In my last post from over a week ago (my, how time flies during the holiday season), I mentioned a book by the late Irish philosopher and poet John O'Donohue, Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity and Hope. I've only made it through the first chapter, but I'm already finding that I need to do a re-read before I launch into the next one. It is that rich.

O'Donohue talks about beauty and the spiritual journey and the challenges presented to both by our present digital age. I could summarize what he has said, but that wouldn't do his writing justice, so let me just quote at length:

"Traditionally, a journey has a rhythm of three forces: time, self and space. Now the digital virus has truncate time and space. Marooned on each instant, we have forfeited the practice of patience, the attention to emergence and delight in the Eros of discovery. The self has become anxious for what the next instant might bring. This greed for destination obliterates the journey. The digital desire for the single instant schools the mind in false priority. Each instant proclaims its own authority and the present image demands the complete attention of the eye. There is no sense of natural sequence where an image is allowed to emerge from its background and context when the time is right, the eye is worthy and the heart is appropriate. The mechanics of electronic imaging reverses the incarnation of real encounter. But a great journey needs plenty of time. It should not be rushed; if it is, your life become a kind of abstract package tour devoid of beauty and meaning. There is such a constant whirr of movement that you never know where you are. You have no time to give yourself to the present experience. When you accumulate experiences at such a tempo, everything becomes thin. Consequently, you become ever more absent from your life and this fosters emptiness that haunts the heart." (Italics added.)

We live in a culture and amongst a people with empty, haunted hearts, closed off from ourselves and from the outside world by a digital rush of stimuli, unable to process or receive the nurturing embrace of Beauty. The journey is now just a hop-skip-and-jump to the next experience, and each ensuing experience becomes more vapid and unsatisfying than the last. For those of us engaged in the spiritual formation of ourselves and others, perhaps the greatest gift we can give is simply an appropriate pacing, slowing the rush so that beauty, truth and love can take their proper roots in our souls at the proper time.