Anam Cara

Beauty is substance and is never present merely as a naïve apparition in the vicinity of things. She is not a ghost who dwells in the preserve of daydream to lull us away for a while from the harshness of life. Beauty is not the mistress of nostalgia or avoidance; she is not flimsy. The greatest minds of antiquity, the medieval world and of modernity were not simply indulging themselves in their portraiture of beauty. They sensed that beauty was the soul of the real. Beauty is the grandeur and elegance of experience that has come alive to its eternal depth and destiny. True beauty can emerge at the most vigorous threshold where the oppositions in life confront and engage each other. The philosopher Schopenhauer said: ‘Opposites throw light upon each other.’ Beauty does not belong exclusively to the regions of light and loveliness, cut off from the conflict and conversation of oppositions. The vigour and vitality of beauty derives precisely from the heart of difference. No life is one-sided; the life of each of us is animated by the inner conversation of forces which counter and complement each other. Beauty inhabits the cutting edge of creativity – mediating between the known and the unknown, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, visible and invisible, chaos and meaning, sound and silence, self and others.

B

EAUTY AND THE

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ELTIC

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MAGINATION

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T

HE

B

ALANCE OF THE

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IND AND THE

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ENSES

THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH IS A CONSTANT PLAY OF LIGHT AND dark, visible and invisible. We perceive and participate in that beauty through the interplay of senses and spirit. Our senses are lanterns that illuminate the world. Beauty is never simply in the mind alone. Beauty awakens for us through what we hear, touch, taste, scent and see. The great traditions have always recognized that beauty is a mysterious presence. Beauty envelops the heart and mind. In beauty’s presence there is no longer any separation between thought and senses, between heart and soul. Indeed, the experience of beauty confirms the intricate harmony and creative tension of senses and thought. Without the senses, we could never know beauty. Without thought, beauty would seem transient and illusory.

Yet beauty is always more than the senses can perceive. While it attracts and gladdens the senses, it also raises and refines what we touch, taste, scent, hear and see. Beauty awakens the soul, yet it is never simply ethereal. Beauty offers a profound psychological and indeed mystical invitation. The dream of beauty is the self drawn forth to its furthest awakening, where the senses and the soul are utterly alive and yet in a harmony, brimming with presence. Unity such as this seldom occurs. In some instinctively creative way, Celtic thought and imagination recognized the lyrical unity that beauty effects and requires, and managed to link huge differences together within a unifying embrace. It avoided the dualism that separates soul and senses. This false division blinds us to the presence of beauty.

The Celtic Imagination often expressed spiritual insight in poetic form, as in ‘The Deer’s Cry’ from The Confession of St Patrick:

I arise today

through strength in the sky:

light of sun

moon’s reflection

dazzle of fire

speed of lightning

wild wind

deep sea

firm earth

hard rock.

I arise today

With God’s strength to pilot me:

God’s might to uphold me

God’s wisdom to guide me

God’s eye to look ahead for me

God’s ear to hear me

God’s word to speak for me

God’s hand to defend me

God’s way to lie before me

God’s shield to protect me

God’s host to safeguard me.

    (translated by John Skinner)

For the Celtic Imagination all of these images held a numinous and sacred resonance. This poem evokes the beauty of creation and the beauty of God as a single helix of presence. At its deepest level, beauty holds everything together as one pervasive presence. Nature and self have beauty because they participate in and express the presence of the one who is beautiful to know, the one whose fiery passion creates, sustains and welcomes everything. The incantatory ‘I arise’ brings out the mystery of awakening. The self does not awaken to find itself trapped in an isolated subjectivity, rather it awakens to ultimate participation; it is a living threshold between nature and divinity, a presence that is wild, free, diverse and indivisible.

There is a wonderful passage in St Bernard of Clairvaux in which interior beauty illuminates the sensuousness of human presence:

when the brightness of beauty has replenished to overflowing the recesses of the heart, it is necessary that it should emerge into the open, just like the light hidden under a bushel: a light shining in the dark is not trying to conceal itself. The body is an image of the mind, which, like an effulgent light scattering forth its rays, is diffused through its limbs and senses, shining through in action, discourse, appearance, movement – even in laughter, if it is completely sincere and tinged with gravity.