Anam Cara Page 15

  Brighid of the mantle encompass us,

  Lady of the Lambs protect us,

  Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us,

  Beneath your mantle, gather us

  And restore us to memory

  Mothers of our mother,

  Foremothers strong,

  Guide our hands in yours

  Remind us how

  To kindle the hearth,

  To keep it bright

  To preserve the flame,

  Your hands upon ours,

  Our hands within yours,

  To kindle the light,

  Both day and night

  The mantle of Brighid about us,

  The memory of Brighid within us,

  The protection of Brighid keeping us

  From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness,

  This day and night,

  From dawn till dark

  From dark to dawn.

  (BY CAITLÍN MATTHEWS)

  This is a fine recognition of the circle of memory holding everything together in a hospitable unity.

  In a positive sense, aging becomes a time for visiting the temple of your memory and integrating your life. Integration is a vital part of coming home to yourself. What is not integrated remains fragmented; sometimes it can come to great conflict within you. The presence and process of integration brings you more fully home to yourself. There is so much that needs to be integrated within each person. Camus said aptly that after one day in the world you could spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement and you would still have dimensions of that day’s experience left to decipher. So much happens to us of which we are unaware even within the simple circle of a day. To visit the temple of memory is not merely to journey back to the past; it is rather to awaken and integrate everything that happens to you. It is part of the process of reflection that gives depth to experience. We all have experiences, but as T. S. Eliot said, we had the experience but missed the meaning. Every human heart seeks meaning; for it is in meaning that our deepest shelter lies. Meaning is the sister of experience, and to discern the meaning of what has happened to you is one of the essential ways of finding your inner belonging and discovering the sheltering presence of your soul. There is an amazing line in the Bible from the prophet Haggai: “You have sown so much but harvested so little.” Everything that happens to you is an act of sowing a seed of experience. It is equally important to be able to harvest that experience.

  SELF-COMPASSION AND THE ART OF INNER HARVESTING

  Old age can be a wonderful time to develop the art of inner harvesting. What does inner harvesting mean? Inner harvesting means that you actually begin to sift the fruits of your experience. You begin to group, select, and integrate them. One of the places where inner harvesting is most vital is in the abandoned areas within your life. Areas of inner neglect and abandonment cry out to you. They are urgent for harvest. Then they can come in out of the false exile of neglect and enter into the temple of belonging, the soul. This is particularly necessary in relation to the things that you have found difficult in your life, things to which you had great resistance. Above all, your inner wounds cry out for healing. There are two ways of doing this. You can do it in an analysis-driven way, where you go back to the wound and open it up again. You take off the protective healing skin that has grown around it. You make it sore, and you make it weep again. A lot of therapy reverses the process of healing. Maybe there is a less intrusive art of attention that you can bring to your wounds. For the soul has its own natural rhythm of healing. Consequently, many of your wounds are very well healed and should not be opened up again. If you want to, you could select a list of your wounds and spend the next thirty years opening them up until eventually you become like Job with your body a mass of sores. If you engage in this practice of woundology, you will turn your soul into a mass of weeping sores. Each of us has a wonderful but precarious freedom in relation to our inner life. We need, therefore, to treat ourselves with great tenderness.

  Part of the wisdom of spiritual soulful self-presence is to be able to let certain aspects of your life alone. This is the art of spiritual noninterference. Yet other aspects of your life call urgently for your attention; they call to you as their shelterer to come and harvest them. You can discern where these wounds are in the temple of memory, then visit them in a gentle and mindful way. The one kind of creative presence you could bring to these areas is compassion. Some people can be very compassionate to others but are exceptionally harsh with themselves. One of the qualities that you can develop, particularly in your older years, is a sense of great compassion for yourself. When you visit the wounds within the temple of memory, you should not blame yourself for making bad mistakes that you greatly regret. Sometimes you have grown unexpectedly through these mistakes. Frequently, in a journey of the soul, the most precious moments are the mistakes. They have brought you to a place that you would otherwise have always avoided. You should bring a compassionate mindfulness to your mistakes and wounds. Endeavor to inhabit again the rhythm you were in at that time. If you visit this configuration of your soul with forgiveness in your heart, it will fall into place itself. When you forgive yourself, the inner wounds begin to heal. You come in out of the exile of hurt into the joy of inner belonging. This art of integration is very precious. You have to trust your deeper, inner voice to know which places you need to visit. This is not to be viewed in a quantitative way, but rather in a gentle, spiritual way. If you bring that kind light to your soul and to its wounded places, you can effect incredible inner healing.

