Poems I Journey With 4

W.B.Yeats, surely one of the greatest poets of all time who wrote in the English language, offers me so much artistic, literary, and dare I say it, spiritual sustenance, that my volumes of his poems are always well thumbed.  Therefore, let me offer the reader another of my favourites from his pen, here.  It is called, aptly enough, "The Long-Legged Fly."  There is something at once beautiful and somewhat gauche about the title as "long-legged" applied to any species suggests a certain ungainliness and a definite awkwardness in the first place. And yet the poem suggests a certain transcendent grace that builds its myth upon lowly nature; a certain extraordinary beauty that transcends the ordinary quotidian experience of life.

Long-Legged Fly

That civilization may not sink,

Its great battle lost,

Quiet the dog, tether the pony

To a distant post;

Our master Caesar is in the tent

Where the maps are spread,

His eyes fixed upon nothing,

A hand upon his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

She thinks, part woman, three parts child,

That nobody looks:

Her feet practise a tinker shuffle,

Picked up upon a street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence. 

That girls at puberty may find

The first Adam in their thought,

Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,

Keep those children out.

There on the scaffolding resides

Michael Angelo.

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

Commentary

Something as beautiful as this poem simple defies commentary, and in so doing I am, in a sense being somewhat sacrilegious in attempting, as it were, to nail down the "sacred" experience of these well-crafted lines in more mundane words.  Despite that caveat, I shall try to express here, at least what this poem means to me, one solitary reader.  I love the scientific, very unpoetical term, a word, naturally enough, avoided by Yeats, namely "dolichopodidae" that describes that most cosmopolitan of fly families, namely that of the "two-legged flies." Apparently there are about 7,000 species of these flies at a conservative count.

When I read a poem I don't necessarily go in search for an exact meaning, for such an intention, to my mind, is sacrilegious.  In other words, I search for connotations more than denotations.  I have learnt to let a poem suggest meanings, obviously not outlandish and impossible ones, but rather more possible ones and as many of them as is reasonable.  In a sense, obviously, we will never know exactly what was in  the poet's mind when he wrote the poem, but we can make an educated guess anyway.

The refrain which marks the ending of each stanza is an amazingly powerful chorus that suggests the power of human reflection, awareness, concentration, meditation or contemplation from whose seeds all of civilization emerged.  It suggests that through this self-reflective power civilization emerges and is greater than the individual parts that go to make it up. Civilization and all its cultures transcend the individual.

Western monasticism and Eastern practices of Buddhism have always rated silence highly because silence is, as it were, the seedbed of creativity and wisdom.  Silence is also the seedbed of genius.  In the first stanza we meet the great Julius Caesar sitting in his tent looking into the distance, obviously pondering, with his eyes "fixed upon nothing."  In silence, he is obviously contemplating what he and his troops have as a goal.  The Romans were great conquerors, great men of action and one of the great builders of Western civilization.  Caesar needs to enter the realm of silence to garner inspiration for his conquests, to tap into his vision of future possibilities:

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence. 

In the second stanza we encounter the great Helen of Troy. Obviously, her beauty is directly conjured up in our minds by the lines:

That the topless towers be burnt

And men recall that face,

Move most gently if move you must

In this lonely place.

These lines remind us of the lines from Christopher Marlowe's play, Doctor Faustus, especially these lines put in Faustus's mouth by the playwright:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium -

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Helen is the very essence of beauty, a beauty so natural and so rhythmic that she captures its quintessence in the gorgeous peasant girl that dances so lithely in the streets. Through her, Yeats seems to be arguing that all beauty is made possible as she is its symbol or emblem in Greek civilization.  The Greeks, obviously, with the Romans were the two great builders of Western civilization. In this sense, we may say that the first stanza is essentially about politics/military affairs, which lie at the physical foundations of civilization, while the second stanza is about aesthetics and the innocence of pure alluring beauty which is also another source of the creative spark that set civilization alight.  One could also maintain that this second stanza highlights or underscores the power of creativity in the realm of mythology.  

In the last stanza, Yeats contemplates the spark of genius that inspired one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance period, one Michel Angelo, whom he calls Michael Angelo here in this poem.  It is, as it were, the "Arts" stanza as it describes the painting of the Sistine Chapel.   To put it rather bluntly the poet's wish "That girls at puberty may find the first Adam in their thoughts" suggests that the power of Michel Angelo's depiction of the naked male form may entice them to have children.

