Serious Sounds E-Book

John Moriarty

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A wonderful walk through the story of Moriarty's childhood growing up on a small farm in north Kerry, and his lifelong engagement with traditional Catholic sacraments, taking as his point of departure Philip Larkin's poem 'Church Going' - a richly meditative essay of extraordinary resonance that begins with a visit to the island of Inis Fallen on Loch Leine: 'People say we live in a time of ritual deprivation. Not so people of my age born into Christian Ireland. From three days' of age I was inducted onto the Christian sacramental road, and that journey I rehearse in this book.' 'The connection between psychic pain and religious ritual in Catholicism is done beautifully. More than any other, this was very personal and profoundly moving.' - Michael Harding John Moriarty is author of Dreamtime (1994), the trilogy Turtle Was Gone a Long Time: Crossing the Kedron (1996), Horsehead Nebula Neighing (1997) and Anaconda Canoe (1998), Nostos, An Autobiography (2001), Invoking Ireland (2005) and Night Journey to Buddh Gaia (2006).

Leseprobe

SERIOUS SOUNDS

JOHN MORIARTY

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

FOR FR NORBERT CUMMINSODC

Contents

Title PageDedicationSERIOUS SOUNDSAbout the AuthorCopyright

SERIOUS SOUNDS

I have come across to Inisfallen, an island in Loch Leine, and I am sitting, not by original intention, in the small roofless Romanesque church. I am nagged by the thought that I should be outside, sitting under the trees at the edge of the water, looking at the mirrored mountains. It’s what I thought I’d do, but it turned out to be too dangerous. Out there today the universe is a shimmer of God within God and it would only take one small lap of water to dissolve it all back into God. And so, contrary to customary reason, I have come to church to escape from God. My hope is that, ruined though it is, it will do for me what the universe cannot do for me. My hope is that these four Christian walls will cut me off from God, save me from God.

Not surprisingly, seeking distraction, I think of a poem called ‘Church Going’ by Philip Larkin:

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer, or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort or other will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?