The Forgotten Threshold: A Journal of Arthur MiddletonO'Brien, Edward J. (Edward Joseph)
Religion
The Forgotten Threshold: A Journal of Arthur Middleton
O'Brien, Edward J. (Edward Joseph)
Diaries; Mysticism
Imagination being Eternal Life, it shows the blind instinct of
language that the word should mean the creation of images. Imagination
is the instrument of God's creation in his own _image_ and likeness.
Today I came to Petrarch and Dante--the mystics of the supreme
elements. To contrast their serenity with Blake's wrath shows the
whiter heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the
Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral
messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in
narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is
outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight
its light in the music of the ancient winds, telling me of the
crucifixion in burning colors of a dying world. Why am I unworthy of
an equal death? The blood runs toward it in a passion of harmony. The
day is near when my morning stars shall sing their lives out together
in praise of their Creator, though it is futile to measure it in terms
of time. One is not curious of time if one lives in eternity. Death is
then only the fulfilment of our operative desires. I wish that I were
one of the tears of God. Joy is for those _of good will_.
August 8.
I met one of Wordsworth's old men today gathering faggots on the
shore. "I have been to all places and cities and I found no one happy
on the world, and now I wish me to be dead." ... Tonight I bowed in
silence under the vault of stars. To be holy is to lose the knowledge
of good and evil through "clinging Heaven by the hems." To refuse evil
is to refuse the apple _(malum)_ of the Tree of Knowledge. There is no
possibility of finding the ideal unless we look passionately for
nothing but the beauty of souls, seeing therein God's image and
refusing to perceive the clouds of evil. Circles lead to Heaven, but
straight lines to Hell. Straight lines are the tangents that "err"
from the sphere of the ideal. Miss C---- told me about a little boy
who was visiting Italy with his mother. He fell down hill, and stopped
before a roadside crucifix. And then he forgot his fall. They found
him crying as if his heart would break, and he told them that it was
because he was so sorry for that sad Man whom everybody had made
suffer so. The angels drop seed into our souls which make them
invisible to other men, and we also may plant seed with modesty and
humility. It is God's fernseed to mortals. How strange it is that we
measure time by moons, cold satellites, and thus the symbol of death.
But after all time is the dark night of the soul. I realized for the
first time today that I was born in December, the month of creation,
when the flame turns in upon itself in the hard cold earth and gives
birth to high hopes whose fulfilment are in eternity. It is the month
of Christmas on that account. I have begun to perceive what awful
wings my thoughts have, and know that they are given them by God
through me to carry them humbly into the most secret circle of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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