A term I often use when discussing spiritual life
is “transmundane”, or “the transmundane”. This isn't a word
in common currency, so even looking up its definition in a dictionary
doesn't necessarily reflect how it is used – especially by me. So I
thought it was perhaps time for me to attempt an explanation.
Online dictionaries tend to give a definition
along the lines of “beyond the physical world”, or “existing
beyond the world”. This is a simple etymological explanation, as
one of the meanings of “mundane” – a technical one, rather than
the vernacular usage – is “of relation to this physical world, as
opposed to a heavenly or spiritual one”. “Trans-” as a prefix,
of course, means “beyond”. As an aside, it is very much a
development of this meaning, via some specific usages, that leads to
the usage in words such as “transgender”, via a sense meaning
“across”, but the root meaning is “beyond”. This does not
mean that “transgender” means “beyond gender”, and I
generally frown on arguments from etymology when determining the
meaning of words. Linguistically, I'm very much a descriptivist.
The sense of mundane I refer to, however, when I
speak of the transmundane, is still somewhat in line with the
definition above. To me, “the mundane”, in a religious sense, is
that which is purely
physical, that which we can reach out and touch, understand with the
five conventional senses, handle with our conscious, analytical mind.
The transmundane is anything that goes beyond that. Thus, if I were
to be considering the possibility of parapsychic abilities, or of
magic, that would be transmundane. The question of life after death
is a matter of the transmundane. Likewise, unless one considers
ministry to actually be the result of conscious pondering and
entirely within the realm of our analytical thought process, ministry
is a matter of the transmundane.
I've once been
asked why I do not use the term “supernatural”. There are several
reasons. One is similar to the reasons not to use the term “atheist”,
as discussed
elsewhere on this blog; “supernatural” carries connotations
that are not appropriate for everything I encompass within the
transmundane. I consider that, while the transmundane is beyond our
rational understanding, it is not necessarily anything fundamentally
strange or beyond. Those transmundane occurrences that I accept, I
think might be a matter of unconscious operation of our minds, or
perhaps even explicable by reasonably normal physics if we had the
means to measure them.
So, the mundane
is our everyday, worldly experience, those things that are shared
experiences of everyone. The transmundane is that which is beyond the
mundane – spiritual experiences, ministry, visions, seemingly
inexplicable phenomena – these are what I mean when I say
“transmundane”.
Of course, as
Quakers, we seek to bring the whole of our lives under the ordering
of the Spirit. To be a Quaker, to me, is to actively pursue the goal
of bridging the transmundane and the mundane. To be aware of the
movement of that which some call God in the smallest things in our
life, and to apply the promptings of truth and love to all areas of
our lives.
