Under the guise of emptiness, the invisible keeps its secrets to itself. Yet the invisible remains the great background which invests your every gesture and action with possibility and pathos. The artistic imagination brings this out. We see this especially in sculpture. The shape of the sculpture evokes the shape of the emptiness around it. Also in dance we see how the body creates fluent sculpture in the air. It draws out the hospitality of the invisible. There is something quite courageous in the endurance of human presence against the vast canopy of the invisible. We endure the invisible by forgetting it—for as long as we can. When you become aware of the invisible as a live background, you notice how your own body is woven around your invisible soul, how the invisible lives behind the faces of those you love, and how it is always there between you. The invisible is one of the most powerful forms of the unknown. It envelopes our every movement. It is the region out of which we emerged and the state we are destined for, yet we never see it. There is no map with which to discern territories of the invisible. It is without texture. This is probably why we long to ignore the invisible. There is a sense in which the invisible is the home of fear. We tend to be afraid of what we cannot see or know.
The Mystery of Resemblance
In Conamara, when someone asks a child who he is, the child is not simply asked for his name. The question is, “Cé leis thú?” i.e., To whom do you belong? There is a recognition in the language that your identity is not merely your own personal marker. You are both an expression and extension of an already acknowledged family line. This tradition is further intensified in Conamara through the use of patronymics. If a person is called Sean O’Malley and his father was Tom and his grandfather was Páraich, Sean O’Malley could be known as Séan Tom Pháraich. His name becomes an articulation of the line of ancestry to which he belongs. The language is an echo of this belonging. Its constant use reinforces the reference and brings the presence of the ancestors to word. A long chain of belonging comes alive in the clink of a name.
The universe is full of differences. No two stones or flowers or faces are ever the same. There is such an intricate tapestry of differentiation in even the simplest places. On the seashore, no two seashells are ever quite the same. When you focus your attention, the texture and range of the differences in Nature becomes more visible. Against this perspective the discovery of resemblance is startling, especially in human beings. Each individual carries a totally separate world in his or her heart. When you reflect on how differently you feel and think about life, it is a wonder that we can talk to each other at all. Even between the closest people, there are long bridges. This makes us attractive and fascinating to each other. To see a resemblance between people in the one family is interesting, a child’s resemblance to an ancestor. For a moment in a gesture, a way of walking, looking, responding, or saying something, you glimpse the presence of an uncle or grandparent. Resemblance has a certain pathos. You behold the gesture, the looks of one person in another. However, each person is a different world. Although the resemblance indicates continuity, it also reveals the distance of the two lives from each other. Resemblance remains a startling index of the way in which two people can so obviously belong to the same clan. There can sometimes be a striking resemblance between people who do not belong to the same family. An old man I know who has been quite ill was making his first journey to Ireland recently. As his daughter picked him up at the airport, he pointed to a woman who seemed to be his recently deceased mother. When the woman turned around, the resemblance vanished. For a moment, the resemblance had startled both father and daughter.
Home as the Cradle of Destiny
There are many places of power in the world: the Pentagon, the Kremlin, the Vatican. Yet the most powerful place of all barely draws attention to itself. This is the family home. One evening, I remember going for a walk. As I came home, the light was ebbing slowly. As the black tide of night was filling the valley, lights began to come on in the houses. The little lights seemed so fragile against the onrush of the night. This has always remained with me as an image of the vulnerability of human presence against the darkness of anonymity. Anywhere the tenderness gathers itself, life often seems to assemble in threat about its nest. This is why all the major thresholds in human life have blessing structures around them in the religious traditions: birth, initiation, illness, marriage, and death. There is a fragility and pathos in light when darkness encircles it. When you drive through a village at evening and the lights come on before the curtains are drawn, for a second you are allowed a glimpse into individual homes. The inhabitants become visible as they move about or sit down together to dinner. Within these walls a unique set of lives is framed and formed. Behind the guise of normal interaction, they are having a huge influence on the hearts and minds of each other. While the home may be a powerful cradle influencing mind and personality, the lack of home is also a huge influence. So many children in poverty-stricken areas are homeless. Some are in institutional care. Imagine how difficult it must be for these little vulnerable ones to develop minds and hearts where they can rest and feel the warmth and shelter of self-belonging. Being deprived of intimate shelter at such a crucial time must cast a lonesome shadow over their future struggle to belong within society.
The Family as Nest of Belonging
The family is the most powerful structure of human belonging in the world. Within the limited compass of the home, a wide range of energies is simultaneously awakening. Limited space inevitably forces form. Their belonging together offers an outer unity to the world. In the family, the emergence of individuality is complex and always accompanied by either a latent or explicit struggle between the different family members. Later in life, when one begins to explore one’s identity, it is surprising to learn how the roots of one’s personality inevitably lead back to the unsuspecting home. The sources of your potential and the secrets of your blindness lie concealed there. The family is the first place where you stretch and test your essence. A family is not a monument to an extended egotism; it must be pervious, open in communication with the larger world. However, it is never a clear space where you can move as you wish. Family is a warm but cluttered space. Each family member must earn his own room in competition with the others. Yet amidst the cut and thrust of life, especially when times are difficult, it is great to know that you have your family.
A home is a place where a set of different destinies begin to articulate and define themselves. It is the cradle of one’s future. Home is the place where the stranger arrives, the place where you see things for the first time. Here you first begin to know that you have a body. You come to know smell, touch, and hearing. Home is the place where your infant senses are fostered. You have been on a long journey; now you settle and learn to recognize things. Here you learn how to cry and begin to notice how the cry and the smile get you attention. Home is where you first notice others, where you first sense that you are separate and different. It is the place where you first recognize your own gender. The fascinating thing about home is how it functions, without the superintendence of consciousness, yet different gifts are being quietly received by each member of the family. Gifts that will take a full lifetime to unwrap and recognize.