The passionate presence
DUNNE, JOHN S.
TRANSCENDING LIFE The passionate presence JOHN S. DUNNE Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by! THOSE WORDS of Yeats, meant for his own epitaph, are an epitaph of our times. They...
...Not the terrible walk up the Via Dolorosa, but the question that has no answer...
...It is like looking into the eyes of another human being — what you see there is a reflected image of what the eyes are seeing...
...Why...
...I think of Mark Rothko himself and of his suicide...
...by loving we go out of ourselves to the persons and the situations in our life...
...There is joy in that relation and life...
...So it is with entering into the heart of another — what you feel there is what the other is feeling...
...Eyes for revelation and a heart for presence, these eyes can see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at large in our times, war and famine and sickness and death, but this heart can feel presence at work in our times too, the presence of God and our presence, the presence of Christ in our relation with God...
...I saw it and felt it not when I was sitting on the benches of the chapel, gazing at the panels, it is true, but when I was Commonweal: 206 walking from panel to panel as from station to station, making the stations of the cross, saying to myself at each one the traditional words, "We adore thee O Christ and we bless thee, because by thy holy cross thou hast redeemed the world...
...thinking of Christ "with me, before me, behind me, in me, beneath me, above me, on my right, on my left," of the words "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world...
...Thus it seemed to me I was seeing with his eyes and feeling with his heart...
...Copyright © 1985 by John S. Dunne and used with permission from Harper & Row Publishers, Inc...
...Now I saw instead a deep-running insight into human suffering and death...
...There are signs of our times, I believe, signs of presence, just as in New Testament times there were signs of coming...
...They evoke both seeing and feeling, side by side, seeing without feeling,' 'a cold eye on life, on death," and feeling without seeing, "Horseman, pass by...
...Presence takes away not only the madness of our seeing without feeling but also the terror and the despair of our feeling without seeing...
...Entering into human suffering and death, I realize now, is a dangerous undertaking, especially living day after day with suffering and death weighing on your mind...
...A man crying out to God in the fullness of time,' 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me...
...When "presence" to the heart is revealed to the eyes, it is "coming...
...Indeed if "all real living is meeting," as Buber says, then the presence at work in life, the presence of God, of human beings, of self, is the real substance of life...
...As light shining in our darkness and warmth glowing in our coldness, I believe, it is the light and warmth of a true passing through death to life...
...Still, I find an answer in the cry itself, an answer to "why hast thou forsaken me...
...The reality of love and of wisdom, of knowing that comes of loving where "I am" and "I will die" come together in "depth of root in the heart...
...It is more like lovers dwelling in one another, looking into but then seeing with each other's eyes, speaking to but then feeling with each other's hearts...
...It can numb you, leaving you in the cold of seeing without feeling, and it can blind you, leaving you in the dark of feeling without seeing...
...an answer to suffering and death in the relation with God that endures and survives it...
...of power that is in terror and despair...
...in "My God, my God...
...Still, the cold gives way to the warmth, the dark gives way to the light in the human eyes and heart of Christ...
...Those words, "Horseman, pass by...
...I am thinking of sense pervaded by spirit, of presence found in knowing and in loving...
...There is joy and life in the human eyes and heart of Christ...
...It is the meaning of the concluding words of the New Testament, "Come, Lord Jesus...
...knowing and loving...
...By knowing we take things into ourselves...
...The light and the warmth are in the eyes and heart, I begin to realize, more than in the suffering and death that are seen and felt...
...make me think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, of war and famine and sickness and death, of eyes averted, of overwhelming feeling, JOHN S. DUNNE, c.s.C, who teaches theology at Notre Dame, is the author of A Search for God in Time and Memory, The Church of the Poor Devil, and other volumes...
...It is to see what "a cold eye on life, on death" cannot see, the presence of God in life, in death...
...Feeling in the cold of our seeing means entering into what we see, even into human suffering and death, and doing this in times when "an extreme critical lucidity," as Michael Polanyi calls it, is set over and against' 'an intense moral conscience'' on suffering and death...
...Instead you find somehow on the road of union a unity of seeing and of feeling...
...It is what one would think simply observing the madness, the terror, and the despair of our times...
...Why forsake me...
...So if I say "There are signs," I am speaking of entering into human suffering and death and finding hope and courage, and of having the heart to enter and the eyes to find, of having the heart and the eyes of Christ...
...5 April 1985: 207...
...That is the full meaning of apokalypsis and parousia...
...They are related to one another: the knowing comes of the loving...