Once again, genius thrives in silence and peace:

With no more sound than the mice make

His hand moves to and fro.

Each of the three characters, one in each stanza, viz., Julius Caesar, Helen of Troy and Michel Angelo achieve transcendence, or an elevation to a higher plane, or a going beyond this physical world just as the long-legged fly defies gravity as it walks across the water.  Let us note here that the imagery in the last two lines, which function like a chorus from a song, is simply beautiful and so gently put because the long-legged fly can move across the surface of the water effortlessly, without disturbing it in the same way, as it were, that the genius of Caesar, Helen or Michel Angelo can move creatively from one idea to the next.

Michel Angelo, like Helen and Caesar, is inspired by a vision beyond him, some transcendent pull, as it were.  Aristotle called such a pull, a "telos."*

*A telos (from the Greek τέλος for "end", "purpose", or "goal") is an end or purpose, in a fairly constrained sense used by philosophers such as Aristotle. It is the root of the term "teleology," roughly the study of purposiveness, or the study of objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or intentions.  See WIKI here.

Thoughts on the Tao Te ching 25

Poem 25

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,

I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,

inside and outside, and returns

to the origin of all things.

The Tao is great.

The universe is great.

Earth is great.

Man is great.

These are the four great powers.

Man follows the earth.

Earth follows the universe.

The universe follows the Tao.

The Tao follows only itself.

Commentary

Who knows what came before the beginning of the universe?  In these big questions theoretical physics, philosophical theology and spirituality-meditation are paradoxically similar or parallel.  In psalm 110 we read:

A prince from the day of your birth 

on the holy mountains;
from the womb before the dawn I begot you.

According to Christian tradition this psalm foretells the birth of Jesus which, according to the psalmist, was preordained from before the beginning of the universe or from before the initiation of time.  In other words, this psalm like the Taoist poem attempts to describe the mystery of the origins of the universe.  The Taoism poet puts it in equally paradoxical and poetic terms:

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

Alexander Vilenkin contends that the Big Bang wasn't a one-off event, but merely one of a series of big bangs creating an endless number of bubble universes.  In this model, there is neither a single Big Bang nor a single beginning.  Instead the universe continually goes through oscillating cycles of expansion, contraction, collapse and expansion anew. (See HERE) 

Of the above three accounts, one could contend that The Taoist poet offers us a Taoist take or Taoist myth of creation; that the Biblical author offers us a Jewish take or Jewish myth of creation and finally that Alexander Vilenkin offers us a scientific take or scientific myth of creation.  Here, obviously, I am using myth in a particular sense and certainly not in its usual sense of an unfounded or false notion or contention.  I am using the word "myth" in the sense that humankind always needs to propose a meaning and an explanation for the existence of the world in which he lives as well as a meaning for his own life.  Fair enough, the first two accounts may be pre-scientific, allegorical or metaphorical or even literal efforts at explaining existence in ancient times - however, they are legitimate efforts even if somewhat fanciful.  I use the term "scientific myth" in a similar way, that is, as a modern presentation of the meaning and significance of life in the twenty-first century which will itself appear more than a little pre-scientific to thirtieth century humankind.  Myth for me represents any valid and authentic attempt at explaining the meaning of life in any particular culture at any particular time, in any particular context.  Now re-read the first stanza of our Taoist poem above. 

There was something formless and perfect

before the universe was born.

It is serene. Empty.

Solitary. Unchanging.

Infinite. Eternally present.

It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

One of the best attempts to link theoretical physics and spirituality/meditation is surely that of Dr Fritjof Capra's classic The Tao of Physics (1975) wherein Dr Capra argued that Theoretical Physics could be reconciled with Eastern Mysticism.  Near the end of this book, the author summed up his motivation in the following words: "Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but man needs both."

The interpretation of a literary text is a complex process that involves much learning and not a little intuition.  A good reader of a text is aware of its many layers: literal, allegorical, metaphorical, poetic, aesthetic, historical, linguistic and structural and so on and so forth.  It is when the reader insists on reading the text at any one level solely that problems emerge.  As we have seen from the recent horrific massacres wrought by a fundamentalism of one kind, literalism can lead to sheer terrorism. Needless to say, fundamentalism in "-isms" of all kinds from fascism to communism to scientism can and will lead to the same bloody conclusion.

