does not close you off from the world around you; on the contrary, it connects you to it at an even deeper level, for God is the core of all reality. At its deepest level, the whole of reality is God.
So mysticism is not unworldly. Mysticism is not a separate level of life, but flows through everything, colouring the ordinary reality of each day. God’s love, which is felt in the mystical experience, flows, as it were, over the boundaries of one person to others.
While I was writing this diary, I was working as a hospital chaplain. Now and then I write something about that. In my work, too, I have always felt God’s love flowing through me to others and through them to me. That is very joyful. ”
FB