Anam Cara

Similarly, the dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. One of the oldest and most beautiful metaphors to convey this change of level is the journey of the larva to become a butterfly. Once it is a butterfly it cannot go back and re-enter the world of the larva. As larva it was bound to earth and water; now as butterfly it inhabits the air. It can fly overhead, look down and remember where and who it has been but not even for one second can it partake again in the image or form from that realm. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny. Those who die come closer to the source of everything creative.

L

IKE THE

M

USIC OF A

R

IVER THE

I

NDIVIDUAL

L

IFE

F

LOWS

T

HROUGH

D

EATH

I have immortal longings in me.

SHAKESPEARE, Antony and Cleopatra

IN ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PASSAGES IN THE BIBLE THE LORD says:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . Here God lives among men. He will make his home among them; they shall be his people and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. The world of the past has gone. Then the One sitting on the throne spoke: Now I am making the whole of creation new . . .

REV. 21: 1–5

When the individual life flows towards death, it also flows through death. It travels like the music of the river. Sustained by its passion and belonging and within the sureness of its flowing, the river is alive. It has a future and urgency for new possibility. It has no fear of death and yet at the end of its flow, a river always seems to be dying into the huge embrace of the ocean. Yet there is no break between the end of the river and its flowing life. The song of its end continues to sing back up the river towards the first moments of its visible infant-flow. At death the music of the heart becomes one with the unheard eternal melody.

T

O THE

P

LACE

W

HERE

G

OD AND

D

EATH

A

RE

O

NE

: T

OWARDS THE

C

ONTEMPLATIVE

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OURNEY OF

B

EAUTY

DEATH IS THE GREAT SHADOW THAT DARKENS EVERY LIFE. IT IS A huge mystery. Though your future is unknown and its content uncertain, one thing will certainly come: death. It is the only certain and absolutely intimate event. Yet we know so little about it. Within a culture the contemplatives are the ones who probe this event. The subtext of the contemplative life is the continual attempt to build a creative companionship with your own death. All fear is rooted in the fear of death. All illusion is the attempt to disguise death. The contemplative mind is willing to school itself in the primal silence of death. It endeavours to turn that bleakness into a welcoming tenderness. It is as though the gaze of kindness causes the abyss to relent and yield some shelter. The courage of the contemplative mind pushes the fragile barque of thought and faith out into the anonymous stillness and vacant silence of the abyss. The contemplative strives for a depth-resonance, a depth-recognition at the outer/inner extreme where death, transience and eternity issue from God. Maybe life and death are one in God. The contemplative wishes instinctively to reach the absolute source: the spring of essence, the well of origin. In this circle all is one, nothing is broken. The crevice that brings duality, opposition and otherness has not yet opened. It is to this numinous region that the contemplative mind is drawn. Joan Chittister writes: ‘It is Beauty that magnetizes the contemplative, and it is the duty of the contemplative to give beauty away so that the rest of the world may, in the midst of squalor, ugliness, and pain, remember that beauty is possible.’