Some Books on Celtic Mysticism Part 3
Words mean everything to us. Without them we could not exist individually or comunally, personally or culturally. Furthermore, words are our primary means of communication. Languages are replete with meaning, national identity, cultural identity and personal identity, and these modalities of our significance are expressed through their medium. Two quotations on words that appeal to me are the following: (i) “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.” (Maya Angelou) and (ii) “Words have magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.” (Sigmund Freud ).
What, then, is the relation of these preliminary thoughts to my proposed review of the now modern classics of Celtic Spirituality, (i) Anamchara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, (Bantam: Transworld Publishers, 1997), (ii) Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Hunger to Belong (Bantam: Transworld Publishers, 1998) and (iii) Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (Bantam: Transworld Publishers, 2003) by John O'Donohue?
The answer is clear enough. It is hard to separate a person's style from the content of his/her words. The very passion of the writer is intricately interwowen with his/her words. In 1994, I wrote the following in an M.A. thesis in theology:
If, as Buffon argues, "le style c'est l'homme meme" then it is impossible to separate a person's thoughts from his or her way of thinking. In short, it is considerably difficult to separate content from method. As soon as we begin to talk about one we find that the other begins to make its presence felt. Newman was aware of this: 'Thought and speech are inseparable from each other, matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.' (Faith and Theological Method in the Work of J.H. Newman, Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, 1994, p. 1)
Those of us who like reading novels, works of literature in whatever genre, are entranced by the passion, originality and commitment of the author to the work at hand. Spiritual and mystical works especially belong in this magical, romantic and esoteric territory of aesthetic experience. Pure scientists who are interested in hard facts will have no recourse to what they adjudge to be woolly thoughts and thinking, or to these "airy fairy" ideas as Alfred Lord Tennyson described such unrealistic, highly romantic and wholly impractical thoughts. Those of you who are following these posts will have read the highly passionate, original and magical words composed by the modern Irish mystic John Moriarty in Invoking Ireland. I added a sample of the magic of such words from his book at the end of the last review. His words may be described thus: incantatory, shamanic, hypnotic, ritualistic, chant-like, animistic, divinatory, mystical and transpersonal. You may add your own descriptors if fancy takes you.
If such adjectives describe the mystical style of John Moriarty, they will not evoke the style or content of John O'Donohue's written oeuvre. O'Donohue's style is lyrical and poetic and less likely to combine the diverse influences of Moriarty's syncretic approach where he distills the wisdom of many traditions into the Celtic and the Christian. Moriarty is a poet's poet and a mystic's mystic, while O'Donohue's style is that of a poet and a mystic for all. His approch is broadly pastoral, too - after all he was trained as a priest. An awkward and maladroit comparison might be to say John Moriarty is more a jazz musician of spirituality whereas John O'Donohue is more a classical one. Here is a taste of O'Donohue's style and his cognate or related mysticism. He is speaking of our place in the universe:
Humans are new here. Above us, the galaxies dance out towards infinity. Under our feet is ancient earth. We are beautifully moulded from this clay. Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us. In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo. An unknown world aspires towards reflection. Words are the oblique mirrors which hold your thougths. You gaze into these word mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging and shelter. Behind their bright surfaces is the dark and the silence. Words are like the god Janus, they face outwards and inwards at once. (Anamchara p. 14)
In keeping with the Celtic tradition, a devotion to the wonders, magic and mystery of nature, both of landscape and seascape, is everywhere in O'Donohue's spirituality or mysticism. Unfortunately this brilliant scholar and modern mystic died young at age 52 in 2008. What further classics he might have written remain an everlasting mystery for us. He was awarded a Ph.D. in philosophical theology (Hegelian hermeneutics) from the University of Tubingen in 1990. His thesis was written in German and also published as a book in that language in 1993. He was also a gifted linguist and had been reared bilingually in Irish and English. Added to these accomplishments, he was also a published poet. He did post-doctoral work on the 13th-century mystic, Meister Eckhart. Ordained a Catholic priest in 1979, he left the priesthood in 2000 because he found the Church too restricting. His was a broader vision of spirituality than obtained in the institutional church. He became a much sought-after international lecturer on spiritual matters in general and creativity in the workplace in particular, both in Europe and the United States. O'Donohue also devoted much of his energies to environmental causes and is credited with helping spearhead the Burren Action Group, which opposed government development plans, and ultimately preserved the area of Mullaghmore, an important heritage site on the Burren in his native County Clare.
