CHRISTIAN MYSTICS HAVE a definite dramatic streak. Their transformative encounters with God are full of divine revelations (Julian of Norwich), ecstatic visions (Teresa of Ávila), stigmata (Francis of Assisi), erotic imagery (John of the Cross), and all manner of artistic compositions (here’s to you, Hildegard of Bingen).

But then there’s Brother Lawrence who — if he is known at all — is known for experiencing God’s presence as he washed dishes, cooked eggs, or did other monotonous chores that came with life in a 17th-century French monastery.

Born Nicolas Herman, he emerged from one of Europe’s deadliest religious wars a disabled veteran. Haunted by his past actions and convinced he was eternally condemned, he failed as a hermit (too much time alone with his thoughts), then as a footman (“a clumsy oaf who broke everything,” he recalled), before eventually joining the lay brothers of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites in Paris in 1640. Yet Brother Lawrence’s anxiety persisted. When he tried to pray, he spent the whole time “rejecting thoughts and then tumbling back into these same thoughts.” Eventually, he gave up all his spiritual exercises and focused on becoming aware of God’s presence as he did his assigned work in the monastery’s kitchen. What he experienced wasn’t a celestial vision, but what he had sought all along: God’s peace.

“We go to such great lengths, trying to remain in the presence of God by so many methods,” he told a friend who posthumously published Lawrence’s modest writings and letters. “Isn’t it much shorter and more direct to do everything for the love of God?”

Carmen Acevedo Butcher, an award-winning translator of mystical and classic Christian texts, was drawn to Brother Lawrence’s gentle practice. Acevedo Butcher herself grew up saddled with severe “self-loathing” and anxiety from a childhood shaped by trauma, hellfire preaching, and the strain of being “a brown girl in a white society.” But in Lawrence’s writing she finds someone who experienced real Love amid real pain.

In Practice of the Presence, Acevedo Butcher’s new English translation of Brother Lawrence, she emphasizes his embodied joy and his “original welcoming spirit,” which she sees in his frequent use of tout le monde — “for everybody.” Drawing on Lawrence’s deeply trinitarian theology, Acevedo Butcher uses they/them pronouns for God, a move she hopes will communicate Lawrence’s kind, inclusive understanding of Love to a wide audience. Acevedo Butcher spoke with Sojourners’ Betsy Shirley about translation, mysticism, and how Brother Lawrence’s practice connects to the work of social justice today.

Betsy Shirley: There were already quite a few English translations of Brother Lawrence’s work. Why publish a new one?

Carmen Acevedo Butcher: It really came out of friendship. COVID had just started, and my editor, Lil, had 30 ideas of books for me to translate. And the very last one she said: “Or there’s Brother Lawrence.” I turned directly from that with this tug or pull ... it’s gentle, like a candle burning. And I turned to Brother Lawrence and started translating.

I found out that the National Library of France has Brother Lawrence’s original text — which, if you’re a geek like me, is like somebody has just handed you a yearlong supply of dark chocolate bars. And it’s free.

I started typing up his words in French and then translating them. I wanted to feel ’em in my fingers. It’s very embodied. I knew pretty much immediately that I loved the way this man used words. I started noticing there’s not really a binary, there’s not sinner vs. saint. There’s not good vs. evil; there is kindness.

Brother Lawrence had this feeling of having harmed others and looking back at his youth with horror, but he says, “God didn’t even accuse me. God sat me down and fed me” — which is a feminine image. That was women’s work, we forget this.

What Brother Lawrence is describing is this God who is kindness. His words suggest a nonbinary, nonpatriarchal, very mystical God, that actually is the birthright of Christianity.

What in Brother Lawrence’s life allowed him to see God this way?

I relate to him a lot because he was on the margins of society: He had no education and no chance of an education. He joined the army in the Thirty Years’ War. We don’t know what he may have seen or done; I can’t guess. All I know is that when you get into his language, he’s horrified.

