The voice comes from your soul. It is the voice of the eternal longing within you, and it confirms you as a relentless pilgrim on the earth. There is something within you that no one or nothing else in the world is able to meet or satisfy. When you recognize that such unease is natural, it will free you from getting on the treadmill of chasing ever more temporary and partial satisfactions. This eternal longing will always insist on some door remaining open somewhere in all the shelters where you belong. When you befriend this longing, it will keep you awake and alert to why you are here on earth. It will intensify your journey but also liberate you from the need to go on many seductive but futile quests. Longing can never be fulfilled here on earth. As the Un-Still Stones sang so memorably some decades ago: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often “make strange” with each other. This keeps our longing alert.
Our Longing to Be Loved
One of the deepest longings in the human heart is the desire to be loved for yourself alone. This longing awakens you completely. When you are touched by love, it reaches down into your deepest fibre. It is difficult to realize actually how desperately we do need love. You inhabit your life; you seem to be in control. You live within an independent physical body. From the outside, you seem to be managing very well. Because you present this face to the world, no one suspects that you have a different “inner body” called the heart, which can do nothing for itself if it is not loved. If our hearts were our outside bodies, we would see crippled bodies transform into ballet dancers under the gaze and in the embrace of love. It is difficult to love yourself, if you are not first loved. When you are loved, your heart rushes forth in the joy of the dance of life. Like someone who has been lost for years in a forgotten place, you rejoice in being found. When you are discovered, you then discover yourself. This infuses your whole life with new vigour and light. People notice a difference in you; it is nice to be around you. Love somehow transfigures the sad gravity of life. The gloom lifts, and your soul is young and free. Love awakens the youthfulness of the heart. You discover your creative force. It is quite touching to see love bring someone home so swiftly to herself. The Conamara poet Caitlin Maude writes:
His little beak
Under his wing
The thrush of our love.
Author’s translation
Even without the outside lover, you can become the beloved. When you awaken in appreciation and love for your self, springtime awakens in your heart. Your soul longs to draw you into love for your self. When you enter your soul’s affection, the torment ceases in your life. St. Bonaventure says in The Journey of the Mind to God: “Enter into yourself, therefore, and observe that your soul loves itself most fervently.”
Souclass="underline" The Beauty of the Broken Circle
The one who dreamed the universe loved circles. There is some strange way in which everything that goes forward is somehow still travelling within the embrace of the circle. Longing and belonging are fused within the circle. The day, the year, the ocean’s way, the light, the water, and the life insist on moving in the rhythm of the circle. The mind is a circle, too. This is what keeps you gathered in your self. If you were just a point in space, you would be forever isolated and alone. If your life were simply a line through time, you would be always trapped at this point with all past and future points absent. The beauty of the mind is its circular form. Yet the circle of the mind is broken somewhere. This fracture is always open; it is the secret well from which all longing flows. All prayer, love, creativity, and joy come from this source; our fear and hurt often convert them into their more sinister shadows.
This breakage within us is what makes us human and vulnerable. There is nothing more sinister than someone whose mind seems to be an absolute circle; there is a helpless coldness and a deadly certainty about such a presence. When you discover this inner well of longing, it can frighten you and send you into flight from yourself. If you can be tranquil, amazing things can flow from it. Your body is open physically to the world and the well of your mind flows out of ancient ground. This is reminiscent of the mountains here in the Burren, in the west of Ireland, where there are many wells. The face of the well is on the surface; it is such a pure and surprising presence. Yet the biography of the well is hidden under eternities of mountain and clay. Similarly, within you the well is an infinite source. The waters are coming from deep down. Yet as long as you are on this earth, this well will never run dry. The flow of thought, feeling, image, and word will always continue. The well of soul flows from the fracture in the circle of the mind. This is, in a sense, a frightening inner opening—anything can flow through from the distant and unknown mountains. Part of the wonder of living a real life is to make peace with this infinite inner opening. Nothing can ever close it. When you listen to the voices of your longing, you will begin to understand the adventure and the promise of life with which you are privileged.
Our Longing for Nature
Celtic spirituality reminds us that we do not live simply in our thoughts, feelings, or relationships. We belong on the earth. The rhythm of the clay and its seasons sings within our hearts. The sun warms the clay and fosters life. The moon blesses the night. In the uncluttered world of Celtic spirituality, there is a clear view of the sacrament of Nature as it brings forth visible presence. The Celts worshipped in groves in Nature and attended to the silent divinity of wild places. Certain wells, trees, animals, and birds were sacred to them. Where and what a people worship always offers a clue to where they understand the source of life to be. Most of our experience of religion happens within the walled frame of church or temple. Our God is approached through thought, word, and ritual. The Celts had no walls around their worship. Being in Nature was already to be in the Divine Presence. Nature was the theatre of the diverse dramaturgies of the divine imagination. This freedom is beautifully echoed in a later lyric poem:
Ah, blackbird, it is well for you,
Wherever in the thicket is your nest,
Hermit that sounds no bell,
Sweet, soft, fairylike is your note.
Translated by Myles Dillon
The contemplative presence of Nature is not ostentatious nor cluttered by thought. Its majesty and elegance drift into voice in the single, subtle note of the blackbird.