Live In the Within

You live in deep space. The vistas that terrified Pascal are all around you. They are the within, the inwardness, of all things. This is Fäerie, this is Tír na nÓg, this is the Heavens, this is the Heart, this is the abyss, this is Zion, this is God’s throne, this is the Silver Branch land to which Bran voyaged. This is the land of magic, the land of enchantment, the land of persons, the realm of freedom, the well of creation.

The heart itself is but a little vessel, and yet there are dragons, and there lions, and there venomous beasts, and all the treasures of wickedness; and there are rough uneven ways, there chasms; there likewise is God, there the angels, there life and the kingdom, there light and the apostles, there the heavenly cities, there the treasures, there are all things.

St Macarius the Great, Spiritual Homily 43:7

All of modernity’s pathos is a forgetfulness of the reality that we live and walk in this land here and now, that it is less than a hair’s breadth from us.

This is the heart-land to which the Lord ascended, to which Enoch was translated, to which the Mother of God was assumed, leaving behind in place of this outward body a mass of flowers, our Christian Blodeuwedd.

The souls of trees are near you. The souls of animals are near you. Their eyes are windows. The stories are windows, are doors. The music is a door. Dancing is a door. Sex is a door. Your love is a door. Prayer of the heart is a door. Your suffering is a door. Someone is knocking at the door. The door can open, you can walk through into that other land, you can walk through now, and yet remain here, surrounded by the outward but drawing into it a flame. The flame burns within. The Lord who wishes to kindle fire on the earth is knocking so you will open the door and allow the flame to pass through. This is your task, this is your vocation, and only you can open this door.

The Silver Branch land is real. It is the very reality of this outward world in which the forgetful have shut themselves. The doors are locked from our side. This is exile, this is purgatory, this is hell, when we are here behind that closed door. But the Kingdom of Heaven is near, it is where the Lord is, the Lord of Avalon, the Lord who is the Lord of Annwn because he descended into it.

Read the story and believe it. Sing the prayer and mean it. Love the sisters and brothers, the land and its creatures, and serve them, serve their souls, serve their life. Open the door, enter the perilous realm, seek the King, seek the Queen, dance with her in the summer meadow, in the secret valley cradled in the heart of those Summerlands. Climb those holy mountains with love in your heart as your feet bleed on the stones.

Open, open, open!