Anam Ċara

I ended a recent post, “On Being Animal”, with these words:

To become animal is to regain Eden. This is why I don’t have a use for the word “spirituality”.

I take those words back. In any case they don’t make too much sense. It’s tedious of me to be so pedantic, and something that cannot be justified without being even more tedious. By way of penance, I retrieve a book I’ve had for years and open it almost at random. The best kind of book to read is one that expresses what you have already thought or felt, at least in part, but couldn’t possibly say yourself. To discover something outside yourself that echoes and mirrors what’s hidden deep within you is magic. Literally, this is what magic is. This is what I found on pages 132-133:

The Celts had a wonderful intuitive understanding of the complexity of the psyche. They believed in various divine presences. . . . [He lists some.] Gods and goddesses were always linked to a place. Trees, wells and rivers were special places of divine presence. Fostered by such rich textures of divine presence, the ancient psyche was never as isolated and disconnected as the modern psyche. The Celts had an intuitive spirituality, informed by mindful, reverent attention to landscape. It was an outdoor spirituality impassioned by the erotic charge of the earth. The recovery of soul in our times is vital in healing our disconnection.

In theological or spiritual terms, we can understand this point of absolute non-connection with everything, as a sacred opening in the soul which can be filled by nothing external. Often all the possessions we have, the work we do, the beliefs we hold, are manic attempts to fill this opening, but they never stay in place. They always slip, and we are left more vulnerable and exposed than before. A time comes when you know that you can no longer wallpaper this void. Until you really listen to the call of this void, you will remain an inner fugitive, driven from refuge to refuge, always on the run with no place to call home. To be natural is to be holy; but it is very difficult to be natural. To be natural is to be at home with your own nature. If you are outside your self, always reaching beyond your self, you avoid the call of your own mystery. When you acknowledge the integrity of your own solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.

Spirituality becomes suspect if it is merely an anaesthetic to still one’s spiritual hunger.