Y
OUR
C
ONTEMPLATIVE
H
EART
For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.
Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the
great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all
things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.
And there it is ahead of all as . . . the Beloved . . . toward which
all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually
brings them into being.
PSEUDO – DIONYSIUS, The Divine Names
PLACED WITHIN THE FRAME OF A UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT DESTINY each one of us is troubled by the ultimate questions. No-one else’s answer can satisfy the hunger in your heart. The beauty of the great questions is how they dwell differently in each mind. How they root deeper than all the surface chatter and image, how they continually disturb. Your deep questions grow quickly restless in the artificial clay of received opinion or stagnant thought. If you avoid that disturbance and try to quell these questions, it will cost you peace of mind. Sooner or later each one of us must succumb to our contemplative longing and gain either the courage or recklessness to begin our contemplative journey. The explicit religious contemplatives offer us inestimable shelter and guidance on this path. They have garnered the wisdom from a long tradition committed to nothing else but the pursuit of these questions. From some of their adventures they have brought back reports of those numinous territories and attempted to bring their kinetic geographies to word. The tradition has always cautioned against undertaking that journey alone. As on a climb in the Himalayas a guide or sherpa is recommended, when one is setting out, there is a lot to be learned from those who have gone before us. Those who publicly and committedly undertake the journey provide some signposts for those of us who are implicitly or secretly drawn in these directions.
In general, in a society there is an encouraging and creative tension between the explicit and the implicit. Those who are willing to stand out and take the risk of following their gift place a mirror to our unawakened gifts. To know they are there, day in day out, at the frontiers of their own limitation and vision, probing further into new possibility, enduring at lonely thresholds in the hope of discovery, to know they are willing to risk everything is both disturbing and comforting. The presence of the contemplative and the artist in a culture is ultimately an invitation to awaken and engage one’s neglected gifts, to enter more fully into the dream of the eternal that has brought us here to earth.
If we could but turn aside from the glare of the world and enter our native stillness, we would find ourselves quickening to new life in the eternal embrace. This is the subversive consolation of God, that sweet mercy that sees beyond our blunders and falsities. There we need feel no shame or guilt or anxiety. No storm can touch us there. In the presence of the God of Beauty our own beauty shines. God is the atmosphere where our essence clarifies, where all falsity and pretension vanish. Here we are utterly enfolded. No words are needed; no actions required; for everything is here. God is the time-circle where all our possibilities unite. In God the ultimate portraiture of the soul fills out. All our different selves unite: the selves we are and were and could have been and could be, the unchosen selves, all our nights and all our days, our visible and invisible lives. It is impossible for language to express this nearness for in the end every thought is an act of distance. Even words like ‘nearness’, ‘intimacy’ or ‘love’ still indicate separation. Only the strained language of paradox can suggest the breathtaking surprise of such divine closeness. God is breath-near, skin-touch, mind-home, heart-nest, thought-forest, otherness-river, night-well, time-salt, moon-wings, soul-fold.
God is that field beyond more and less, near and far, self and other, past and future, elsewhere and otherwise, before and after. God is that beautiful danger wherein the earth no longer needs to behave, where the levels are no longer separate. As Eckhart says: ‘Height is Depth’. Perhaps this was the field that Eckhart glimpsed and that glimpse burns through the Everest of his thought. One of his followers said: ‘The master spoke to ye from eternity but ye have understood him according to time.’ The subversive beauty of God holds the secret design of everything that happens outside, in time. Yet to enter that beauty is not a dissolution but a transfiguration where the signature of your essence glows in the mountain of Being. Created in beauty and secretly sustained all the while by beauty, you surrender now to ultimate awakening. Home at last – as Eckhart says: ‘Back in the house you never left’.
A B
EAUTY
B
LESSING
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell.
As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time is presence.
As the moon absolves the dark of distance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness.
As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.
As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.
As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within.
As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE QUESTION OF BEAUTY HAS FASCINATED ME FOR A LONG TIME. Many friends have helped me in the research for this book. I became acquainted with the depth of the beauty theme in the philosophical tradition through the mind-shaping lectures on Greek philosophy of the late Professor Dr Gerard Watson at Maynooth University. Dr P.J. McGrath’s lectures in philosophy opened up the wonder, light and clarity that the beauty of thought could hold. Dr Noel Dermot O’Donoghue’s work in mystical theology exposed the threshold where the mountains soared from the foothills. For his illumination of the world of medieval aesthetics I am indebted to the wonderful books of Umberto Eco. For insights into Beethoven, I am indebted to the work of J.W.N. Sullivan. Bryan Magee’s book on Wagner is wonderful. In researching the theme of colour, I learned a lot from the books by Philip Ball and John Gage; Victoria Finlay’s book on colour is rich in imagination, adventure and insight. The Letters of Keats were a constant inspiration, as were frequent visits to the Thought-Cathedral of Meister Eckhart. I learned about music therapy from Rachel Verney, a gifted music therapist. Tom Kenny of Kenny Art Galleries told me the story about ‘Teannalach’. The phrase ‘Fáilte roimh thorann do chos, ní amháin thú fhéin’ I got from Lelia Doolan; the translation is Bob Quinn’s.
I would like to thank Brenda Kimber, my editor at Transworld; she has been so encouraging, caring and rigorous. Kim Witherspoon has been wonderful in ‘watching over’ everything; I am grateful for her care and clarity. Dr Lelia Doolan did a trenchant critique of the manuscript several versions ago; I am grateful for her friendship and the generosity of her beautiful mind. I thank Dr John Devitt of Mater Dei for his critique and the inspiration of his erudition. Professor Laurie Johnson of Hofstra University read the manuscript several times and offered challenging criticism. I am deeply grateful to the poet David Whyte for our friendship and great conversations, and to the priest-poet Pat O’Brien for his friendship, generosity and inspiration. I was privileged to have great discussions about beauty and architecture with Jennifer Vecchi; I am deeply grateful for her friendship and inspiration, and that she introduced me to the work of Santiago Calatrava. Fr Martin Downey loved the topic from the beginning and gave great encouragement. I wish to thank my friends Anne and Sheila O’Sullivan and Ethel Balfe, who gave me constant support and encouragement; Ethel accompanied this journey of words from its first meanderings and kept the way lit. I thank Barbara Conner for all her wonderful work and for her care, friendship, wisdom and intuition. The artist Loretta Roome inspired me with her beautiful imagination and mystical heart. I thank the poet Nöel Hanlon for her love and the grace of illumination – there all the days. My dear friend Ellen Wingard entered into the soul of this book with the finesse and depth of her aesthetic sense; her love and care is a radiance and shelter. Near the end Kathleen Duffy arrived and helped gather it all over the threshold. I wish to thank my family, especially my mother, Josie. When someone asked her a few months ago how I was, she said: ‘Beauty has him nearly killed.’ My father Paddy and my uncle Pete introduced me to the beauty of landscape, the beauty of work and the beauty of spirit; memories of them are icons that keep the heart bright. The first story in the book happened on Loch Corrib with my great old friend, the late Joe Pilkington; we all miss him yet he continues to surprise us with presence. During the writing of this book, my friend Donie Lynch passed away; he was an ‘undercover mystic’, a beautiful outsider who offered sanctuary when the mind hurt. Tony O’Malley, the great Irish painter, died too; his work testifies to a lifetime dedicated to the passionate and careful evocation of beauty. I give thanks for friends and their secret crochet of prayer that keeps all the spaces between luminous. A final pagan thanks to the mountains of the Burren and Conamara and a salute to the Atlantic Goddess!