It is impossible to be on the earth and to avoid awakening. Everything that happens within and around you calls your heart to awaken. As the density of night gives way to the bright song of the dawn, so your soul continually coaxes you to give way to the light and awaken. Longing is the voice of your soul, it constantly calls you to be fully present in your life: to live to the full the one life given to you. Rilke said to the young poet, “Live everything.” You are here on earth now, yet you forget so easily. You travelled a great distance to get here. The dream of your life has been dreamed from eternity. You belong within a great embrace that urges you to have the courage to honour the immensity that sleeps in your heart. When you learn to listen to and trust the wisdom of your soul’s longing, you will awaken to the invitation of graced belonging that inhabits the generous depths of your destiny. You will become aware of the miracle of presence within and around you. In the beginning was the dream, and the dream was Providence.
A BLESSING
Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.
May you enjoy the critical and creative companionship of the question “Who am I?” and may it brighten your longing.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and shelter your feeling.
May your mind inhabit your life with the same sureness with which your body belongs to the world.
May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.
May your soul be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.
May you succumb to the danger of growth.
May you live in the neighbourhood of wonder.
May you belong to love with the wildness of Dance.
May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of God.
2 Presence:
The Flame of Longing
To Realize That You Are Here
There is a lovely, disconcerting moment between sleep and awakening. You have only half emerged from sleep, and for a few seconds you do not know where you are, who you are, or what you are. You are lost between worlds. Then your mind settles, and you recognize the room and you take up your place again in your own life. And you realize that both you and the world have survived the crossing from night to reality. It is a new day, and the world is faithfully there again, offering itself to your longing and imagination, stretching out beyond your room to mountains, seas, the countenances behind which other lives hide. We take our world totally for granted. It is only when we experience the momentary disturbance of being marooned in such an interim that we grasp what a surprise it is to be here and to have the wild companionship of this world. Such disturbances awaken us to the mystery of thereness that we call presence. Often, the first exposure to the one you will love or to a great work of art produces a similar disconcerting confusion.
Presence is alive. You sense and feel presence; it comes towards you and engages you. Landscape has a vast depth and subtlety of presence. The more attentive you are, and the longer you remain in a landscape, the more you will be embraced by its presence. Though you may be completely alone there, you know that you are not on your own. In our relentless quest for human contact, we have forgotten the solace and friendship of Nature. It is interesting in the Irish language how the word for the elements and the word for desire is the same word: dúil. As the term for creation, its accent is on the elemental nature of creation. Dúil suggests a vital elementalism. It also means longing. “Dúil a chur I gceol” means “to get a longing for music.” Dúil also holds the sense of expectation and hope. Could it be that dúil originally suggested that human longing was an echo of the elemental vitality of Nature?
You feel the presence in Nature sometimes in great trees that stand like ancient totem spirits night and day, watching over a landscape for hundreds of years. Water also has a soothing and seductive presence that draws us towards it. John Montague writes: “Part order, part wilderness / Water creates its cadenced illusion.” Each shape of water—the well, stream, lake, river and ocean—has a distinctive rhythm of presence. Stone, too, has a powerful presence. Michelangelo used to say that sculpture is the art of liberating the shape hidden and submerged in the rock. I went one morning to visit a sculptor friend. He showed me a stone and asked if I saw any hidden form in it. I could not. Then he pointed out the implicit shape of a bird. He said, “For ten years I have been passing that stone on the shore and only this morning did I notice the secret shape of the bird.” Whereas human presence is immediate, the presences in landscape are mediate; they are often silent and indirect.
Presence Is Soul-Atmosphere
Presence is the whole atmosphere of a person or thing. Presence is more than the way a person walks, looks, or speaks. It is more than the shape of a tree or the colour of a stone, yet it is a blend of all these aspects. Presence is mainly the atmosphere of spirit that is behind them all and comes through them. This is why no two presences are ever the same. There are landscapes that are deeply still and consoling. Travel a half a mile farther, and you could be in a place that is so brooding and sinister you cannot wait to escape. You can often sense this in people’s homes too. Houses now seem to resemble each other more and more. Years ago, as a child, one sensed how different each home was. Each one had a unique aura. When a person came to visit, they seemed to bring in the presence of their home with them. To a child’s mind, each neighbour’s house was a different cave of presence. The furniture, colours, and décor of each interior were different. In one, you can make yourself at home. In another, a brooding tension or hostility makes you want to leave immediately.
There is a really distinctive and somewhat vulnerable presence to a home in which someone lives alone. A family tends to fill up a house. The sounds of their conversations layer the walls and rooms with the texture of presence. When you come in, you walk into a vibrant web of presence. There are practically no clear spaces in a family home; every corner is packed with echo. In contrast, the home of the solitary person is never completely full. There is clearance and silence here. The silence here belongs around one presence. Regardless of how cosy and welcoming the home may be, there is always a distilled quality of longing in a solitary person’s home. Though the person is solitary, the home can often be full of presence and not lonely at all. Yet it is usually a more intimate event to visit such a home. There is none of the distraction and avoidance that meets you in a family home which somehow protects both you and them from exposure. In the solitary home you have a certain access everywhere to the solitude of the inhabitant.
Presence has a depth that lives behind the form or below the surface. There is a well of presence within every thing, but it is usually hidden from the human eye. This comes in different ripples to the surface. No two stages of presence are ever exactly the same. The flow of soul within means the surface is always different. When you know a place well, you can sense this. The fluent nuance of the light alters the presence of the landscape constantly. As the stream of feeling and thinking flows through you, it also alters your presence. Your presence is always in a subtle flow. When you are happy and at peace, your presence is gentle and approachable. When you are worried or anxious, there is a tension in your presence, and it closes and tightens. If we were able to read presence, we could sense what is happening inside a person’s mind. Some people have an open presence. They cannot hide anything; you know immediately what is haunting or delighting them. Others are adept actors at putting on a face—to, as T. S. Eliot says, “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” The mask is always in place, and it is exceptionally difficult to read what is happening within.