...The signs of presence, though, are like the stations of the cross in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, dark panels in black and red, where we do not see Christ but we see what he is seeing and feel what he is feeling...
...We hide ourselves from the presence of God, "and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord," when we have become aware of being naked to seeing without feeling, when the knowing we know is a knowing without loving...
...In the end all we know dwells in us and we dwell in all we love...
...This is the Passion," he says.' "This outcry of Jesus...
...All I have to set against terror and despair is presence, and yet presence, Ido believe, is enough, for "a timeless presence in time," God's to us, ours to one another, mine to myself, becomes "a meaning in unmeaning things of life...
...It is what is really happening in my life and even in my times...
...I am thinking ultimately of the presence of Christ, the parousia, taking the word in its primary sense, "presence," even more than in its secondary sense, "coming...
...To what purpose...
...reveals to me the "depth of root in the heart" where "I am" meets "I will die...
...Why did you forsake me...
...I saw it and felt it, I mean, not by observing the paintings, but by entering into the human suffering and death I thought they were showing, by entering, as far as I could, into the suffering and death of Christ...
...This article is adapted from The House of Wisdom, a new book, which will appear at the beginning of May...
...It is to open ourselves to the presence of God, no longer to hide ourselves but to be naked to "the presence of the Lord...
...It passes all understanding because understanding fails us when we come up against human suffering and death...
...It is an insight, a seeing, I felt as peace and a peace, a feeling, I saw as insight...
...These are the two basic ways we have of relating to the things of life...
...Knowing and loving God, though, still has to do with the things of life, for it means looking into God's eyes, as it were, and entering into God's heart, and so ultimately seeing the things of life with God's eyes, and feeling them with God's heart...
...It is the relation of Jesus with God that is the reality here, a relation that endures suffering and death and survives it, a relation that endures even being forsaken by God and is expressed in the very cry, "My God, my God...
...Or so it is in the beginning...
...On' 'the road of the union of love with God," therefore, you do not turn away from the persons and the situations of your life, even though you make a choice for that road and turn away from other possible loves, from roads you are not taking...
...If I say "Things are meant," I am speaking not of the madness of our times, not of the terror and the despair, as if they too were meant, but of the presence at work in my life and in our lives, and so in my times and in our times, working against the madness, against the terror and the despair...
...Yet the peace I saw in those dark panels was luminous...
...It never means turning away from the things of life...
...At Rothko I found myself looking for the human eyes and heart of Christ...
...Our meeting with God, our meeting with one another, my meeting with myself, is always more, that is, than a chance meeting...
...Barnett Newman introducing his Stations of the Cross, abstract paintings like those of Mark Rothko but vertical rather than horizontal, bright rather than dark, uses the Aramaic words of the cry, lema sabachthani...
...There is an understanding that comes out of the peace itself, an understanding that passes all understanding...
...As I look into ' 'a cold eye," as I see my own image, my life and death, reflected there, I realize suddenly what seeing without feeling really is...
...I think of figures of our times and of times past, of Max Jacob, of Vladimir Solovyov, of Ramon Lull, of Al-Hallaj, all of them in love with God, as it seems, all of them entering somehow into the figure of Christ so that the figure itself is the dark red and black of human suffering and death suffused with the light and warmth of hope and courage...
...Seeing with those eyes, I can see the dark of our feeling, and feeling with the heart, I can feel in the cold of our seeing...
...And so, as being known and loved becomes knowing and loving, as being seen becomes seeing, it is to see with an eye like that of Brother Lawrence seeing the tree in winter, knowing it would put forth leaves, blossom, and bear fruit in spring...
...I would say not only the terrible walk up the Via Dolorosa but also the terrible cry that gives words to the walk...
...It is the light of knowing that redeems us from the dark, and it is the warmth of loving that redeems us from the cold...
...Presence of mind, and not of mind only but of heart and soul, that is what it means, I think, to conjoin seeing and feeling, God's presence to us then, our presence to one another, my presence to myself in conjoining them...
...Seeing in the dark of our feeling means seeing hope and courage, or seeing lives of hope and courage, especially in dark times when, as in Thoreau's times, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation...
...What is it then to conjoin seeing and feeling, to conjoin knowing and loving...
...It is knowing without loving, and we hide ourselves from it in shame...
...When I had first visited the chapel some years before, I had thought I was seeing despair in those dark paintings, knowing Mark Rothko had committed suicide...
...he repeats...
...I thought of the words "the peace of God which passes all understanding...
Vol. 112 • April 1985 • No. 7
