Anam Cara

Mystical Prayer as a Mosaic of Presence

Because we are so limited, it is difficult for us to understand who we are and what happens to us. No human can ever see anything fully. All we see are aspects of things. Being human is like being in a room of almost total darkness. The walls are deep and impenetrable, but there are crevices which let in the outside light. Each time you look out, all you see is a single angle or aspect of something. From within this continual dark, you are unable to control or direct the things outside this room. You are utterly dependent on them to offer you different views of themselves. All you ever see are dimensions. This is why it is so difficult to be certain of anything. As the New Testament says, “Now we see in a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face.”

Most of the time we are so rushed in our daily routine that we are not even aware of how limited our seeing actually is. In this century, Cubist painters attempted to paint what an object might look like if it were seen simultaneously from all perspectives. Picasso and Kandinsky often take simple objects like guitars or animals and portray them in a fascinating multiplicity of different visions. If you could only step back from your life and view it from different angles, you would gain a whole different sense of yourself. Aspects of you that may disappoint and sadden you from one perspective may be perfectly integrated in the image of you as seen from another angle. Sometimes things that really belong in your life do not seem to fit because the way you view them is too narrow. We see a good illustration of this in friendship. You have different friends. No two of your friends see you in exactly the same way. Each one brings a different part of your soul alive. Even though your friends all like you, they may not like each other at all. This is one of the sad and joyful things about the wake when someone dies. Different friends have diverse stories of the departed. A funeral involves the creation in a stricken community of a narrative whose ending makes a beginning possible. All the stories are like different pieces that combine to build a mosaic of presence. All the stories go to make up the one story. This is like mystical prayer. This wholesome and inclusive seeing, in which all the differences can be seen to belong together, is what mystical prayer brings. Mystical prayer brings you into the deepest intimacy with the Divine. Your soul receives the kiss of God. Such closeness has great beauty and frightening tenderness. Embraced in this belonging, all talk and theory of the Divine seem so pale and sound so distant.

Mystical prayer is never trapped. Most of our viewpoints are trapped like magnets to the same point on the surface. Mystical prayer teaches us a rhythm of seeing that is dynamic and free and full of hospitality. Far below and beyond the fear and limitation of the ego, mystical prayer teaches us to see with the wild eye of the soul. It sees the secret multiplicity of presences that are active at the edge of our normal field of vision. In this kind of prayer you will find what Paul Murray describes as

A ground within you

no one has ever seen

a world beyond the limits

of your dream’s horizon.