Finally, let us read the above poem reflectively letting a word or phrase suggest itself to us as a mantra for a five or ten minutes reflection.

Namaste, friends. 

Journal of a Soul 47

The Validity of Experience 2

1. Psychology and Psychotherapy: 

Self recently in Santry Wood

If modernity (or post-modernity even)  means anything, then the quest for personal identity is at its heart.  One could argue that this quest lies at the very core of Western philosophy, and indeed Western religions.  In that modern search for self, psychology and psychotherapy are foundational.  I discussed psychotherapy in the immediately preceding post to this one. Psychology, which chronologically preceded psychotherapy, is commonly defined as the science of behaviour and the mental processes which instigate that behaviour.  The year 1879 is commonly seen as the start of psychology as an independent field of study, because in that year German scientist Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig, Germany.

Wundt combined philosophical introspection with techniques and laboratory apparatuses brought over from his earlier physiological studies as well as many of his own design. This experimental introspection was in contrast to what had been called psychology until then, a branch of philosophy where people introspected themselves.  In other words, Wundt was taking human experience seriously, or using empirical data, and was, then and only then, reflecting upon those experiences through introspection.  Before this psychology was a a mere branch of philosophy where people examined their minds through introspection, or through looking within.  This process, while legitimate, was merely speculative and not based on concrete empirical or experiential data.

2. Religion and Theology

The problem with reason or rationality is that it is just that, the working out in a methodical or logically rigorous way our thoughts on X, Y or Z subject, oftentimes with little reference to the whole gamut of human experience in its broadest sense.  We are not merely rational beings - we are human beings with all that incorporates: social, ethical, moral, religious/spiritual, musical and artistic dimensions and so on.  Here, one could say, that we are talking about human beings as essentially cultural beings.  I quite like the WIKI definition of culture, which is worth reproducing in its entirety here:

In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings:

1. the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and
2. the distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. (See HERE)

Within that broader cultural context outlined above lies everything that marks out human beings as different from their animal brothers and sisters (to use terminology much loved by St Francis). Here I wish particularly to talk about the human experience of the numinous or the divine or the spiritual in the lives of human beings.  It is simply incontrovertible that human beings have religious experiences.  One would want to be living in a cocoon not to be aware of that.  What is this phenomenon anyway? What are religious experiences? Here, one can study the anthropology of religion, the sociology of religion, comparative religions, philosophy of religion and indeed theology itself to explore what this may be.

In the above paragraph, I referred to what is termed the numinous. Quite simply this impressive word is an English adjective, taken from the Latin word "numen", and is used by some to describe the power or presence of a divinity or a God or a Spirit or a Power that is both beyond and within us, a reality that sustains us and everything in the universe.  The Latin word "numen" means a "divine presence."

The word was popularised in the early twentieth century by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential book Das Heilige (1917; translated into English as The Idea of the Holy, 1923).  The phrase from this book which this writer remembers from his theological studies in the late 1970s are the Latin words: "Mysterium tremendum et fascinans" that translates as "terrifying and fascinating Mystery."  In other words, that is a mystery before which we both tremble and are fascinated; before which we are both repelled and attracted. Thus, God can appear both as wrathful or awe inspiring.

Interestingly, and quite appropriately for my purposes in this post, the numinous experience as described by Rudolf Otto also has a personal quality, insofar as the person experiences a closeness to, or a communion with the wholly other. That people constantly report that they have personal experiences of such closeness to the divine is also a given in most if not all cultures.  As a phenomenon, religious experiences simply cannot be written off as delusions, though there are many who would do so from a narrow rationalist viewpoint.  However, it is the adjective "narrow" that I underscore here.  Our rationality is merely a small, albeit significant, part of our wider experiences as human beings.

