Island Spirituality

One of the joys of a beach bumming holiday is being able to catch up on one's reading, between dozing in the leisurely heat and with swims to revive.

Alastair McIntosh's 'Island Spirituality' is a short book, built around a lecture and extensive and fascinating endnotes, on the spiritual values of Lewis and Harris. It is an exploration that is biographical, historical and theological.

Three themes emerged for me.

The continuity of a Creation-centred spirituality through striking historical change as if the beauty of the Isles always demanded a more than natural explanation and response.

The way in which the austerity of a Calvinist interpretation of Hell can be not simply rejected, watered down or evaded but responded to by taking the reality of Hell up with renewed seriousness. Hell is 'the place' we inhabit with all that we are temptingly not - our egotism and selfishness - and where we meet the purifying burning of God's love. As long as we refuse that love, which we are always free to do, we remain in Hell. The invitation of God's love is relentless however and, therefore, we can hope that Hell will be empty at the fulfilling end of things, what the Orthodox tradition calls the paraousia.

The importance of a religion of experience that embraces the signals of transcendence that are often labelled the 'paranormal' most commonly on Lewis and Harris, the gift of second sight (vivid examples of which Alastair gives). If we are going to have renewed confidence in the realities of the spirit, we need to faithfully build communities where stories of such signals can be told and welcomed.

These themes, and others, are woven into a compelling account of what the islands' traditions may have yet to teach us and how such an act of cultural criticism and recovery may be of value in other contexts. It is a real joy to see history woven with such insight from theology and both together making a wider, more embodied whole.

Comments

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...

Golgonooza

Search This Blog