He was injured in the leg, and so from the time of his early 20s he limped and was in constant pain. No aspirin, no Advil, no nothing; just constant pain. Then he joined the monastery and was on the margins even there. He was the one who was in the kitchen — women’s work.

The first 10 years of his time in the monastery, he feels he’s damned to hell. That sounds a lot like a “dark night of the soul,” it sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, we don’t know, but he definitely had difficulties and pain.

When you’ve been desperate for healing, prayer becomes more than just a mental exercise. To heal himself, he evolved the kind of mental prayer that Teresa of Ávila did. He developed this way of praying along with his daily activities that embodied his prayer to an extent that it healed him. And he had over 40 years of almost unbroken peace.

I think what happened was Brother Lawrence hunkered down in that “I’m made in the image of God,” and when he washed dishes, he returned to God. People romanticize him, “Aw, isn’t that nice, look at him in the kitchen praying.” But actually, I picture him in the kitchen having to make the soup for a hundred brothers and him turning to God like, “Hey, look, I’m in the kitchen and I don’t want to be here and I’ve got to make a soup and I don’t know how to do it, so could you help me?” And later we hear him say, before you do something, always ask God for help to get it done. If it went well, thank God. If it didn’t go well, tell God thanks for the help anyway.

In his humble way, he returned to God in every moment. And I think what we’ve forgotten is that’s not a mystical path, that is the path.

When you say “mystical,” what do you mean?

If we’re talking a big definition of mystic, from a global perspective, then you would say a mystic is someone who has a direct relationship with mystery. And if we’re going to talk in Christian terms, then we would have to say, like Brother Lawrence, that a mystic is someone who has an embodied direct relationship with the Trinity. And it wouldn’t be a lip-service Trinity; it would be a Trinity that is inclusive, with everybody getting to have their differences and uniqueness. And it would also be loving, trying to make the world literally a better place.

But “mystic” is a very Western term. It precludes a lot of people. When we start talking about it, you have to use binary terms — mystic, nonmystic — and Mystery has nothing to do with the binary. It’s beyond.

Look at somebody like Dorothy Day: She had this contemplative life where she had a direct relationship with God and she did social justice. But why do we divide those up? That’s a very artificial divide. Isn’t it all the same?

One of the most charming quotes attributed to Brother Lawrence is “I flip my little omelet in the frying pan for the love of God.” It’s so French and so humble. What’s he getting at there?

All he means is that he’s conscious. It’s like Thérèse of Lisieux who says, “Do small things with big love, extraordinary love.” What Lawrence means by that is that God the Trinity — in his language, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost — is his friend, somebody who is always waiting for him to return. So, in other words, when he says, “I flip my little omelet,” he means that God is his friend, and literally he feels the company of God.

I love that he advises those who come to him to not overdo it on spiritual activity, saying “God does not ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time. A little love sometimes asking for grace.” It feels very contemporary.

He’s very much echoing The Cloud of Unknowing. Brother Lawrence often says to do this presence prayer gently; there’s no harshness. There’s not an ego thing of “Did I do it right?” It’s not meant to be harsh. It’s not meant to be a performance. It’s not meant to be right or wrong. It’s meant to be you. Return as you can. You do it as you can. You ask for help as you can. When you feel depleted, fill yourself up.

At the same time, Brother Lawrence’s practice could seem like withdrawal from the world. There’s so much raging around him — wars, plagues, famine — and he just turns inward and talks to God. What’s missing in that understanding of Brother Lawrence?

That’s a good question. Anyone who is trying to be present and make a difference in the world: If you are running on just your own steam, how far will you get? And, if your efforts aren’t successful, then what will you do? Why were you doing it? It seems to me that we need to have this rootedness in love. Or else [I] might be doing right by others to try to fill this hole in myself.

How is the “doing” of social justice different from the relationship? I just can’t get my mind wrapped around how they’re split.

