The Life of Evelyn Underhill

Margaret Cropper

Description

"Margaret Cropper was the first to capture [Evelyn Underhill’s] life, which now in this new century can continue to inspire, challenge and point the way for those on the ancient quest for the holy."
—from the Foreword by Dana Greene, dean of Oxford College of Emory University

SkyLight Lives reintroduces the lives and works of key spiritual figures of our time—people who by their teaching or example have challenged our assumptions about spirituality and have caused us to look at it in new ways.

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) was one of the most highly acclaimed spiritual thinkers of her day. Her fresh approach to mysticism provided one of the first invitations to modern seekers to realize that not only saints or great holy men could experience the love of God—but that all people contain within them a capacity for the Divine.

This intimate biography, written by one of Underhill’s closest friends, allows us to appreciate this revolutionary woman as both a charming, down-to-earth friend and a groundbreaking spiritual seeker and guide.

Through letters, personal reminiscences, and excerpts from Underhill’s much-loved published writings—including her definitive Mysticism, published in 1911 and continuously in print since then—Margaret Cropper captures the spirit, journey, and wisdom of one of the most influential women of the early twentieth century.

Updated with a new foreword by Dana Greene, dean of Oxford College of Emory University, this intriguing spiritual portrait includes a brief memoir of Lucy Menzies, one of Underhill’s closest confidants, highlighting their remarkable relationship.

This biography of Evelyn Underhill, one of the greatest spiritual thinkers of the early twentieth century, guides readers on a voyage through her life and a survey of her spiritual classics that would forever bring the Divine into the everyday for countless people.

A passionate writer and teacher who wrote elegantly on mysticism, worship, and devotional life, Evelyn Underhill urged the integration of personal spirituality and worldly action. This is the moving story of how she made her way toward spiritual maturity, from her early days of agnosticism to the years when her influence was felt throughout the world.

An early believer that contemplative prayer is not just for monks and nuns but for anyone willing to undertake it, Underhill considered the study of modern science not as a threat to contemplation but rather an enhancement of it. Her many lectures and writings on mysticism and spirituality, including her classic Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, inspired the many people touched by her unique passion to take on a spiritual life.

Sujets

• Religious
• Lettres et linguistique
• Mysticism
• Biography
• Evelyn Underhill
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 19 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594734670
• Langue: English

