The Homing Spirit
Toolan, David
IN BRIEF The Hominq Spirit: A Pilgrimage of the Mind, of the Heart, of the Soul, by John S. Dunne. Crossroad, $12.95, 132 pp. It will surprise no one familiar with Dunne's work to hear him say, as...
...But I don't trust this...
...Taking off from three separate pilgrimages to Jerusalem (in 1974, 1976, and 1985), Dunne passes over into the religious standpoints of Muslims and Jews-in quest of a catholic vision based not on a single standpoint but on the mutual understanding of others from within...
...Is there a road in life I can follow with all my heart...
...mind can lose heart, become over-detached, stretched thin, bloodless, empty-and excruciatingly alone...
...Virtually alone among contemporary theologians, Dunne has come out of hiding,, dropped the distanced, academic third person, and disclosed the personal agony behind the intellectual's searching reflection upon what is missing in his own life...
...meditation chapel in New York, pursued the theme of the soul's hunger for the sacred...
...For one thing, Dunne is stingy in describing for the reader what he sees, hears, touches, smells, tastes, or kinesthetically feels in these sites...
...instead of "insight into images," his method might better be described as insight without images (and the publisher supplied none...
...The joy arises, by contrast, from finding true home, a place where the three monotheistic faiths converge in the mystery of God in the soul...
...asked Dunne in Reasons of the Heart (1978...
...The anguish here is that of encountering a kind of root void in oneself, and thus of not knowing where home is...
...House of Wisdom (1985), which depends on the aesthetic impact of the mosque-church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Rothko chapel in Houston, and the U.N...
...Dunne's path to that joyful convergence follows the route set out by a Sufi sheikh, who told him, "Go deep in your own religion...
...too cerebral...
...It will surprise no one familiar with Dunne's work to hear him say, as he does in The Homing Spirit, "I have gone on my journeys longing for movement...
...The book that followed, Church of the Poor Devil (1982), took Dunne to the Amazon, and explored the heart's longing for social connection between rich and poor...
...Dunne seems to suffer acutely from a form of what Walker Percy calls "false transcendence...
...And the joy...
...The common bond turned out to be a void in the North American's soul...
...In a book like this, one should have allowed the stones to speak, but they don't get the chance...
...The current book, The Homing Spirit, suffers from some of the same difficulties-a certain airless, claustrophobic quality...
...Secondly, Dunne's densely inflected, circular style of musing is labyrinthine, tortuous, and still (alas...
...D.T...
...Straining for perspective, balance, and objectivity, the academic (celibate...
...But this was a difficult journey to follow...
...This leads to reflection on the questions of the Gospel of John-Where do you come from...
...The book ends on a note of well-being, almost peace...
...it sounds too much like a monologue, as though Dunne has merely talked himself into it...
...Where are you going...
...The insights into the "I am" sayings and the meaning of the Trinity are quite wonderful...
Vol. 116 • January 1989 • No. 2
