The Golden Cord: A Short Book on the Secular and the Sacred

Chapter 4: Some Real Appearances

81 c h A p t e r 4 SOME REAL APPEARANCES No unity with God is possible except by an exceedingly great love. —Saint Dimitri of Rostov In 2011,I attended a philosophy conference in Hong Kong. Near the end of three days of meetings, w e—a group of Chinese and American phi losophers —were dining at a r estaurant overlooking the port. It turned out to be a v ery non–Virginia Woolf dinner party and much more like that summer night in the 19 30s with W.H. Auden. Most of us happened to be Christians, though we differed considerably on this or that philo sophical position. The meal proceeded with personal, at times intimate, conversations about life’s difficulties. Earlier, on the balcony, I was talking to two B ritish philosophers, both R oman Catholic, and one with considerable experience in monastic life. As the meal ended, ho wever, I felt dizzy with a sharp pain in my chest. One of my companions asked calmly, “Are you alright? Would you like some air? Perhaps you should return to the balcony.” I did. And waited. The pain subsided and I was 82 T H E G O L D E N C O R D prepared to rejoin the others. “Wait. Stay as long as you like.” The feeling I had then was not exactly akin to Augustine and his mother Monica, but it was close. Here is the vision of God recorded by Augustine in his Confessions. In my case, I was not with my mother and my experience of the divine was not a joint venture through conversation. It was, instead, a more quiet, tangible event. But, consider Augustine: Not long before the day on which [M onica] was to leav e this life—you knew which day it was to be, O Lor d, though we did not—my mother and I were alone, leaning fr om a window which overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house wher e we were staying at O stia. We were waiting there after our long and tiring journey, away from the crowd, to refresh ourselves before our sea-voyage. I believe that what I am going to tell happened through the secret working of your providence. For we were talking alone together and our conversation was serene and joyful. We had forgotten what we had left behind and were intent on what lay before us . . . we laid the lips of our hearts to the heavenly stream that flows from your fountain, the source of all life which is in you, so that as far as it was in our power to do so we might be sprinkled with its waters and in some sense reach an understanding of this great mystery. As the flame of love burned stronger in us and raised us higher to wards the eternal G od, our thoughts ranged o ver the whole compass of material things in their various degrees, up to the heavens themselves, from which the sun and the moon and the stars shine do wn upon the earth. Higher still we climbed, thinking and speaking all the while in won der at all that you have made. . . . Then with a sigh, leaving our spiritual harvest bound to it, we returned to the sound of our own speech, in which each word has a beginning and an ending—far, far different from your Word, our Lord, who abides in himself for ev er, yet never grows old and gives new life to all things.1 While I did not exactly pass through “all the levels of bodily objects,” still, I did have what seemed like a blissful experience of the sacr ed, a transporting sense of the divine. Some Real Appearances 83 Upon reflection, I believe that my experience was informed by a link between my acquaintance saying, “ Wait. Stay as long as y ou like,” and one of my fav orite lines from Goethe, “Stay, moment, stay, for you are so fair.” The line comes from Faust and, when first introduced, is a bit sinister. In his pact with the devil (M ephistopheles), when Faust utters this phrase, the devil may take his soul captive. Nonetheless, when Faust finally does say, “Stay, moment, stay, for you are so fair,” he has finally come to a different place spiritually. He has seen the futility and...