The House of Spiritual Belonging

I wrote yesterday about John O'Donohue's critique - in his book, Anam Cara - about how we see. Continuing his discussion of how we relate to the world through our senses, today I'm quickly sharing some passages relating to speaking, smelling and breathing.

Words

After bemoaning the loss in much of modern society of the rich experience that eating a meal used to provide, O'Donohue notes a broader metaphor that today's fast food society provides:  

"The fast-food metaphor provides a deep clue to the poverty of sensibility and lake of taste in modern culture ... Many of the words we use are of the fast-food spiritual variety. These words are too thin to echo experience; they are too weak to bring the inner mystery of things to real expression. In our rapid and externalized world, language has become ghostlike, abbreviated to code and label. Words that would mirror the soul carry the loam of substance and the shadow of the divine."

Again, I am moved by O'Donohue's prose. Truly, his words echo experience and reflect deep thought and insight.

On Fragrance and Memory

"Experts," writes O'Donohue, "tell us that smell is the most faithful of all the sense in terms of memory. The smells of one's childhood still remain within." I found this a fascinating thought. 

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, the subject of memory is important to me. For so much of my life, most of my memories of my early life have been filed away somewhere deep within my brain. The image of the Room of Requirement (from Harry Potter), where things are hidden, comes to mind. For more times that I care to remember, I have stood before that stone wall that conceals the Room and have tried to will the door to that Room to appear, only to face the disappointment of its refusal to materialize.

But, it seems like more and more, flashes of memory are coming back to me. Yesterday, for example, Mark and I went skiing here in Utah for the first time this year. As we rode the lift, images flashed in my mind of when I used to go skiing with my fraternity brothers during college at Big Powderhorn Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: the room where I rented my gear in the lodge; the bunny hill there; the chair lifts; the view from the top; etc. In a sense, these flashes are like smells that waft through the air, savored briefly before they dissipate and disappear.

On Breath

"Traditionally," writes O'Donohue, "the breath was understood as the pathway through which the soul entered the body." He continues:

"[Among other things], the dynamic of breathing also takes in the deep world of prayer and meditation, where through the rhythm of the breath you come down into your own primordial level of soul. Through breath meditation, you begin to experience a place within you that is absolutely intimate with the divine ground. Your breathing and the rhythm of your breathing can return you to your ancient beginning, to the house, as Eckhart [Meister Eckhart] says, that you have never left, where you always live: the house of spiritual belonging."

Meditation is something I have always struggled with. The few times I have tried it, it seemed contrived and artificial. But O'Donohue's comments have provided me with a new way to look at this practice, as have other material I have been reading over the past couple of months. I'm looking forward to putting theory into practice after the holidays when things have settled down a bit in our lives.

Candles for Mark

We met some wonderful people on our cycling trip to Corsica last fall. Among them were Michelle and Malcolm, a couple around our age who are from Washington State but are currently living in Germany. Not that that matters, except it is important for my story - not that they are from Washington but that they are living in Europe.

Michelle, like me, was raised a Catholic. Unlike me, she never felt the need to join the Mormon Church; and her life has been far less complicated as a result. She still struggles, however, in some form or another, with the faith of her youth. And I totally understand that. The faith of our youth holds a special place in our hearts. Like our first love. And as we confront the ugliness and realities of life, even though we know we can't go back to the nursery and believe in the fables of our youth, we still hold a spot of secret comfort in our hearts as we age.

Maybe. 

Anyway, when Michelle heard about Mark's cancer, she embarked on a crusade of sorts. No, that's not the right word. She decided, in her travels around Europe, to light candles in small and large Catholic churches across the continent in remembrance of Mark and the journey he is now on.

How beautiful is that?

Malcolm and Michelle in Corsica

Not that Michelle believes that the Virgin is going to intercede on behalf of Mark. Her offering is far more sacred than that.

I was raised Catholic, like Michelle, but I honestly don't think I've ever lit a candle; though I remember them in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary at a side altar (not the right word), flickering away, in the midst of St. Polycarp's vaulting modernity. Quite a contrast to the churches that Michelle enters on her travels across Europe. And saints were never a big deal to me. And novenas and rosaries and all that other stuff that Catholics are known for.

Which is why I think I connect with what Michelle is doing and think it is so awesomely cool.  (I know I sound a bit like a juvenile, but whatever.) I read on a website that lighting candles is "a way of extending one's prayer and showing solidarity with the person on whose behalf the prayer is offered." To me, it is similar to the thought behind Tibetan prayer flags: the wind catches the flags and releases the prayers, blessing unknown beings throughout the world. 

The difference with a candle is that it is lit as a prayer, as a remembrance, for one specific person. And I think that is even cooler. Not that some saint or even the Virgin is going to reach down and bless Mark - who has a decidedly Lutheran background which I'm not sure the Virgin would entirely approve of. The point is that he is being remembered across the breadth of Europe, or as Michelle put it, from the Chapel of Dachau to the Notre Dame de Paris. 

And what can you do with friends like that except embrace them across the miles and thank them for their offering from the heart. The point is not whether there is actual metaphysical efficacy in such offerings. That doesn't matter. At least not to me, and I suspect to Mark. The point is, that someone on the other side of the globe is thinking of him and is making efforts to go into centuries-old sacred spaces to send a prayer into the universe on behalf of my beloved.

Thank you, Michelle.