Mystic Liberalism and Mystic Conservatism

I have a liberal Christian friend who is of mystical bent, and a conservative Christian friend of mystical bent. The former goes to sweatlodges and has a wealth of life-advice that she swears comes from Native Americans, such has having both hawk-vision (seeing the big picture) and mouse-vision (seeing the immediate and personal). I would bet that if you used that metaphor on a clever Patuxent in 1630 they would pick up the meaning and approve of it. But it is the type of abstraction I have never seen in any discussion of Native Spirituality. I would bet just as much or more that it is not NA wisdom. It's a bit New-Agey modern interpretation of the world. My friend, who I will call C, also continues to believe in recycling even when told that most items lose money, and the environmental impact is near-invisible. The effect of weird chemicals on our food from the plastics is much greater than whether we melt them back together versus putting them in the ground.  The ground is large, our bodies are small. Yet she is sure that Nature is grateful to us when we make such efforts on her behalf and treats us more kindly. She had all sorts of bins all over the hospital for various materials, which she would carry to her car and drop off. Interestingly, she deeply objected to the idea of doing this for Gaia, because she was Roman Catholic and saw that as worshiping a false god. I refrained from telling her that recycling is an environmentalist sacrament. She is a nice, nice person and it would hurt her.

The conservative Christian mystic, who I will call S is "very into prophecy." She grew up NewYork Italian Catholic. She just knows that some of what is predicted in modern books about Daniel and the Revelation to John are true and can tell you which ones are not, because she discerns their spirits. I have known her long enough that I have seen these change over the years. It is always somewhat paranoid, but who the forces are behind these evils has shifted. She has been in a true cult, the Boston Church of Christ, and even when in trinitarian churches has gravitated toward those with at least some heterodox views. She is thrice-married, with each of the husbands greatly influencing her theology at the time.  The first two were abusive (I don't know the details), so she left them. While she could show temper and quick judgement at times, she was basically the sunniest, warmest, least-judgemental friend you could find. When I first met her in the early 90s, she was lavishly pro-Israel because of its role in end-times prophecy. She was quite anti-Catholic. As the focus of her paranoia slowly changed, I wondered if she would get around to blaming the Jews. In the meantime, she eventually started going to Catholic women's retreats because of a cousin in New Jersey and decided that they did retreats the best. Her third husband was an older man who had been a fundamentalist preacher in Georgia. He tolerated her Catholic flirtations, but gradually convinced her that the Jews today were not the same as the Hebrews in the Bible. 

I got irritated when I knew them, but not often. Lovely, dear people who deserved the best I could bring. In my frustration I would drop the occasional hint, which they almost invariably misunderstood. I have had some mystical experiences, but very widely spaced.  I am suspicious of that approach to God, however much it is recommended by people who are much nicer than I am. Mostly, I am merely bemused.