Anam Cara

The House Keeps the Universe Out

The human person is the creature that changes the wildness of the earth to suit the intentions of his own agenda. Gerard Manley Hopkins argues against disturbing Nature: “Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.” Homo sapiens is the one species that has deliberately altered the earth. One of the first ways this happened was by clearing trees and land to build homes. Humans wanted to come in from the great immensities of Nature and the heavens. Homes provided shelter against marauding animals. They also provided shelters of belonging. Perhaps the awakening of infinity in the mind demanded relief from the cosmos in the refuge of simple belonging. At another level, the home represents a certain limitation. It frames off the privacy of your life from the outside world. As cities expand octopus-like into the countryside, it is sad to see beautiful fields serrated with replica housing developments. An old neighbour of mine who rarely visited the city until recently was heard to remark as he looked at all the housing developments, “The houses are all the same. How would a person find his way home in the evening?” A few minutes later the logic of his own musing had the solution: “I bet you they are all numbered.”

A house can become a little self-enclosed world. Sheltered there, we learn to forget the wild, magnificent universe in which we live. When we domesticate our minds and hearts, we reduce our lives. We disinherit ourselves as children of the universe. Almost without knowing it, we slip inside ready-made roles and routines which then set the frames of our possibilities and permissions. Our longing becomes streamlined. We acquire sets of convictions in relation to politics, religion, and work. We parrot these back and forth at each other, as if they were absolute insights. Yet for the most part these frames of belief function as self-constructed barriers, fragile clichés pulled around our lives to keep out the mystery. The game of society helps us to forget the unknown and subversive presence of the human person. The control and ordering of society is amazing: we comply so totally with its unwritten rules. In a city at morning, you see the lines of traffic and the rows of faces all on their way to work. We show up. We behave ourselves. We obey fashion and taste. Meanwhile, almost unknown to ourselves, we are standing on wild earth at a crossroads in time where anything can come towards us. Yet we behave as if we carry the world and were the executives of a great plan. Everywhere around us mystery never sleeps. The same deep nature is within us. Each person is an incredibly sophisticated, subtle, and open-ended work of art. We live at the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless nature.