Circle Dance of Time, The

John S. Dunne

Description

There is nothing wiser than the circle, Rilke says in his Stories of God. John Dunne's new book explores the wisdom of the circle. He uses the metaphor of the circle dance, a folk dance in which the women form an inner circle, holding hands and moving clockwise; the men form an outer circle, moving counterclockwise. When the music stops the person opposite you is your partner for the next dance. Dunne interprets the circle as the great circle of life and light and love that comes from God and returns to God. Dunne emphasizes the far point on the circle, farthest away from God, and uses that to discuss the difficulties of our secular age. In the individual life, the far point is a dark night of the soul. Yet Dunne sees that far point of loneliness and darkness as a point as well, marking the return to love and light. So the theme of the book is like the words of an old Bedouin to Lawrence of Arabia, "The love is from God, and of God, and towards God." The book concludes with the words of twenty-one "Circle Songs," composed by the author.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Spiritual Growth
• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Spirituality

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780268077716
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Circle Dance of Time

JOHN S. DUNNE

The Circle Dance of Time

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre DamePress Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dunne, John S., 1929– The circle dance of time / John S. Dunne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references ( p. ) and index. ISBN-13: 978-268-02605-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-02605-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Spiritual life—Catholic Church. I. Title. BX 23050.3. D 86 2010 248.4'82—dc22 2010007651

∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Contents

Prefacevii

Reasons of the Heart1 Heart as Center of Stillness Heart Surrounded by Silence

God Sensible to the Heart God Kindling the Heart God Illumining the Mind

21 23 31

3 12

The Vision of Emanation41 “A melody that sings itself ” 43 “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces”

The Vision of Return63 “Our heart is restless” 65 “Until it rests in you” 74

The Far Point on the Circle83 Love Passing through Loneliness 84 Light Passing through Darkness 94 Life Passing through Death 104

The Vision of God with Us115

Circle Songs129

Notes Index

135 159

52

Preface

“ D eath is long,” the ghost of Darius says, “and there 1 is no music.” If there is life, on the other hand, and there is music at journey’s end, then the journey of life is a circledancewhere“Inmybeginningismyend,”asT.S. 2 Eliot says, and “In my end is my beginning.” I was originally going to call this bookFaith Seeking Understanding, echoing Saint Anselm and Karl Barth, but as I got into it I changed the name toThe Circle Dance of Time.Using the metaphor of the circle dance, I wanted to describe the great circle implied in the words of the old Bedouin to Lawrence of Arabia, “The love is from God 3 and of God and towards God.” I found that circle also in the Gospel of John in the words “The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8), and in the words “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). In theEnneadsof Plotinus the great circle is actu- 4 ally a dance, a choral dance he says, around the One. I thought myself of the circle dance, the folk dance where the women form an inner circle holding hands and mov- ing clockwise and the men an outer circle moving coun- terclockwise, and when the music stops the person op- posite you is your partner for the next dance. Circling implies a center, “the still point of the turn- ing world,” and indeed “we all have within us a center of

vii

5 stillness surrounded by silence,” as Dag Hammarskjöld says in his little brochure for the Meditation Room at the UN. This center of stillness isthe heart,I want to say, not just the seat of emotions but the place where thought and feeling meet and unite. So “the reasons of the heart” that Pascal speaks of would be the way things appear to us when we are in our center of stillness. We are not always there. When I am upset or afraid or depressed, “I am out- 6 side my heart, looking for the way back in.” When I am dwelling in my center of stillness surrounded by silence, on the other hand, then I can see things aright and make sound judgments and decisions. And the silence sur- rounding our center of stillness I take to be an encompass- ing presence. “Here is what faith is” (Voila que c’est la foi), Pascal 7 says, “God sensible to the heart” (Dieu sensible au coeur). I suppose it is the presence of God that is sensible to the heart, the silence surrounding our center of stillness. That presence, that silence can kindle the heart, illumine the mind. How? The silence speaks when the heart speaks. So it is by waiting, waiting on the heart, waiting on the si- lence that we come to a kindling and an illumining. “At- tention is the natural prayer of the soul,” Malebranche 8 says, and attention here takes the form of a listening si- lence. I think of a passage inFour Quartetswhere T. S. Eliot speaks of waiting, “I said to my soul, be still, and wait . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the still- 9 ness the dancing.” If we wait in a listening silence, “the darkness shall be the light,” that is, the mind will be illu- mined, “and the stillness the dancing,” the heart will be kindled. Silence can be terrifying. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me,” Pascal says, “the infinite im- mensity of spaces I do not know and that do not know 10 me.” The answer is in the Upanishads, God in the heart

viii

Preface

and God in the universe are one and the same. The silence surrounding our center of stillness, according to this, and the eternal silence of these infinite spaces are one and the same. A listening silence can be our relation to the uni- verse then, as well as to the heart. What is there to be heard in this listening silence? The music of the spheres? The speech of all things? Maybe we could say the silence speaks just as the silence does surrounding our center of stillness, and what the silence says is simply the presence, “I am.” “Our heart is restless until it rests in you,” Saint Au- 11 gustine’s saying at the beginning of hisConfessions, comes true when we are in our center of stillness surrounded by silence. When “I am outside my heart, looking for the way back in,” I feel the restlessness of desire and imagination, moving from one thing to another, from one person to an- other. How to go from restlessness to rest? “The oarsman sat quietly and praised the voyage,” Werner Herzog says at 12 the beginning and end of a screenplay. To sit quietly and praise the voyage I have to enter into my center of stillness surrounded by silence. Praising the voyage means praising the whole journey of my life. That seems to be what Saint Augustine is doing in hisConfessions, confession as praise, coming to peace with the journey of his life. If the journey of life is a great circle, however, from and of and towards God, there is a far point on the circle, like the far point on the earth’s orbit around the sun, where love must pass through loneliness, light must pass through darkness, life must pass through death. “The oarsman sat quietly and praised the journey,” as Herzog says at the beginning, “and the oarsman sat still and praised the voyage,” as he says at the end of his screen- play, means praising even the passage through loneliness and darkness and death, for the name of the screenplay is “Every man for himself and God against all.” I can

Preface ix