Anam Cara

OFTEN WE APPROACH THINGS WITH GREED AND URGENCY. WE do not like to wait. As we wait at the vertical altar to go on-line, we become frustrated by the extra few seconds the machine needs to find its mind. Computer makers are constantly at work to cut the transition time; the flick from world to cyber-world must become seamless. We live under the imperative of the stand-alone digital instant; and it is uncanny how neatly that instant has become the measure not alone of time but also of space. Classically, the understanding of life, the unfolding of identity and creativity, the notion of growth and discovery were articulated through the metaphor of the journey. Virgil’s Aeneid is the journey from fallen Troy to the glory of the new city of Rome. Homer’s Odyssey is a great mystical journey home. Dante’s Divine Comedy is an epic journey through hell and purgatory until the arrival in Paradise. Each human life is the journey from childhood to a realized adult life. Each day is a journey out of darkness into light. Each friendship and love is the intimate journey where the soul is born and grows. The journey is the drama of the heart’s voyage into the tide of possibilities which open before it. Indeed, a book is a path of words which takes the heart in new directions.

In the Celtic tradition, warriors and monks undertook incredible journeys of imagination and spirit. The journey to the eternal, invisible world was called the imram. In Irish lyric poetry of the eighth century there is the story of the Immram Curaig Máile Dúin, The Voyage of Mael Duin’s Currach. Mael Duin and his companions made a voyage and visited many wondrous islands. One day they came upon an island surrounded by a fence of brass. All around the fence was a beautiful pool, elevated high above the waves. Before the pool was a bridge. Mael Duin’s warriors attempted time and again to climb up onto the island but kept slipping off the bridge of glass and plunging back down into the ocean. Then:

Towards them came a gentle white-throated woman

Whose nature was free from folly and whose deed

Was fair; she was clad in radiant raiment of

Swanlike brightness.

Her fair cloak, which was shining and beautiful, was

Surrounded by a hem of red gold. About her feet were

Silver sandals on which to rest.

Upon her bosom she wore a white brooch of

Wondrous silver, inlaid with woven gold of loveliest

Workmanship.

On her head fair yellow hair gleamed like gold; graceful

Were her steps and regal her fine stately movements.

Like a holy sanctuary in the lower portion of the huge

Bridge was a wave-bright well protected by the lovely

Bulk of a lid.

She poured lovely liquor but offered them none. She chanted wondrous music which lulled them to sleep. This lasted three days and then she led them to a feast in a banquet hall high above the ocean. While they were feasting she chanted ‘marvellous names’. She knew and called out the name of each young man. But then she was asked to satisfy the lust of Mael Duin. She upbraided the warriors for being undignified and false. Then she mysteriously enjoined them: ‘Ask the secret of the island, that I may be able to relate it to you.’ When morning had come, they awoke in their boat and the beautiful island had vanished, no-one knew where.

In its encounter with us beauty invites our dignity and graciousness. Often it beckons us from afar but holds us off until our hearts become more refined and receptive; then beauty draws us into her mysterious invisible embrace. However, when the coarse thought or grasping smallness protrudes, we can find ourselves forsaken, dropped down into the severance of our familiar, blind hungering.

W

HEN THE

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ENSE OF

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ESTINATION

B

ECOMES

G

RACIOUS, THE

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OURNEY

C

AN

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ECOME AN

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DVENTURE OF

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EAUTY

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments

of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.

ELAINE SCARRY