Finding the Sacred in the last place you might think to look.
Last weekend I was at Esalen in Big Sur, sitting with one of my favorite mystical teachers, Mirabai Starr, who spoke about what she calls ordinary mysticism — the idea that spiritual experience isn’t reserved for mountaintops or meditation retreats. It’s available in every moment, if we’re willing to see past the surface of things.
I came home thinking about a friend of mine who recently tore her Achilles tendon. Surgery. Off her feet for months. This woman is fiercely independent, and she’ll tell you herself she has trust issues. And yet people keep remarking on how lightly she’s carrying it. Her answer: awfulizing it won’t make it better. So she’s choosing to see the blessings. She’s leaning into trust.
That’s ordinary mysticism. That’s what it looks like to stay open when life presses in.
This month I’m sitting with Divine Doubt — the idea that questioning isn’t a sign of weakness, but the very thing that might actually deepen our faith.
And today I want to go one step further: what happens when we stop carrying our doubt alone?
Most of us, if we’re honest, can’t look at the world right now and feel a settled sense of certainty about the future. The newsfeed is relentless. There’s real suffering happening. It’s enough to make you question the efficacy of prayer, to wonder whether prayer actually works.
Here’s what I want to say about that moment of uncertainty: it is not a failure of your faith. It’s an invitation. A strange angel at the door.
D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem called Song of a Man Who Has Come Through — a fierce, beautiful piece about surrender and intuition. There’s a moment near the end where he writes:
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.
The strange angels in Lawrence’s poem represent sudden inspiration and the unexpected spiritual visitation that frightens us precisely because it asks us to change. The poem isn’t about comfort. It’s about the courage to open the door despite our discomfort.
I believe doubt is one of those strange angels. When we admit it — consciously and honestly — it becomes a portal to deeper understanding.
The New Thought tradition exists because one woman admitted her strange angel.
Emma Curtis Hopkins was in the inner circle of early Christian Science — editing Mary Baker Eddy’s flagship journal at the height of the movement’s influence. She believed in the healing work. And then she started reading other mystics and other traditions, asking whether Mary’s revelation was truly unique to her or whether it was one expression of something much more ancient.
Mary saw this as betrayal. In 1885, she fired Emma.
What happened next is history. Emma went on to become the teacher of teachers — training Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who founded Unity as well as one of the founders of Divine Science. She also trained one young man who would later write The Science of Mind and found Religious Science: Ernest Holmes. The philosophy that underlies Centers for Spiritual Living, the community I serve, is the result of Emma’s willingness to follow her doubt instead of burying it.
The doubt didn’t destroy the work. It expanded it beyond anything the original container could have held.
But here’s what happens when we don’t admit the strange angels: the doubts don’t disappear. They go underground. They settle into the subjective mind and quietly undermine the very beliefs we’re trying to build. Going along to get along feels easier, but it’s a trap — the ego’s way of trading spiritual growth for the comfort of belonging.
You know the story of the emperor with no clothes. One person finally said the true thing — the thing everyone already knew but no one would say, despite thinking it — and it woke everyone up.
A few years ago I was at a strategic planning retreat for an international nonprofit. Big ideas, bold energy, flip charts full of vision. As we were wrapping up, I noticed something no one was saying: how are we actually going to do any of this?
I almost didn’t ask. The room had such a great vibe, I didn’t want to dampen it. But I asked anyway.
The room got quiet. Then people started nodding. Because everyone had been thinking it. Nobody had said it. We left with an accountability team, real structure, actual roles and responsibilities. The organization moved from a startup with great intentions to one genuinely having impact. Leadership became more collaborative. The work got more focused.
All of that happened because one person voiced the question that was already in the room. It could have been anyone, all it took was a little courage.
I’m not asking you to perform uncertainty or manufacture doubt. That’s just the ego being contrary for sport. I’m talking about divine doubt — the honest, conscious question that makes you look deeper and think new thoughts.
What I am asking is simpler and harder: stop pretending.
It’s okay to be uncertain. You don’t have to arrive with all the answers. You don’t have to pretend you have faith you don’t feel. When you find safe space in a community that does that — where they let their shared uncertainty breathe — something shifts, people wake up, as if all they needed was the permission of your doubt to participate fully.
This week: When you hear something you immediately disagree with, pause before you react. Follow the feeling versus engaging in argument. When something keeps nagging at you, sit with it instead of pushing it away.
Who knows, it might just be strange angels at the door.
Admit them. Admit them.
This post is adapted from a talk given at CSL Capistrano Valley [www.cslcv.org] on May 17, 2026, part of a five-week series on Divine Doubt. I’m sharing the central ideas here each week for those who aren’t in the room — or who were and want to sit with them a little longer.
If this resonated, share it with someone who might enjoy it.