3. Discovering Shared Reality as a Ground for Religious Experience

In this section, here, dear readers, I am going to use some of my teaching experiences with adolescent boys with Asperger's Syndrome. These boys lie on what is termed the ASD spectrum where ASD stands for Autistic Syndrome Disorder.  Put in its simplest terms (at the risk of oversimplifying things, admittedly) let's say that these boys live to varying degrees in their own world.  The more autistic of them are, shall we say, more lost in their own worlds than the less autistic.  When I am teaching them (always in small groups of about 4 to 6 students) social education and communication skills I draw a simple diagram on the board of a series of little circles around a round table (my table in my classroom is actually circular) where each circle with the individual pupil's initials represents the individuals in the room.  I include my own initials in one of the circles and also that of the Special Needs Assistant in another.  The middle circle or table I tell them is common shared reality. Reality, I tell them is the commonly shared experiences of all of the individuals present.  All the while, when the students are sharing their experiences on whatever topic we are discussing, I as teacher or facilitator constantly challenge them to stay in "the world of shared reality" and attempt in as far as possible to prevent them from escaping into the more surreal landscape of their own isolated minds.  I have several students who, no matter what we are discussing, will reduce any and every conversation to their own narrow interests.  In other words, in common parlance, the teacher's task is actually to "keep it real!"

Link with Religious Experiences

The wonder of the simple Honey Bee!

It has long been my considered opinion that religions do tend to attract the "lunatic fringe." Now, I am casting no judgement here - this is a mere objective statement.  These people have one psychiatric or neurological complaint or another.  And the world (or church), in the words of St Augustine, must, at its best, be a hospital which offers healing to all.  Now, this is where we come to "shared reality."  When you or I have a "religious experience" we must check that experience against the shared reality of the believing community.  This has always been a sound theological principle, that is, that individuals must confirm their personal experiences with those of others, especially with those of others in their community. Otherwise, they run the risk of being looked on as belonging to the "lunatic fringe", or, at least, being somewhat deluded. (At its most extreme, unchecked and non-validated religious experiences end up being cult-like and a grave distortion of the truth.)

There is much that I want to write about religious experience in these posts, but because it is such an almost indescribable reality, I am singularly lost for words.  So, please excuse the lack of overall structure in what I am writing here.  I am, dear readers, struggling here to get across what I have experienced as "real," as "spiritual" or "religious," having checked them out through reading, research, and discussion with others.  The biggest thing I have learnt ever is not to rush to judgement, to take a Socratic approach of admitting one's ignorance before searching for the truth of the question in discussion.  In other words be open-minded and broaden the picture out.

Tentative Conclusion

As this post is about the validity of experience, let me finish with one or two of my own spiritual experiences. In the Easter period of 2002 I went to visit my cousin P. in Boston.  P. was always (and still is) one of my dearest friends.  He is now an addiction counsellor employed by the State and has a beautiful wife and a lovely little daughter.  He himself suffers from two addictions - gambling and alcoholism.  Obviously, he is more than coping with this double-addiction, allied to a third complaint of being Bipolar, as he is a very successful and much sought-after addiction counsellor.  P. is a living example of "the wounded healer" and is carrying three heavy crosses to use a religious metaphor. As a boy he was a wonderful young lad with a great sensitivity in his soul.  Anyway, P. invited me to an A.A. meeting, which he was chairing, as his guest.  That evening I was deeply moved.  I sat and listened to what could only be called the deep truths issuing forth from the souls of other human beings.  The A.A. is such a super organization, the first and foremost self-help group ever.  There were so many wounded souls there healing and supporting each other. The experience of that meeting was a deep and profoundly moving experience for me.  I can safely and most assuredly call it a spiritual experience.  Here we had individuals sharing a common spiritual reality.  All recovering alcoholics speak about having to admit that they are not in control of their lives and of having to hand over control to a greater and higher power who alone can lead them onward through their own personal wilderness.  I know, I went home a changed and more chastened man that evening. Now psychologists or social psychologists might describe this experience in different, more objective terms, but, but, but... and, dear readers, it is a big but and a long but... we always have to return to what the experience is for the individual.  Standing outside an experience and trying to objectify it may, in fact, be somewhat distorting of the truth of the experience.  Here, is perhaps, where the principles of phenomenology come in - I hope to discuss in more detail the phenomenological basis of religious experiences in upcoming posts if I can get my mind around this great and mysterious subject. 

To finish this post let me describe another spiritual experience I shared with my dear friend and cousin P.  One day he said to me: "Let's go down to New York and visit Ground Zero."  I deeply wished to go as I knew that we would be literally going on a pilgrimage.  As we travelled down in P's pick up truck we talked of old times growing up in the small town of Roscrea, Co.Tipperary, Ireland.  When we got to Ground Zero, we knew, as all knew, that we were standing on sacred ground where thousands of wonderful human beings had perished. We spent hours reading all the various posters and tributes to the dead and perusing with tearful eyes their pictures.  This experience still remains etched on my heart and soul.  I have to call this a religious or spiritual experience because, literally, it was so.  No amount of analysis can pin point the depths of that experience.

