That Ancient Longing

What is that vague desire that niggles away at the edge of consciousness, a fleeting consciousness that slips through the fingers of memory like the mists of the morning blowing through elysian fields?

There have been moments: the Old Warsaw Restaurant in Dallas and the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston; a very cheap student basement restaurant in Amsterdam and in a museum near Rotterdam, the Vermeer painting “The Girl with a Pearl in Her Ear;” the Boston Pops and the Dallas Symphony; mid-day music at St. Martin’s in the Fields in London and fish and chips and mushy peas in a London restaurant; Elizabeth Elming singing “My love is like a red, red rose” at the Robbie Burns night at Herstmonceux Castle;  Julian Onderdonk’s blue bells and Camille Corot’s fields of poppies; prime rib at Durgin Park in Faneuil Square and a ride on the Harbour Ferry.  Some paintings speak out of a different wellspring, a soul sickness slathered on with a heavy pallet knife.  Other painters evoke a beauty and penultimate joy beyond words.  Nothing is neutral.  I keep reaching for those ephemeral moments … what echoes of history, light, culture and beauty lie behind them? 

Some books stir my heart, and in search for that fleeting touch of the numinous other I read them and re-read them; authors like C. S. Lewis and The Narnia Tales, and That Hideous Strength; Charles Williams Descent into Hell or War in Heaven; J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic hobbit tales, and translations of poetry from the Poems and Prose from Old English by Burton Raffel.

So often the melodies of heaven flow fleetingly through classical music, but some composers, artists, or writers speak out of an inner angst that conveys a deadly message I don’t need to hear.  Just because the composer is having a bad day, or even a bad life there is no reason for him to afflict that on me.  

What is it that I miss?  There isn’t enough art, music, and history to satisfy those longings of the soul.  Why?  Is it actually sparse?  In some places culture and history are only a thin veneer.  On the other hand, is it that I don’t always take the time and effort to look for it?  Or is it that in all these fleeting things the images of beauty and depth are only pale reflections of an eternal beauty seen only in the vision of the face of Jesus Christ who is the icon of God?

            “Oh my Lord, there is in everything I love a shadow of You and shadows of my heavenly home.  Too often I search among the paler reflections what can be seen most clearly in You.  Where You are there is life, art, beauty, and true culture.”