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  Love is also a force of light and nurture that liberates you to inhabit to the full your own difference. There should be no imitation of each other; no need to be defensive or protective in each other’s presence. Love should encourage and free you fully into your full potential.

  In order to preserve your own difference in love, you need plenty of room for your soul. It is interesting that in Hebrew one of the original words for salvation is also the word for space. If you were born on a farm, you realize that space is vital, especially when you are sowing something. If you plant two trees side by side, they will smother each other. That which grows needs space. Kahlil Gibran says, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness. Let the winds of the heavens dance between you.” Space allows your otherness to find its own rhythm and contour. Yeats speaks of “a little space for the rose breath to fill.” One of the lovely areas of love where space can be rendered beautiful is when two people make love. The one you love is the one to whom you can bring the full array and possibility and delight of your senses in the knowledge that they will be received in welcome and tenderness. Since the body is in the soul, the body is illuminated all around with soul-light. It is suffused with a gentle, sacred light. Making love with someone should not be merely a physical or mechanical release. It should engage the spiritual depth that awakens when you enter the soul of another person.

  The soul of a person is most intimate. You meet a person’s soul before you meet that person’s body. When you meet soul and body as one, you enter the world of the Other. If a person could bring a gentle and reverent recognition to the depth and beauty of that encounter, it would extend incredible possibilities of delight and ecstasy within lovemaking. It would free in both people this inner wellspring of deeper love. It would reunite them externally with this third force of light, the ancient circle, that actually brings the two souls together in the first place.

  THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE SENSES

  The mystics are among the most trustable in this area of sensuous love, and they have a lovely theology of the sensuous implicit in their writings. The mystics never preach a denial of the senses, rather they speak of the transfiguration of the senses. They recognize that there is a certain gravity or darkness in Eros that can sometimes predominate. The light of the soul can transfigure this tendency and bring balance and poise. The beauty of such mystical reflection on Eros reminds us that Eros is ultimately the energy of divine creativity. In the transfiguration of the sensuous, the wildness of eros and the playfulness of the soul come into lyrical rhythm.

  Modern Ireland has had a complex and painful journey toward the recognition and acceptance of Eros. In the old Irish tradition, there was a wonderfully vibrant acknowledgment of the power of Eros and erotic love. This finds expression in one of the most interesting poems from that era, a poem by Brian Merriman called “Cúirt an Mheáin Oidhce” or “The Midnight Court.” Written in the eighteenth century, much of this poem is given from the perspective of a woman. It is a radically free, feminist perception. The woman’s voice speaks:

  Amn’t I plump and sound as a bell,

  Lips for kissing, and teeth for smiling,

  Blossomy skin and forehead shining,

  My eyes are blue and my hair is thick

  and coils and streams about my neck;

  A man who’s looking for a wife

  Here’s a face that will keep for life;

  Hand and arm and neck and breast

  Each is better than the rest;

  Look at that waist! My legs are long

  Limber as willows and light and strong.

  (TRANS. BY FRANK O’CONNOR)

  This very long poem is a ribald celebration of the erotic. There is no intrusion of the frequently negative language of morality, which tries to separate sexuality into pure and impure. It is redundant in any case to use such words about clay creatures. How could you possibly have such purity in a clay creature? A clay creature is always a mixture of light and darkness. The beauty of Eros is its passionate thresholds where light and darkness meet within the person. We need to reimagine God as the energy of transfigurative Eros, the source from which all creativity flows.

  Pablo Neruda has written some of the most beautiful love lines. He says, “I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, / dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. / I want / to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees.” This thought is so beautiful; it shows that love is also the awakening of springtime in the clay part of the heart. Yeats, too, wrote some inspiring lines of love poetry, such as “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you / and loved the sorrows of your changing face.” These poems show a recognition of the special depth and presence within the beloved. Love helps you to see the Other in his or her own unique and special nature.

  THE WOUNDED GIFT

  One of the great powers of love is balance; it helps us move toward transfiguration. When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them. They also come to each other not with empty hands, but with hands full of gifts for each other. Often these are wounded gifts; this awakens the dimension of healing within love. When you really love someone, you shine the light of your soul on the beloved. We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth. If you look at flowers early on a spring morning, they are all closed. When the light of the sun catches them, they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.

