Anam Cara

We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person’s soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of the words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said.

Bill Stafford suggests that these things which dwell out of reach, beyond words, are the things that make the soul rich. The in-expressible depth in us is our true treasure. In our endless social chatter and psychological labelling, we frequently cheapen its beauty. We need to learn the art of inner reverence and never force the soul out into the false light of social gratification and expectation. To observe an appropriate silence regarding our interiority means our talk will never be weak. In a culture where there is a morass of second-hand chatter, we need to mind our hearing; otherwise it becomes dull and deaf to the voice of what is real and beautiful. To practise the discipline of reverence which Bill Stafford recommends means that we remain always secretly ready to receive the words that could illuminate our destiny.

B

EAUTY

A

VOIDS

THE

S

IREN

C

ALL

OF THE

O

BVIOUS

A beautiful thing, though simple in its immediate presence,

always gives us a sense of depth below depth, almost an

innocent wild vertigo as one falls through its levels.

FREDERICK TURNER

THE EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY HAS FOR THE MOST PART A particular force. It envelops and overcomes us. Yet there are times when beauty reveals itself slowly. There are times when beauty is shy and hesitates until it can trust the worthiness of the beholder. Human culture seems to build its temples of meaning in the wrong places, in the garish marketplaces of transient fashion and public image. Beauty tends to avoid the siren call of the obvious. Away from the blatant centre, it prefers the neglected margin. Beyond the traffic of voyeuristic seeing, beauty waits until the patience and depth of a gaze are refined enough to engage and discover it. In this sense, beauty is not a quality externally present in something. It emerges at that threshold where reverence of mind engages the subtle presence of the other person, place or object. The hidden heart of beauty offers itself only when it is approached in a rhythm worthy of its trust and showing.

Only if there is beauty in us can we recognize beauty elsewhere: beauty knows beauty. In this way, beauty can be a mirror that manifests our own beauty. This has little to do with narcissism or self-absorption. To achieve a glimpse of inner beauty strengthens our sense of dignity and grace. The glimpse ennobles us; it helps awaken and refine our reverence for the intimate eternal that dwells in us. Yet the recognition of another person’s beauty can sometimes induce envy and a sense of inferiority. When we succumb to envy, we have become blind to ourselves. In the end, the truth is surprisingly ordinary – that there is beauty in every life regardless of how inauspicious, dull or hardened its surface might seem.

W

HERE

F

EELING

AND

F

ORM

F

IND

B

ALANCE

THERE IS A SUBLIME COHERENCE AT THE HEART OF BEAUTY, AN order which has a lyrical simplicity. Since beauty issues from depth, this order has emerged from intense engagement with chaos, confusion and contradiction. It is a beauty that the soul has won from the heart of darkness. Such beauty cannot simply be siphoned off from chaos. Neither can it be fabricated or slipped over chaos as a benign, concealing mask. Such beauty engages in the labour and grace of the imagination. Beauty is ultimately a gift.

Sometimes the perfection of beauty can seem aloof and cold. There is the clichéd image of the man or woman who is immensely good looking. Their attraction draws others towards them. But the magnetism turns hollow if their hearts are shown to be cold or empty. Sometimes a work of art has the same style of perfection – technically accomplished, formally adept yet disappointingly void of presence. This is especially clear in a musical performance. Each note is hit immaculately, yet the fibre and tenor of the sequence remains strangely hollow. For true beauty is not merely a formal, technical order or quality in a thing. When passion of feeling and technical brilliance come together, the beauty can be devastating and transfiguring. Feeling in itself can tend towards sentimentality and often masquerade as concern when in truth it is concealed resentment or smothered anger. There is a profound balancing within beauty. Perhaps the magnetic tension of beauty issues precisely from the threshold where passionate extremes come into balance. Beauty invites refinement of feeling and thought. It calls us ever towards a greater fullness of presence.

E

LEVATED

BY THE

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RANDEUR OF A

G

REATER

H

ARMONY