Silent Music
I am delighted that Leatherhead Art Club will be mounting a new exhibition of paintings in the Parish Church between the 9th and 11th May as advertised in the magazine. There is a reception on Thursday 8th between 6pm and 9pm to which all are welcome.
The Chairman of Leatherhead Art Club, Stuart Stanley, was generous enough to ask me to suggest a theme for this exhibition. Amongst the suggestions I made was "silent music". This is a quote from the writings of St John of the Cross: "My beloved is the mountain, the solitary wooded valleys, strange islands ... silent music". It will be interesting and intriguing to see how club members have developed this theme in their paintings.
St John of the Cross was a 16th century Spanish Christian mystic. John entered a Carmelite priory at Medina when he was only 20 years old. It was the religious life, which was to shape the rest of his life although he died prematurely at the age of 49. He was educated through the Carmelite order and studied at the University of Salamanca and was ordained in 1567. When he was 25, John met Teresa of Avila. Although Teresa was much older than John at 52 their friendship proved to be a creative working partnership. Their working together and writings were hugely influential in Spain where Teresa is still the patron saint. They reformed the Carmelite order and opened a number of new houses across the country.
Sadly, their success produced rivalry and jealousy and John was kidnapped by friars from another order and imprisoned Music in Toledo. Here he was treated with great harshness, yet remained resolute in his chosen path. He was publicly flogged, half starved and humiliated physically almost to the point of death. This trauma proved to be the cauldron for great creativity. It was out of this that he wrote many of his most inspiring poems. His theme was similar to the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. In both cases the writers see the relationship between God and the disciple as that between bride and bridegroom. At the heart of discipleship is love.
John was able to escape from imprisonment and was mercifully free from further persecution. His friendship with St Teresa continued until her death. She found great comfort in his counsel and spiritual awareness. John's best-known theme is the dark night of the soul. It comes from a poem of the same name, which begins "on a dark night, with anxious love inflamed, O happy lot! forth unobserved I went, my house now being at rest".
There is a story told of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey. He had virtually no small talk. At dinner with Mary Welch, who was the wife of the Bishop of Lincoln at the time and a psychotherapist in her own right, he asked her whether she thought the dark night of the soul and depression were the same thing. This was during the starter. She said "No". There was no further conversation until a dessert arrived. At this point Michael said "Good. Neither do I"!
It's an important distinction. The dark night is really a spiritual desert. Being there might lead to, or be a result of, depression but it isn't a pre-requisite nor is it a result. The dark night is really a spiritual encounter. It was occasioned for John by his imprisonment and ill treatment. He found that when all else was absent, and when all else had failed, the one thread of hope was his faith in God and the love which they shared. Love, and the joy which it brings, are only experienced at the deepest level when everything else is laid aside. We must not rely on anything we can see, feel, taste or experience, for God is more than all these.
In his desperation John found that only faith touched him and held him. Through this process sorrow is turned into joy. A deep love is kindled in the soul for God in a place of stability and hope. John describes his love of God as like that which exists between bride and bridegroom. The language of love is the language of the journey of faith. God is not an idea, or a doctrine, God is not a rulebook, God is not a taskmaster He is much more the Beloved. He is the one with whom I am in love. My heart is given to Him. So it is that the language of love illustrates perfectly the relationship at the heart of the spiritual journey: therefore my Beloved is the mountain, the solitary wooded valleys, the strange islands. My Beloved is silent music.
By this John meant that there was no audible voice. All was silence. But deep in the heart there was nonetheless sweetness of music, because there is a bond and a trust between the disciple and the Beloved, just as there is between all true lovers. There is the joy of silence shared just as there is between lovers. No words are needed, it is not necessary to speak, all that is needed is to rest in the silence of the trusting relationship, and in the knowledge that all is well, and all will be well, no matter what clamour and disturbance there may be at the gates.
John of the Cross is one of the great mystics of the church and in the Spanish tradition. It is perhaps appropriate that we also celebrate during May one of our own English Christian mystics, Julian of Norwich, whose feast day is 8 May. The mediaeval English mystics shared the same tradition with John and it was Julian who first said, "All shall be well".
Canon David Eaton, from the May 2008 magazine