  When you love someone who is very hurt, one of the worst things you can do is to directly address the hurt and make an issue out of it. A strange dynamic comes alive in the soul if you make something into an issue. It becomes a habit and keeps recurring in a pattern. Frequently, it is better simply to acknowledge that there is a wound there, but then stay away from it. Every chance you get, shine the gentle light of the soul in on the wound. It is helpful to remember that there are ancient resources of renewal and refreshment in the circle of love that bring and hold you both together. The destiny of your love is never dependent merely on the fragile resources of your separate subjectivities. You can invoke the healing of the third force of light between you; this can bring forgiveness, consolation, and healing in stony times.

  When you love someone, it is destructive to keep scraping at the clay of your belonging. There is much to recommend not interfering with your love. Two people who love each other should never feel called to explain to an outside party why they love each other, or why it is that they belong together. The place that they belong is a secret place. Their souls know why they are together; and they should trust that togetherness. If you keep interfering with your connection with your Other, your lover, your anam ara, you gradually begin to force a distance between you. There is this wonderful two-line poem from Thom Gunn called “Jamesian.” Henry James is the most precise and utterly nuanced of novelists. He described things in such fine detail and from so many different angles. But such insidious analysis can become obsessive and destructive of the lyrical presence of love.

  JAMESIAN

  Their relationship consisted

  in discussing if it existed.

  If you keep shining the neon light of analysis and accountability on the tender tissue of your belonging, you make it parched and barren.

  A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison, in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer.

  IN THE KINGDOM OF LOVE, THERE IS NO COMPETITION

  Prayer is the act and presence of sending this light from the bountifulness of your love to other people to heal, free, and bless them. Whe
n there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have. One remembers here Dante’s notion that the secret rhythm of the universe is the rhythm of love, which moves the stars and the planets. Love is the source, center, and destiny of experience.

  A Friendship Blessing

  May you be blessed with good friends.

  May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.

  May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.

  May this change you.

  May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.

  May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.

  May you treasure your friends.

  May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey.

  May you never be isolated.

  May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ara.

  TWO

  TOWARD A SPIRITUALITY OF THE SENSES

  THE FACE IS THE ICON OF CREATION

  Landscape is the firstborn of creation. It was here hundreds of millions of years before the flowers, the animals, or the people appeared. Landscape was here on its own. It is the most ancient presence in the world, though it needs a human presence to acknowledge it. One could imagine that the oceans went silent and the winds became still the first time the human face appeared on earth; it is the most amazing thing in creation. In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate. The dream of the winds and the oceans, the silence of the stars and the mountains, reached a mother-presence in the face. The hidden, secret warmth of creation comes to expression here. The face is the icon of creation. In the human mind, the universe first becomes resonant with itself. The face is the mirror of the mind. In the human person creation finds the intimacy it mutely craves. Within the mirror of the mind it becomes possible for diffuse and endless nature to behold itself.

  The human face is an artistic achievement. On such a small surface an incredible variety and intensity of presence can be expressed. This breadth of presence overflows the limitation of the physical form. No two faces are exactly the same. There is always a special variation of presence in each one. Each face is a particular intensity of human presence. When you love someone and are separated from them for a long time, it is lovely to receive a letter or a phone call or even, in the silence of your own spirit, to sense their presence. Yet there is such deeper excitement when you return again and see the face you love; at this moment you enjoy a feast of seeing. In that face, you see the intensity and depth of loving presence looking toward you and meeting you. It is beautiful to see each other again. In Africa certain forms of greeting mean, “I see you.” In Connemara, the phrase used to describe popularity and admiration is, “Tá agaidh an phobail ort”—that is, “The face of the people is toward you.”

  When you live in the silence and solitude of the land, cities seem startling. In cities, there are such an incredible number of faces: the faces of strangers moving all the time with rapidity and intensity. When you look at their faces, you see the particular intimacy of their lives imaged. In a certain sense, the face is the icon of the body, the place where the inner world of the person becomes manifest. The human face is the subtle yet visual autobiography of each person. Regardless of how concealed or hidden the inner story of your life is, you can never successfully hide from the world while you have a face. If we knew how to read the faces of others, we would be able to decipher the mysteries of their life stories. The face always reveals the soul; it is where the divinity of the inner life finds an echo and image. When you behold someone’s face, you are gazing deeply into that person’s life.

  THE HOLINESS OF THE GAZE

  In South America, a journalist friend of mine met an old Indian chief whom he would have loved to interview. The chief agreed, on the condition that they could have some time together beforehand. The journalist presumed that they would meet and just have a normal conversation. Instead, the chief took him aside and looked directly into his eyes in silence for a long time. Initially, this terrified my friend; he felt his life was totally exposed to the gaze and silence of this stranger. After a while, the journalist began to deepen his own gaze. Each continued this silent gazing for more than two hours. After this time, it seemed as if they had known each other all of their lives. There was no longer any need for the interview. In a certain sense, to gaze into the face of another is to gaze into the depth and entirety of his life.