And so the turn to experience is very important indeed in all areas of human endeavour.  It is my hope that I will be able to trace its deep undercurrents in forthcoming posts.

Journal of a Soul 38

A Passion for Equality

Frederick Douglass, around 1874

There are few things that move us as much as good oratory, and indeed we would go almost anywhere to hear a good orator speak.  The orators that come immediately to my own mind are, of course, luminaries such as Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, William Jefferson Clinton, Nelson Mandela and, of course, Barak Obama.  I would go anywhere to here them speak.  Indeed, I had the privilege to hear Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama here in Dublin when they visited our great city over the last ten or so years.  Needless to say, I was truly moved.  To add a few females to this list Hillary Rodham Clinton springs immediately to mind as does Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  I have heard these two prominent international figures speak on our media outlets and can truly say they are accomplished public speakers. Our own two former presidents, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese are also superb orators. You, no doubt can add your own favourites to this list.

Orators are never better than when they are speaking on the great issues of supreme human interest, namely human and civil rights, and about issues of the equality of all human beings no matter what their religion, race or colour. Words, coupled with passion and conviction can and do ring true.  However, we are not interested in hearing mere words, no matter how passionate, unless we know they are also coupled with deeds.  Otherwise, they ring exceedingly hollow. When we listen to great passionate speakers and know that they not alone believe what they say, but that they also do what they say we are truly moved, and moved in such a way as to do something positive or to work for a better world in our immediate surroundings.  We are here right at the heart of what it means to "do the truth", "to live the truth" or what is fundamentally meant by PRAXIS. And so hypocrisy is often immediately clear to an astute and sensitive listener.  We are right to turn away from such bogus oratory and mere rhetoric.  

I write about oratory, real oratory in that sense of linking in with the passion for justice which the speaker evokes in our hearts.  Obviously, good speakers can also evoke hatred in the hearts of his listeners as did the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, but they were mere manipulators of base emotions, not evokers of a passion for justice and truth.  Real orators touch us deeply at a centre of truth, at a centre of compassion, not at a centre of base emotions like hatred and greed, power and conquest.  Sophistry, of course, is even worse, as it is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 -1865) said much and did much, but his was never an idle or thoughtless oratory - no, it was oratory in the true sense that I have adumbrated above - his words came from his heart and from how he lived his life on a daily basis, with a conviction always to do his best and to follow the light of his conscience. I like the following words from this great man:

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Or take the words of our own Irish Catholic Liberator, Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847): "Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."

Abe Lincoln

What put these thoughts on real oratory into my head was reading an article in a recent edition of The Irish Times on the great American orator Frederick Douglass (1818? - 1895), who has links with both Lincoln and O'Connell. The journalist Barry Roche recently wrote an interesting and illuminating article on Douglas in the Irish Times: Douglass was honoured in Waterford some days ago when a plaque was unveiled to mark a speech he gave in the city during a lecture tour of Ireland in 1845.   While here, the great orator met and befriended our great Catholic Liberator, and it appears that O'Connell influenced Douglass greatly especially with respect to the non-violent achievement of freedom for human beings of all colours and creeds.  Barry Roche quotes him in the above linked article, and it is worth re-quoting in full here:

“I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult,” he later wrote in My Bondage and My Freedom

President Obama has said that Douglass' Irish experience "defined him not as a colour but as a man."

Our Workaday World

Daniel O'Connell

All of the above is not worth a curse, unless it influences how I live and work on a daily basis, how I treat others, how welcoming I am of all the differences I meet in them. I am tasked as a Resource Teacher with treating all students, no matter what their ability, with equal dignity and respect.  Today, thankfully and wonderfully, indeed, Ireland is no longer mono-cultural or monochrome. Thankfully and wonderfully, it is multicultural and technicolour. Our country has been enriched by the influx of people of many nations since the growth and decline of the Celtic Tiger years.  This is a powerful cultural legacy which will serve only to enrich and strengthen our traditions.  There is much unity in diversity.  Their is no little discovery of what makes us different as Irish and what makes us all the same no matter what the colour of our skin or the shades of our beliefs are.  We need great orators in the sense that I have described them to inspire us to cherish and protect all life, human, animal and vegetable.  When the great orators of the future speak, and speak they must, their topics will be broader than human rights and human dignity.  Their subject will be, I believe, the very survival of our planet.  But that, alas, is a topic for another post.  Let us, in the meantime, ponder the words of the great orators of today and yesteryear and be inspired to work for justice in the world and the equality of all.