  TO KEEP SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IN YOUR HEART

  The soul is the natural shelter around your life. If, during your life, you have not continually scraped away this shelter, your soul will now gather around you to mind you. To approach your soul and memory with neon analysis can be very destructive, especially in the vulnerability of your old age. You should let your soul be natural. From this perspective old age can be a vulnerable time. Many people, as they age, get very worried and anxious. It is precisely when times are difficult and you are vulnerable that you really have to mind yourself. I love Blaise Pascal’s idea that in a difficult time, you should always keep something beautiful in your heart. Perhaps, as a poet said, it is beauty that will save us in the end.

  How you view your future actually shapes it. In other words, expectation helps create the future. Many of our troubles do not belong to us. They are troubles we draw upon ourselves through our gloomy attitude. There is a friend of mine from Cork who lived near an old woman named Mary who had a notoriously negative and gloomy outlook on everything. She always had the “bad word.” A neighbor met her one beautiful May morning. The sun was shining, flowers were out, and nature looked as if it wanted to dance. He said to her, “God, isn’t it a beautiful morning, Mary.” She replied, “I know sure, but what about tomorrow?” She was not able to enjoy the actual presence of beauty around her because she was already troubled by how awful tomorrow was going to be. Troubles are not just constellations of the soul or consciousness; frequently, they actually assume a spirit form. Perhaps there are little crowds of miseries flying along through the air. Then they look down and see you gloomy and miserable. They imagine if they come down they might be able to lodge for a week or a few months or even a year. If you let your own natural shelter down, these miseries can come in and take up tenancy in different places in your mind. The longer you leave them there, the harder it will be to evict them in the end. Natural wisdom seems to suggest that the way you are toward your life is the way that your life will be toward you. To have an attitude that is compassionate and hopeful brings home to you the things you really need.

  Old age is a time of second innocence. There is the first innocence when we are children; but that innocence is based on naive trust and ignorance. The second innocence comes later in your life, when you have lived deeply. You know the bleakness of life, you know its incredible capacity to disappoint and sometimes destroy. Yet notwithstanding that realist
ic recognition of life’s negative potential, you still maintain an outlook that is wholesome and hopeful and bright. That is a kind of second innocence. It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there. That light is innocent; it is not inexperienced but rather is innocent in its trust in the good and the true and the beautiful. Such a gaze from an old face is a kind of blessing. You feel good and wholesome in that kind of company.

  THE BRIGHT FIELD

  One of the most destructive negative attitudes toward one’s past or toward one’s memory is the attitude of regret. Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was. Edith Piaf’s song “Je ne regrette rien” is wonderful in its free and wild acceptance.

  I know a wild woman who has lived a very unprotected life. She has had a lot of trouble, and things have often gone wrong for her. I remember that she said to me one time, “I don’t regret a bit of it. It is my life, and in everything negative that happened to me, there was always something bright hidden.” She brought a lovely integrating perspective to her past, a way to retrieve treasures that were hidden in past difficulties. Sometimes difficulty is the greatest friend of the soul. There is a beautiful poem by the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas about looking back on life feeling, maybe, that you missed something or that you regret something that you did not do. It is called “The Bright Field”:

  I have seen the light break through

  to illuminate a small field

  for a while and gone my way

  and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

  of great prize, the one field that had

  the treasure in it. I realize now

  that I must give all that I have

  to possess it. Life is not hurrying

  on to a receding future nor hankering after

  an imagined past. It is the turning

  aside like Moses to the miracle

  of the lit bush. To a brightness

  that seems as transitory as your youth

  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

  At the heart of R. S. Thomas’s beautiful poem is a Celtic idea of time. Your time is not just past or future. Your time here always inhabits the circle of your soul. All your time is gathered, and even your future time is waiting here for you. In a certain sense your past is not gone but rather is hidden in your memory. Your time is the deeper seed of the eternity that is waiting to welcome you.

  THE PASSIONATE HEART NEVER AGES

  Often old people have a touching mellowness about them. Age is not dependent on chronological time. Age is more related to a person’s temperament. I know some young people who are about eighteen or twenty that are so serious, grave, and gloomy that they sound like ninety-year-olds. Conversely, I know some very old people who have hearts full of roguery, devilment, and fun; there is a sparkle in their presence. When you meet them, you have a sense of light, lightness, and gaiety. Sometimes in very old bodies there are incredibly young, wild souls looking out at you. It is so invigorating to meet a wild old person who has remained faithful to their wild life force. Meister Eckhart said that, too, in a more formal way: There is a place in the soul that is eternal. He says time makes you old, but that there is a place in the soul that time cannot touch. It is a lovely thing to know this about yourself. Even though time will inscribe your face, weaken your limbs, make your movements slower, and, finally, empty your life, nevertheless there is still a place in your spirit that time can never get near. You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one will ever be able to take away from you. Put more formally, this is a way of inhabiting the eternal side of your life. It would be sad on your one journey through life to miss out on this eternal presence around you and within you.

