Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir by John F Deane - Faith in the natural world

John F Deane’s ardent faith and his love of the natural world interweave throughout this memoir. His celebration of the numinous in ordinary things recalls me to the poetry of my late husband, John Montague, and indeed, in the course of the book, Deane praises the “richness and variousness” of Montague’s work.

Song of the Goldfinch explores the author’s growth from traditional Catholic piety (“our God was a static God, unchanging”) to a new form of faith that cherishes the divine presence in “the depths of the physical universe ... and not in a transcendent and impossible otherwhere”. Guided by the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Deane apprehends that God ignited “the whole of creation with a fire of love and service”. Through Teilhard’s influence and his own spiritual journey, Deane has “come awake ... become open, porous, alive in and to the world”.

I myself prefer to regard Christianity as an enhancement of Jewish ethics

So God endures in the warp and weft of our life and the life of the entire cosmos: matter and spirit are the same. In one of the many lyrics included in this text, Deane observes the death of a baby bird: “I buried it ... beneath the wine-dark blooms / I, too, made of the self-same star dust, the same waters.” And in the poem Cosmos, a fruitfly, “tiny as the biro’s tip” is “crushed against the glass, a dot of ruby blood / more awful and more astonishing than the stars”.

Deane’s belief in a universe charged with mystery, always dynamic, always changing, bears some resemblance to Buddhism, though he does not explore that connection. He does reflect on the Old Testament, describing a harsh God who encourages the bullying Israelites, and who is supplanted by a God “of love and care and abundance”. I myself prefer to regard Christianity as an enhancement of Jewish ethics, and to picture a Jesus who helps his mother light the Sabbath candles and who rests against Joseph’s knee to read with him the sacred texts. Perhaps my judgment is coloured by the fact that I have Jewish ancestry, but, in any case, if Jesus Christ loves the Father, surely we can, too?