Journal of a Soul 27

Facing Death

Ireland's Eye from Baldoyle

Those who live close to nature learn its mysteries with a certain ease that is always foreign to us city dwellers.  That is why I love travelling back to the county where my father was born and lived for more than half his life.  He truly shared in that country wisdom.   Likewise, do the simple country people of Calabria where I have been holidaying for some recent summers.  Tribes and more primitive peoples also share in such simple wisdom.  Modern sophisticated humankind, which works so much from the neo-cortex, has almost forgotten what it is like to live close to nature and its cycles. Often, alas, we moderns only meet nature when it interrupts our plans through the natural evils of tornadoes, snow blizzards, floods and so on.  Indeed, we have learned of late that much of the natural disasters are caused by man-made pollution to our atmosphere.  Alas, we moderns have done so much learned thinking about the world that we have quite forgotten that we are part of it, too.  We are creatures, albeit self-conscious, but creatures nonetheless of the world, in which we live, move and have our being.

Be that as it may, what I want to write about here is the last few hours of my mother’s life.  That frail life is slowly but surely leaking away now at the grand old age of 96. My brother Pat and I have been called home from holiday to await her passing from this world.  And yet, with all the knowledge we have gained about what it means to be human, we have never really bettered the ways of coping and dealing with dying and death than the many religious traditions of the world have put at our disposal.  The community comes around and ritualises the passing of this person from our presence.  As a philosopher, I would like to believe that I am open enough to allow all creeds the dignity of their individual beliefs.  Dying and death, and indeed how we deal with them, are not matters of pure science that can rule as to what is the true and right way to celebrate the meaning of a life that has passed or indeed rule upon the belief of a life to come.  Comforting ourselves in our lonely grief is quite fittingly the province of faith, religion and indeed of the imagination, and it is my considered conviction that both faith and religion belong firmly within the ambit of the intricate mystery of the imagination.  It is not, therefore, a question of whether the next life exists or not or of whether it can be proved one way or another. It is simply not a question that falls within the province of science at all.  It is one that falls within the ambit of the psychology and sociology of religion and within humanity’s many learnt ways of coping with its crises.  These are the factors that such trenchant atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins and Denneth leave out of the picture.  Their arguments are good and valid, but only good and valid within the narrow parameters of a delimiting and dehumanising science, in effect within the confines of a sheer scientism.

My mother and I about five years ago

The imagination is a wonderful faculty which leads us individually and collectively into mysteries which the rational or cognitive faculties of the mind cannot fathom – great works of music, wonderful pieces of art, marvellous buildings and bridges and so on.  Over 100 years ago the great John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out that even scientists had to use their imagination as well as their cognitive or rational faculties in bringing their discoveries and inventions into the world. The imagination of a culture is a rich world that cannot be reduced to the parameters of any science.  We meaning-making creatures need our beliefs, no matter what their standing in a purely cognitive or logical sense. The brain, and the mind which resides principally though perhaps not entirely there, and even the soul which some believe lives mysteriously there, too, are all more than just firings on and off of various neurons.  Yes, they may be that, but not just that.  We humans are more.  And it is in the quest to find out what the “more” in us is that all true inquiry lies.

And so, as my mother’s life leaks out, I am in many ways diminished.  The womb that begot me is no more.  That was the human animal womb.  Was there or is there, as the great psalmist David put it, a womb before the dawn that begot us all?  Our questions are legion, our feelings confused, perhaps numbed.  The existentialists are right.  Death makes dust of both our individual achievements and dreams.  However, it cannot reduce to ashes the memory of the collectivity, the shared emotions and feelings of the race, the drive to meaning within any culture. In times like this, all I can do is take refuge in the wisdom of the culture which begot me.  Rest in peace, Mary Quinlan.  I hope I will live the remainder of my life with the courage and determination to see no task left undone as you did! Your task is finished – a job well done!    Consummatus est! I will miss you sorely!