Review in magazine 'VolZin' by Jeroen Fierens
Take me total / leave nothing / nothing that is not yours / nothing that is not you. “Just a random sentence from You sing in Your name. On January 1, 2003 Carine Philipse has a mystical experience, an experience of union with God that changed her life. But how do you describe with words what can not be put into words? What if you are misunderstood and thought as being crazy? That doubt often comes back in the following pages, but the confidence is greater than her doubts, the confidence that it is good, that this is her way. And thus Philipse published this anthology out of a two and half years diary. She bares her soul. Because she believes that it is ultimately not so much her soul, but His soul of which she is a piece. It is not so much her words, but words which are given to her out of His hand. Meditations, poetry, hymns and desperate cries (“What You want, WHAT YOU WANT!”) alternate with eachother. Sometimes you can sing her words like the poetic songs of Huub Oosterhuis, the next moment you will be torn apart by the raw desperate desire of the medieval mystics.
The book begins with the day of that first experience and takes the reader on the stormy journey that follows. Because life goes on Philipse notices that much in her life holds her back from total and everlasting union with God. For instance, she always felt that she had to prove herself to receive the love of her mother and that experience makes it difficult for her to believe that someone really loves her unconditionally. When at the end of the journey she looks back she says: These obstacles were only obstacles from my limited perspective, they are allowed to be there, belong there. That’s exactly what that word unconditionality is about. I am a human person and will continue to be that for the time being, but “it has no longer control over me (…) because I now live from out of the union with You.”
It is that experience of unity which makes Philipse at the end of the road not an unworldly hermit, but a ‘modern mystic'(if such a thing exists) who works as a pastor in a hospital, worries about the war in Iraq and at home on the couch watching The Sixth Sense. She is open minded and sees in every religion the same mystical core. That makes this book very accessible. At the same time it doesn’t hold her back to shout her love for God from the rooftops. That variety – from the most mundane human experience of a conversation with a friend to the most transcendent unity with God, from poetry, songs, experiences and reflections – makes it possible to follow Philipse on her wonderful journey and finally maybe even catch a glimpse of this mystery that she experiences in her life.