Extrait

Evelyn Underhill in the garden at Pleshey
Contents
Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Introduction
Note
Lucy Menzies: A Memoir
1 . Childhood and Girlhood
2 . I Entered Italy
3 . Years of Discovery
4 . Vocation and Marriage
5 . Early Married Years
6 . Her Book Called Mysticism
7 . The Years before the War
8 . The War Years
9 . Choice of a Director
10 . In We Are, and On We Must
11 . Called Out and Settled
12 . A Tremendous Year
13 . In Torment and Effort to Serve the Brethren
14 . Speaking to the Clergy
15 . The Revision of the Prayer Book and Matters of Reunion
16 . Religious Editor
17 . Chiefly about Retreats
18 . The Golden Sequence and a Visit to Norway
19 . The Last Retreats and Worship
20 . Laying Down Tools
21 . The Sword Outwears the Sheath
22 . Doctor of Divinity and Pacifist
23 . The Prayer Group
24 . The Last Years
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
About the Author
Copyright
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Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Acclaimed in her own Edwardian era, Evelyn Underhill was then briefly forgotten only to emerge again today as one of the foremothers of contemporary spirituality. The passage of time burned away the inessential, leaving the core of her insight to finally be appreciated. A lucid and prolific writer, in her novels, poetry, biographies, text editions, analytical pieces, and devotional writing, she serves as a mediator of God s reality in the world. She is best known for her groundbreaking book Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man s Spiritual Consciousness , published in 1911 and continuously in print since then. In this big book she did what no one writing in the English language had ever done before, that is, examine the elements of mystic experience and track its developmental stages. In this, and in all her work, she was not theological but anthropological, exploring the human quest for the divine.
It was Underhill s experience of the mystics-those she defined as claiming to know for certain the love of God-which first inspired her. But at mid-life in 1921 she moved away from a scholarly consideration of mysticism and set out on a new course to help normal people, those who would not call themselves mystics, deepen their experience of the love of God. This care of souls was largely unknown amongst Christians. Self-trained and with no ecclesiastical or academic standing, she begin to give retreats and serve as a spiritual guide. Her friend T. S. Eliot claimed that her genius was that she understood the grievous need of her contemporaries for the contemplative element in their lives. Through her writing, which was both elegant and accessible, Underhill compelled her readers to go to their center where they are anchored in God.
In all of her efforts she held up not so much institutional religion, but human holiness, those models of sanctity who radiate God because God is within them. For Underhill, to be human was to be born with a capacity for God, but only the holy ones, the saints, became pure capacities for God. Underhill s vocation was to bring these great souls before her contemporaries, reminding them that they were kin, different only from themselves in degree, not kind.
Underhill s torrent of writing poured from what has been described as her quiet life, a stable, married existence in London s charming Kensington section. But this barrister s wife lived her life in the company of what she called the great pioneers of humanity, the mystics. And it was that company which made all the difference in her life and work.
Margaret Cropper, friend and fellow author, captures Underhill s quiet life and its inner adventure in her biography published in 1958, seventeen years after Underhill s death. In 1945, Charles Williams had gathered up much of Underhill s correspondence and published The Letters of Evelyn Underhill , but Cropper s was the first biography. Her Evelyn Underhill is testimony to friendship and the kind of knowing and insight it provides. Based on manuscript sources and an unfinished biography by Lucy Menzies, another of Underhill s intimate colleagues, Cropper illuminates the center of Underhill s personality. She weaves a life that captures both the discipline and constraint of a prolific writer and the abandon of one who knows there is a splendor burning in the heart of things.
Through Cropper s prism we see a life which points beyond itself. There are first the early days as a lonely child and Underhill s beginning efforts as a writer. There are her travels to the continent, especially Italy, a place she called the holy land of Europe, the only place left that is really medicinal to the soul. It was there through art and architecture that she came to what she called a gradual unconscious growing into an understanding of things. We see her pursuit of the mystics, her scholarly efforts to preserve their insights and then her own personal torment during the first world war. She emerges with a new vocation to bring the mystic insights to ordinary people through years of retreat work and sustaining the inner life of others. As World War II began she made a final vocational decision to embrace pacifism. This was her darkest moment, yet it followed from her life a free and unconditional response to that spirit s pressure and call whatever the cost may be.
Margaret Cropper was the first to capture this life, which now in this new century can continue to inspire, challenge and point the way for those on the ancient quest for the holy.
Dana Greene
August 2002
Oxford, Georgia
Introduction
It is important that I should introduce this book as in part the work of Lucy Menzies, though she did not give it its final form. When she died, I had her draft of Evelyn Underhill s life up to 1922. She did not feel at all sure that this had taken the shape that she would have liked, and I gathered that she meant to alter it considerably. There were besides a file of precious personal letters, a box full of unsorted reviews, and articles, and letters, various diaries and notebooks, and, above all, the letters to and from Baron von H gel all collected by her diligent and brave researches. I had gone north to see if I could help her with the book; we had one day together looking at these things before she fell ill, afterwards we had only snatches of talk, for she was too ill to say much. In the spring of that year she had asked me if I would write the book, but I had to reply then that I was not free enough to do so; after she died it seemed right to take on the work for which she had prepared with so much courage and devotion, in spite of feeling myself very unequal to the opportunity, and, so that the book might have a unity, I rewrote the early part of it, using her draft freely.
I knew Lucy Menzies and Evelyn Underhill with a good degree of intimacy, and loved them both, and always feel myself deeply indebted to them. To see them together was to have a sight of a very dear friendship, full of heavenly values, and fun, and freedom to say anything, and a love which warmed and comforted their friends. Life was supremely with them an adoring search for the Will of God, sometimes in great darkness and suffering, sometimes in the Light.
Evelyn was Lucy s spiritual director for many years, and always had a sort of motherly care for her. Lucy was Evelyn s devoted disciple, and delighted in spoiling her in all sorts of endearing ways, to Evelyn s sometimes dismayed pleasure. Lucy continued her devoted work after Evelyn s death, bringing out works that had not been published, steering a steady course as Evelyn s literary executor, a not too easy trust, and giving to her friends a sense that they were part of the enduring circle of her love.
I am very grateful for help in discovering many facts and records to Miss Clara Smith, who was for long Evelyn Underhill s secretary, to the Rev. R. Somerset Ward for much help and encouragement, to Miss Audrey Duff, Miss Dorothy Swayne, and many other of Evelyn Underhill s friends for letters and reminiscences. I should also like to thank Lucy Menzies family and her executor, for entrusting to me the books, papers and letters which I needed for completing the work she had begun.
The draft of the first part of the book which Lucy Menzies herself prepared has been lodged in the Library of the University of St. Andrews.
Margaret Cropper
1958
Note
Many friends of Lucy Menzies, who know how much this life of Evelyn Underhill owed to her courageous research, and her costly work, asked that some memorial of her might be included in it, and that Bishop Barkway, lately Bishop of St. Andrews, who knew her most intimately, should write it.
I was of course more than willing that this should be done, for I could not have written the book without the material that she had collected, and the work that she had already begun on it.
Margaret Cropper
Lucy Menzies: A Memoir
The title of Lucy Menzies best-known book is an admirable clue to her own character. She was truly a Mirror of the Holy. She reflected that with which her thoughts were constantly occupied, and like a mirror hid herself behind its reflection. The self-renunciation after which others strive is often distorted and unattractive because it is self-conscious and artificial; her self-abandonment was so complete that it drew no attention to itself. The words on her book-plate represent what she was-a lantern for the divine Light: Ego sum lux; tu es lucerna. Her slight and fragile form at times seemed almost luminous. Her name, Lucy, suited her nature.
Sacrifice is always fruitful, and there is nothing fruitful else. Without shedding of blood there is no There can be little doubt that Lucy Menzies sacrificed her life in the preparation of her last work, as a final tribute to what she owed to Evelyn Underhill. She shrank from it, as if she already kn