became an unexpected international bestseller in the late 1990s and established O'Donohue’s signature style, which blends philosophy, Christian mysticism, and Irish poetry into a magical and attractive opus. The term "Anamchara" is the Gaelic or Irish language for "soul friend." He summarises his philosophy/spirituality as follows in his passionate introduction to this book:
Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace. Nowhere else is there such intimate and frightening access to the misterium. Friendship is the sweet grace which liberates us to approach, recognise and inhabit this adventure. This book is intended as an oblique mirror in which you might come to glimpse the presence and power of inner and outer friendship. Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and universe. The human journey is a continuous act of transfiguration. If approached in friendship, the unknown, the anonymous, the negative and the threatening gradually yield their secret affinity with us. As an artist, the human person is permanently active in this revelation. The imagination is the great friend of the unknown. Endlessly, it invokes and releases the power of possibility. Friendship, then, is not to be reduced to an exclusive or sentimental relationship; it is a far more extensive and intensive force. (p. 15)
The human heart is never still. There is a divine restlessness in each of us which creates a continual state of longing. You are never quite at one with yourself and the self is never fixed. There are always new thoughts and experiences emerging in your life; some moments delight and surprise you, others bring you onto shaky ground. On the outside, your body looks the same. Your behaviour, work, home and the circle of friends remain consistent and predictable. Yet behind this outer facade there is another life going on in you. The mind and heart are wanderers who are always tempted by new horizons. Your life belongs in a visible, outer consistency; your inner life is nomadic. Hegel says: 'Just this unrest is the Self.' Your longing takes you frequently on inner voyages that no-one would ever guess. Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul. It is the secret source of all presence and the driving force of all creativity and imagination: longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts and blessings of which our lives dream.... It is interesting that.... a version of the root of desire is 'de-sidus': 'away from a star'. When you are in a state of desire, you are away from your star. Your heart yearns for the light and luminosity which are now absent. While we are in the world there is alwas a large area of heart in exile. This is why we are suffused with longingg. Deep down we desire to come back into the intimate union of belonging. (p. 74 - 75)
In short, this book helps us explore our deepest desires and our most profound longing for this 'infinite union' with our Creator, the source and destiny of our finite life.
Finally, I turn to give the reader a taste of the third classic book by O'Donohue on my shelves. The book is Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. In the Theaetetus, Plato asserts that “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”, using the Greek term thauma to describe an enduring perplexity and awe before existence. Theology, mysticism, poetry, even science, I would argue also begin in wonder at the amazing beauty and often sublimity in everything in our universe if only we learn to develop the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the patience to stay still and become aware, or as the late Jesuit mystic Anthony de Mello put it, if only we would WAKE UP! This book is O'Donohue's gentle but urgent call to us to wake up to the beauty all around us and in us. He writes to open our eyes, hearts and ears to the wonder of our own relationship with beauty. Through allusion to classical, medieval and Celtic sources in music, literature, philosophy and theology, and through his deep love of nature and through the striking lyricism of his own beautiful writing, he invites his readers to new heights of passion for life and living. This is an essential call to rediscover the beauty of nature and the beauty in our own lives and that of others.
I will offer a truly simple quotation from this wonderful spiritual classic as an insight into his profundity of reflection on beauty. For me, it sums up O'Donohue's aesthetics and spirituality of beauty:
Once while travelling in China I was on my way to Shanghai Airport. It was a dull morning. The road, suburbs and landscape were grey and colourless. Even the track and trek of commuters seemed like some underworld parade. It began to rain in slanted layers. Then I noticed a cyclist coming towards me. Attached to the back of his bicycle was a large basket piled high will balls of wool in every colour you could imagine. This determined cyclist was like a traveller from another world who transfigured the whole grey suburban landscape with his gentle cargo of blues, yellows, greens, indigos, oranges, purples and ochres.
The presence and experience of colour is at the very heart of human life. In a sense, we are created for a life full of colour. It is no accident that we abandon the world when the colours vanish and the reign of darkness commences. Night is the land where all the outer colours sleep. We awaken and return to the world when the colours return at dawn. There is a beautiful word in Irish for this: luisne - the first blush of light before dawn breaks. Gradually, the coloured horizon of dawn gives way to daylight. (p 84 - 85).
Here ends this review. Please forgive its intensity and enthusiasm, and indeed its length, as I simply got carried away.
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