Western Province Welcomes John Philip Newell.
The following short video shows the opening of the day in Claregalway, Co Galway. Please ensure your speakers are turned up, click on the arrow and enjoy!
This next short clip shows John Philip speaking to us as Mercy women.
John Philip Newell is the author of many very readable books. However, for the over 140 strong audience, to hear him speak in person in Claregalway recently brought a whole extra dimension to all the wisdom he has to share. Many remarked on the beautiful scarf he wore as, indeed, it showed his comfort in himself and how well-rounded is his presence. Moments throughout the day brought us to meaningful, quiet prayer and two short, meditative, times of silence reminded us of that deep well, from which we all need to drink.
We began with the active quality of listening, as John Philip reminded us of the Celtic tradition of keeping the story of John the Beloved’s closeness to Jesus. Such listening to the heartbeat of God was our invitation for the day, and for the rest of our lives. Listen, he suggested, to what we have forgotten and to what we haven’t heard before. Listen in an unbounded way, aware that the deeper we move into our own being, the closer we come to each other.
John Philip spoke of how we have been schooled into a sense of separation, rather than one of well being, or the generosity of inter-being. From his deep connection with Iona, he spoke of the thirteenth-century nunnery that stands in ruined openness there and the growing awareness of the need to re-connect with the, “cathedral of creation.” This place where women worshipped also emphasises our need to recover feminine spirituality. He connected this with the roofless church of New Harmony, something of which he has written in his own books, A New Harmony and The Rebirthing of God. Such openness was mirrored in this event in the delight of being inter-provincial and having the freedom to invite interested friends to participate.
John Philip referred to some of the earlier Christian wisdom figures. Meister Eckhart, for example, writes of the origin of the phrase, the Only Begotten Son of God, as coming from the reality of Jesus’ being begotten of the Only One. John Philip also spoke of Jesus as revelation of God, in that the word comes from the Latin revelare, meaning to lift the veil. Yet, John Philip spoke of this age as being a time of exile, on which his most recent book is based. Juliana of Norwich wrote of the love longings of God, and it is to such that we are invited to re-connect. Can we be present to the unspeakable beauty in life? What has happened to our sacred instinct for oneness? How can we be part of serving this instinct? One truth, of which John Philip reminded us, is that what we do matters and how we treat each other matters. What we need, he suggests, is not a new word but a re-sounding invitation to grow again into God at the heart of all.
There was much in John Philip’s sharing on Teilhard de Chardin, who saw the heart of matter as being the heart of God. We can be saved, he wrote, only by being one with the earth. There was much fear of the inconvenient truth of his revelations but, having been exiled to China, the fragrance of the feminine came to be more deeply appreciated by Chardin, in matter’s sacred attraction to oneness. This is seen in the fundamental law of gravity.
In speaking of the future, John Philip was most hopeful. He acknowledges that a collapse is happening but that we are being called to a deep, faithful letting-go. We need to be strong in a spirit of birthing that allows the new to emerge. We can lack radical humility but by welcoming ways of seeing in the great traditions that are not our own, we can re-claim our own tradition. John Philip spoke of Bede Griffiths, who found the other half of his soul in Hinduism. During travels to India, they actually met and exchanged that beautiful Namaste blessing. This was close to the time when Bede had a life-changing experience of God as feminine. For him, a stroke (“too much for my old Western body”) was a time of illumination and liberation. As Bede Griffiths moved away from ego, John Philip urged us too to let it go.
Another memorable quotation from Meister Eckhart, shared by John Philip, was that God is to be found in the human heart not by addition but by subtraction. As Jesus tells us all the time, only by dying can we truly live. One other dimension of this rich day, was some counsel with regard to meditation. Don’t get cross with the monkey mind but just return to the centre! In the short times of practice, John Philip played a short chant that can help this time. Towards the end of the input, he returned to this theme, telling us that meditation is about experiencing the heart of the divine presence that is at the heart of every moment. The invitation is one of love and he gave us the advice to nourish the sense of self in one another.
We were all truly nourished by participation in this day and share our appreciation with everyone involved in organising it, as well, of course, as our wonderful speaker, John Philip Newell.
Suzanne Ryder rsm
Western Province
