vision or a taste or perhaps fragrance of God in the depth of his fullness, and one second of such a moment of encounter is worth more than a lifetime of pious deeds and “correct” opinions: “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Ps. 84:10). If mysticism, rightly understood, is not foreign to Christianity, and if it is, as I have suggested, the lifeblood of the premodern church, then why does