So many times, in the past somewhat turbulent decade of my life, I have reflected upon a particular verse by Sophocles:
πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει [1]
For this seems to me to capture something of our rather strange human nature – of our ability, our potential, our capacity, to be compassionate, empathic, honourable, cultured, human beings, and our seemingly equal capacity (or often, greater capacity) to be unsympathetic, insensitive, selfish, dishonourable, and just plain barbaric.
This morning – as the Sun of a late English Spring rose into an almost cloudless sky and a north-easterly breeze presaged another beautiful but not too hot day – I received a lovely message (via that modern medium of communication, the Internet) from someone in Canada I have never met and whose existence I was previously unaware of. Some words about The Numinous Way – and in the moment of my reading of those words it was as if we two unmet human beings were somehow in some very human way briefly connected; as if some energy – something numinous and good – passed between, touched, and linked us, if only for a fleeting moment, to bring for me one more remembering of the numinous promise that lives within us, as individual human beings, and as a species.
For me, it has been a hard journey – sometimes a terrible journey – to finally arrive at this, my hitherto un-named, destination. To forge in words some work of art, wrought by memories and feelings of that decades long journey. And now, all I can hope for – all I should hope for – this work, this Numinous Way of mine which is yet not-mine, is that it may, it might, just aid someone, somewhere, to avoid the mistakes I made; that it might, just might, cause someone, somewhere at some time, to sense, to feel, the numinosity of life; that it might, just might, engender in someone, somewhere at some time, a certain empathy and compassion, and thus in some small way contribute to our human culture.
For surely that is what all human culture is, or perhaps should be: a means, one means, whereby we can share with others our pathei-mathos – presenced as some work or works of Art, or by the passage and experiences of our lives – so that others can possibly learn from them, and so not inflict upon humans beings, upon other life, what we ourselves did in our quite often arrogant and selfish quest before the Cosmos, or some personal tragedy, or some love, humbled us, and restored to us, or gave to us as a gift, the goodness that exists in so many human beings.
Now, I have no gods, no God – living, remembered, hoped for or believed in – to thank for aiding, guiding, me on that journey. No longer any sense of personal Destiny, of that arrogant self-assurance and almost primal determination that so many times kept me safe in the midst of danger. Now, there is only a knowing of my place – of how I am but one fragile microcosmic connexion, one nexion, to all the life around, beyond, me; one affected and affecting connexion who can so easily, so thoughtlessly, so dishonourably, cause so much suffering and harm, and yet who has so many positive gifts to offer.
For this knowing of my place, this human perspective, is a knowing of how our humanity – the numinous good that lies in wait within us – is and can be and should be presenced in a shared and personal love; in that compassion, that desire for the cessation of suffering, which empathy so painfully, and so poignantly at times, reveals for us; and in that sense of fairness, that spirit of nobility, that lack of prejudiced judgement, that a code of personal honour enshrines.
It has not, I must admit, been easy, to so selflessly offer such human gifts as a gentle love, shared; not easy to quell the anger that once, so many times, would arise within me; not easy to slowly emerge from the safe cave of prejudiced assumptions; not easy to cease to dream dreams of personal Destiny and worldly Fate. For such things had become a habit, perhaps even an addiction. But like a body, trained: there came time when effort, pain, endurance, produced a surge of health so that one would run, a young, youthful man, again, among the meadow grass, bare feet touching Sun-warmed soil, to feel, to be, the very essence of numinous life; glad, so very glad, to live, to be alive – one human being, reborn, bearing within so many gifts, and knowing, knowing in that wordless way of Empathy and Thought, that Life, we, are here, born, for compassion, love, sensitivity, and sharing.
David Myatt
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[1] Sophocles: Antigone, 334. My translation is – There exists much that is strange, but nothing has more strangeness than we human beings.