  When you are young you have a great intensity and sense of adventure. You want to do everything. You want it all, and you want it now. Your young life is usually not a time for reflection. That is why Goethe said that youth is wasted on the young. You are going in all directions, and you are not sure of your way. A neighbor of mine has a lot of difficulty with alcohol. The nearest pub is in the next town. If he wanted to get a ride to the pub, he would have to go to the next village, which lies in the opposite direction. My brother passed this man on the road one evening. He stopped the car to give him a ride. But he refused, saying, “Even though I’m walking this way I’m going the other way.” Many people today are walking one way, but their lives are going in the other direction. Old age offers the opportunity to integrate and bring together the multiplicity of directions that you have traveled. It is a time when you can bring the circle of your life together to where your longing can be awakened and new possibilities can come alive for you.

  THE FIRE OF LONGING

  Modern society is based on an ideology of strength and image. Consequently, old people are often sidelined. Modern culture is totally obsessed with externality, image, speed, and change; it is driven. In former times, old people were seen as those who had the greatest wisdom. There was always reverence and respect for the elders. Old people still have the fires of longing burning brightly and beautifully within their hearts. Our idea of beauty is impoverished now because beauty is reduced to good looks. There is a whole cult of youthfulness where everyone is trying to look youthful; people have face-lifts and try endless methods to keep the image of youth. But this is not beauty at all. Real beauty is a light that comes from the soul. Sometimes in an old face, you see that light coming from behind the lines; it is a vision of the most poignant beauty. That passion and longing are beautifully expressed in Yeats’s poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus”:

  I went out to the hazel wood,

  Because a fire was in my head,

  And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

  And hooked a berry to a thread.

  And when white moths were on the wing

  And moth-like stars were flickering out,

  I dropped the berry in a stream

  And caught a little silver trout.

  When I had laid it on the floor

  I went to blow the fire aflame,

  But something rustled on the floor,

  And some one called me by my name.

  It had become a glimmering girl

  With apple blossom in her hair

  Who called me by my name and ran

  And faded through the brightening air.

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands;

  And walk among long dappled grass,

  And pluck till time and times are done

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun.

  AGING: AN INVITATION TO NEW SOLITUDE

  The new solitude in your life can make the prospect of aging frightening. A new quietness settles on the outer frame of your active life, on the work that you have done, the family that you have raised, and the role that you have played. Your life takes on a greater stillness and solitude. These facts need not be frightening. If you view them creatively, your new stillness and solitude can be wonderful gifts and great resources for you. Time and again, we miss out on the great treasures in our lives because we are so restless. In our minds we are always elsewhere. We are seldom in the place where we stand and in the time that is now. Many people are haunted by the past, things that they have not done, things that they should have done that they regret not doing. They are prisoners of their past. Other people are haunted by the future; they are anxious and worried about what is coming.

  Few people are actually able to inhabit their present time because they are too stressed and rushed. One of the joys of aging is that you have more time to be still. Pascal said that many of our major problems derive from our inability to sit still in a room. Stillness
is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all. Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And to know the place for the first time.

  LONELINESS: THE KEY TO COURAGE

  When you are too familiar with who you are, you have become in fact a real stranger to yourself. As you age, you will have more space to become acquainted with yourself. This solitude can take the form of loneliness, and as you age you can become very lonely. Loneliness is exceptionally difficult. A friend who was living in Germany told me of his battle with homesickness. He found the temperament, the order, the structures, and the externality of Germany very difficult. He had the flu during the winter, and the loneliness he had repressed came out to haunt him. He got desperately lonely, but instead of avoiding it, he decided to allow the loneliness to have its way. He sat down in the armchair and gave himself permission to feel as lonely as he wanted. As soon as he gave that invitation to his soul, the loneliness just poured through him. He felt like the most abandoned orphan in the cosmos. He cried and cried. In a way, he was crying for all the loneliness in his life that he had kept hidden. Though this was painful, it was a wonderful experience for him. When he let the loneliness flow, let the dam burst within, something shifted in his relation to his own loneliness. He was never again lonely in Germany. He became free once he had met the depth of his own loneliness, engaged and befriended it. It became a natural part of his life. An old friend of mine in Connemara said one evening as we were talking about loneliness, “Is poll dubh dóite é an t-uaigness, ach má dhú-nann tú suas é, dúnfaidh tú amach go leor eile atá go h-álainn chomh maith”—that is, “Loneliness is a black burnt hole, but if you close it up, you close out so much that can be so beautiful for you as well.” There is no need for us to be afraid of that loneliness. If we engage it, it can bring us new freedom.