Anam Cara

Traditionally, we have reserved the title ‘wisdom’ for the highest form of knowing. Wisdom is knowing which embraces the truest feeling of the heart and the most profound seeing of the mind. Wisdom illuminates the deepest nature of things. Such breadth and depth of seeing is no accidental glimpse into the secret of things. It takes long years to gather wisdom, or to come in to wisdom. This is why we so frequently hear the phrase ‘ancient wisdom’. It is Eros that draws us towards wisdom. In its depth, darkness and achieved poise, wisdom is the style of knowing that Eros loves. When knowing has been refined in the fires of all the seasons of spirit, it earns the title ‘wisdom’. It is an affirmation and recognition of the beauty of the feminine that in the overwhelmingly patriarchal Judaeo-Christian tradition wisdom was recognized as being feminine.

Wisdom is bright, and does not grow dim.

By those who love her she is readily seen,

And found by those who look for her.

Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself

known to them.

Watch for her early and you will have no trouble;

You will find her sitting at your gates.

Even to think about her is understanding fully grown;

Be on the alert for her and anxiety will quickly leave you.

She herself walks about looking for those who are worthy of her

And graciously shows herself to them as they go,

In every thought of theirs coming to meet them . . .

Book of Wisdom 6: 12–17

She it was I loved and searched for from my youth;

I resolved to have her as my bride,

I fell in love with her beauty.

Her closeness to God lends lustre to her noble birth,

Since the Lord of All has loved her.

Yes, she is an initiate in the mysteries of God’s knowledge,

Making choice of the works he is to do . . .

Book of Wisdom 8: 2–4

The writer identifies wisdom and beauty here. Later on there is the beautiful sentence: ‘For nothing is bitter in her company’ (Wisdom 8: 16). Wisdom is not just special knowledge about something. Wisdom is a way of being, a way of inhabiting the world. The beauty of wisdom is harmony, belonging and illumination of thought, action, heart and mind. A friendship with wisdom is the key to the door of Providence. Nowhere is that sense of the Eros of wisdom and the shelter of providence more tested than in suffering. True beauty must be able to engage the dark desolations of pain; perhaps it is on this frontier that its finest light appears?

8

T

HE

B

EAUTY

OF THE

F

LAW

Breakage, whatever its cause, is the dark complement to the act

of making; the one implies the other. The thing that is broken

has particular authority over the act of change.

LOUISE GLUCK

T

HROUGH A

B

LURRED

S

URFACE

:

T

HE

G

LIMPSE OF THE

E

SSENCE

I LOVE THE WORD ‘ESSENCE’. IT HAS MYSTERY, HEART AND luminosity. It reminds me of the way a cloud can open over a dark Conamara lake and turn it into a shimmering mirror of silver brightness; for a few moments the lake illuminates. The essence of a thing is always elusive and hidden. The dream of art and prayer is to come nearer, even to slip through to dwell for a while in the vicinity of the essence. Daily life is blurred. We live between endless layers of darkening and occasionally brightening veils, but for the most part we remain outside the walls of what Kant affectionately called: ‘the thing in itself’. We manage merely to live in the neighbourhood of things. Their essence remains beyond our reach. The essence of a person is even more elusive. The medieval mind used the word ‘ineffable’ to suggest the essence of individuality. Your essence is the utter ‘isness’, the utter ‘youness’ of you.

A lovely friend in London, an eminent philosopher and psychotherapist, told me once that when his second child was born he was granted, for one moment, a pure glimpse of the child’s essence. Often during his child’s life, there have been such moments and even now in the dark-lands of adolescence, where conversation is scarce and where monologue frequently dims into single syllable glowering, the father is still given the occasional clear view. Through the blurred, awkward surface the beautiful radiance of his son’s soul becomes briefly visible. This view always recalls him to a sense of the hidden eternal light of his child’s life.

A

FTER THE

B

LEAK

J

OURNEY,

THE

H

IDDEN

D

OOR INTO THE

B

RIGHT

F

IELD

I always feel like an escaped prisoner.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

IT IS HEART-RENDING TO SEE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO RESPECT FOR themselves and are unaware of any light or beauty in their lives. We have a sacred responsibility to encourage and illuminate all that is inherently good and special in each other. This can have an incredible lifelong effect, especially on children: to encourage them to dream and live so that their dreams might come true. Sadly, many people do not even suspect that deep behind the veils of anxiety, emptiness and labour, there dwells a beauty of essence. How have they become so exiled? What evicted them from the inner sanctuary of their own presence?