The image and the Creator

Aesthetics: In 1997, John O'Donohue published Anam Cara, an exploration of the spiritual riches of the Celtic tradition, writes…

Aesthetics: In 1997, John O'Donohue published Anam Cara, an exploration of the spiritual riches of the Celtic tradition, writes Patrick O'Brien.

It became, almost immediately, a bestseller, and, more importantly, became one of the books that readers cherished. Again and again in parish life and in pastoral situations of both grief and joy, people would refer to it and quote it and ask to have passages used in various rituals. One had the sense that it spoke to some longing in the hearts of men and women in an age of dislocation and brokenness. Indeed, this loss of bearings became the source and subject of Eternal Echoes, his second volume.

In his introduction to Divine Beauty O'Donohue refers to his works not as philosophical investigations, but rather as a "series of little icons". The comparison is exact and it suggests both the great strength and wonder of the books, but also the puzzle that many people have before their success.

In the Byzantine tradition icons are "written", not painted, and the viewer is a believer "listening" for the voice of God speaking from the depths of the image. Divine Beauty presents us with a series of images of beauty - from nature, painting, music, dance - and invites us to enter into the presence of God as the source and ultimate subject of all beauty. Each section, each "icon", is written in a prose that is rich and jewelled. They demand to be read as one reads a poem, with an attention to each word and phrase. But the book also has a forward motion. It moves with the prayer of the icon, from the image to the Creator. So this book ends with a chapter called simply 'God Is Beauty'.

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In his previous two books, O'Donohue was mainly speaking from the tradition of Celtic spirituality. Behind Divine Beauty there is a wider reach in reference and absorbed influence. The long tradition of considering beauty as one of the central attributes of God comes through the Platonic and neo-Platonic influence on medieval Christianity. Divine Beauty is as much at home in the stones of Chartres Cathedral as it is in the stones of the Burren or Connemara. But the deepest current of energy running through this work has its dynamo in the mystical theology of Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross.

O'Donohue's philosophical background and his poetic spirit give him the capacity to apply their vision to the contemporary crisis in the world. Divine Beauty argues that in a time in which economics is the only touchstone of truth, in which the sacred dignity of the earth itself and the people who inhabit this fragile planet are hostage to the brutal powers of financial and military complexes, the only hope lies in a rediscovery of that mystical sense of the unity of all in a God of beauty and love.

On its own terms Divine Beauty achieves its aim. For all already searching for a way to God in a world which disregards the spiritual, this book will be a constant companion. Indeed it will open new vistas on the journey. In its luminous pages one of the most neglected aspects of the nature of God, beauty, is affirmed and celebrated. Others, who have lost trust in the religious imagination because of the various scandals and divisions in the churches, will find here an invitation to recover the original springs of wonder and drink deeply of those still living waters.

There remains only one question, which I ask as one who knows the author and is acknowledged in the book. It is a question which haunts. The Athens of Plato was also a slave state. St John of the Cross wrote his poetry in a church which conducted inquisitions from the crypts of cathedrals, albeit he wrote from a prison cell. Concentration camp personnel loved art and music. Beauty in isolation from other attributes of either God or the human can lead to horrors. Goodness and truth must be always present if we are to name both Creator and creature. Indeed Divine Beauty acknowledges this and subsumes all into that definition of God given long ago by one who was both a lover of beauty and, in his work, a creator of beauty, St John the Divine: "God is love."

However, I would have preferred if some of the darker temptations of beauty and the cultures which worship there were engaged in dialogue.

With Divine Beauty, John O'Donohue has contributed a major work which is neither philosophy nor theology, neither spiritual nor doctrinal, neither critical nor exhortative but is rather a delighted dance of all these elements. It is the work of a writer finding new space to celebrate old truths.

Patrick O'Brien is a priest and poet. He is the chaplain at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Castlebar.

John O'Donohue will give a talk on the subject of his book on Monday, January 19th at 8 p.m. at the Burlington Hotel, Dublin. Tickets, priced 18.50, can be bought online from www.ticketmaster.ie or by phone: 0818-719300.

Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. By John O'Donohue. Bantam Press, 259pp £15