I’m an introvert with an extrovert interface, but I have almost eight and a half hours a week that I meet with students. I give everything to it, not as a way of filling myself up — although I’m sure I did that more when I was younger — but because I want my students to feel seen and helped and have a connection. But if it were just Carmen doing that, I’m exhausted, right? All I know is that if I do not have a friendship with God, where I can turn up and say “Whew, I’m tired, what am I supposed to do?” this just isn’t possible. When I read “God doesn’t ask much of us,” it seems really reassuring to me because I’m working my buns off. When I read Brother Lawrence say, “God doesn’t ask much of you,” what I hear is, “Phew. Love’s in charge,” even when it may not look like it.

What I’ve had to come to realize is that by being on the margins a lot of my life and being raised evangelical and having kind of a bad operating system put into me to begin with, I have really had to say, “Wait, Love really is true. And I’m really Love.” Brother Lawrence is all about that.

What have the mystics offered to help resist the toxic systems and influences in our lives?

The first one I would say is lectio divina, which is steeping in scripture and sinking in, reading it and really looking at its words very intently and then letting them speak to you.

And then there’s community. I think that’s one of the reasons the nuns and the monks are useful to us because they have private prayer and communal prayer. The mystics remind us, like Barbara Holmes at the Center for Action and Contemplation does, that all prayer is community. We get away from this in our individualistic society. We forget that the Trinity is a community. We forget God is love. That’s why we need community — to remind us.

The mystics also remind us that the ordinary is holy. The mystics enter into the reality of life. We cannot divorce Christianity from all that is embodied, the suffering and the good and everything else. In the middle of their contemplation and prayer, they always, always have an ear to the ground that somebody’s suffering.

I’m not the person you would have picked to publish a book when I was a kid. I had childhood trauma. I was a brown girl in a white society. My dad told me, “We can’t afford to send you to college.” I’ve always struggled with severe anxiety, and I used to really have profound self-hate. I went through depression, suicidal ideation for decades. I was a high functioning depressive. I’m not anymore.

The mystics all helped me to see that I’m worthy of love. I think we’ve forgotten that there’s no division between my being worthy of love and my wanting to help others to have a kinder life.

What I’m trying so say is: We don’t need to think mystics are “other people.” They’re just showing us what love is about.

I noticed that a portion of the proceeds for Practice of the Presence are going to the Women’s Prison Association. Why?

I knew about the Women’s Prison Association from talking with a reporter, Kamilah Newton. She calls me up for a 15-minute conversation; two hours later, I felt like I found a sister. I found out from Kamilah that she was a graduate of the Women’s Prison Association.

I worked in a prison in Georgia on death row. They don’t let you do this anymore, but this was a Southern Baptist missionary thing for the summer. I’ve never forgotten the women there. I learned so much about the unfairness of our system. It taught me that the world is upside-down. These are women who had no money. These are women who had abuse and trauma in their life. I met women who had backgrounds like me who were in prison, and I realized I’m so lucky not to be in prison. Most of the women who are facing incarceration, a large portion are Black or brown or marginalized women. This was a small thing that I could do

Lift Up Your Heart to God

By Brother Lawrence

GOD DOES NOT ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time, a little love, sometimes asking for grace, sometimes offering them your sufferings, other times thanking them for the blessings they have given, and are giving you. In the middle of your tasks, you can comfort yourself with Love as often as you can, in all these ways. During your meals and conversations, lift up your heart to God sometimes. The slightest little awareness will always be very pleasant. We don’t need to shout out to do this. God is closer to us than we may think.

We don’t always have to be in church to be with God. We can make our hearts an oratory where we withdraw from time to time to talk with them there, gently, humbly, and lovingly. Everyone is capable of these familiar conversations with God, some more, some less. Love knows what we can do. Let’s begin. Perhaps God is only waiting for our kind intention.

Be brave. We have little time left to live. You are almost 64, and I am nearly 80. Let us live and die with God. Sufferings will always be gentle and agreeable to us when we are with God, and without God the biggest pleasures are bitter agony. May God be thanked by all. Amen.

An excerpt from Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation, by Carmen Acevedo Butcher. Used with permission from Broadleaf Books.