  We assume too readily that we share the one world with other people. It is true at the objective level that we inhabit the same physical space as other humans; the sky is, after all, the one visual constant that unites everyone’s perception of being in the world. Yet this outer world offers no access to the inner world of an individual. At a deeper level, each person is the custodian of a completely private, individual world. Sometimes our beliefs, opinions, and thoughts are ultimately ways of consoling ourselves that we are not alone with the burden of a unique, inner world. It suits us to pretend that we all belong to the one world, but we are more alone than we realize. This aloneness is not simply the result of our being different from each other; it derives more from the fact that each of us is housed in a different body. The idea of human life being housed in a body is fascinating. For instance, when people come to visit your home, they come bodily. They bring all of their inner worlds, experiences, and memories into your house through the vehicle of their bodies. While they are visiting you, their lives are not elsewhere; they are totally there with you, before you, reaching out toward you. When the visit is over, their bodies stand up, walk out, and carry this hidden world away. This recognition also illuminates the mystery of making love. It is not just two bodies that are close, but rather two worlds; they circle each other and flow into each other. We are capable of such beauty, delight, and terror because of this infinite and unknown world within us.

  THE INFINITY OF YOUR INTERIORITY

  The human person is a threshold where many infinities meet. There is the infinity of space that reaches out into the depths of the cosmos and the infinity of time reaching back over billions of years. There is the infinity of the microcosm: one little speck on the top of your thumb contains a whole inner cosmos, but it is so tiny that it is not visible to the human eye. The infinity in the microscopic is as dazzling as that of the cosmos. However, the infinity that haunts everyone and which no one can finally quell is the infinity of one’s own interiority. A world lies hidden behind each human face. In some faces the vulnerability of inner exposure to these depths becomes visible. When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface. This moment can open in a gaze from a stranger, or in a conversation with someone you know well. Suddenly, without their intending it or being conscious of it, their gaze becomes the vehicle of some primal inner presence. This gaze lasts for only a second. In that slightest interim, something more than the person looks out. Another infinity, as yet unborn, is dimly present. You feel that you are being looked at from the strangeness of the eternal. The infinity gazing out at you is from an ancient time. We cannot seal off the eternal. Unexpectedly and disturbingly, it gazes in at us through the sudden apertures in our patterned lives. A friend of mine who loves lace often says that it is the holes in the lace that render it beautiful. Our experience has this lace structure.

  The human face carries mystery and is the exposure point of the mystery of the individual life. It is where the private, inner world of a person protru
des into the anonymous world. While the rest of the body is covered, the face is naked. The vulnerability of this nakedness issues a profound invitation for understanding and compassion. The human face is a meeting place of two unknowns: the infinity of the outer world and the unchartered, inner world to which each individual alone has access. This is the night world that lies behind the brightness of the visage. The smile on a face is a surprise or illumination. When the smile crosses the face, it is as if the inner night of this hidden world brightens suddenly. Heidegger said very beautifully that we are custodians of deep and ancient thresholds. In the human face you see that potential and the miracle of undying possibility.

  The face is the pinnacle of the body. Your body is as ancient as the clay of the universe from which it is made; and your feet on the ground are a constant connection with the earth. Your feet bring your private clay in touch with the ancient, mother clay from which you first emerged. Consequently, your face being at the top of your body signifies the ascent of your clay-life into intimacy and selfhood. It is as if the clay of your body becomes intimate and personal through the ever new expressions of your face. Beneath the dome of the skull, the face is the place where your clay-life takes on a real human presence.

  THE FACE AND THE SECOND INNOCENCE

  Your face is the icon of your life. In the human face, a life looks out at the world and also looks in on itself. It is frightening to behold a face in which bitterness and resentment have lodged. When a person’s life has been bleak, much of its negativity can remain unhealed. Since the negativity is left untransfigured, the bleakness lodges in the face. The face, instead of being a warm presence, has hardened to become a mask. One of the oldest words for person is the Greek word prosopon; and prosopon originally meant the mask that actors wore in a Greek chorus. When bitterness, anger, or resentment are left untransfigured, the face becomes a mask. Yet one also encounters the opposite, namely, the beautiful presence of an old face deeply lined and inscribed by time and experience that has retained a lovely innocence. Even though life may have moved wearily and painfully through such a person, they have still managed not to let it corrode their soul. In such a face a lovely luminosity shines out into the world. It casts a tender light that radiates a sense of holiness and wholesomeness.