There is a telling story of a British anthropologist who came to a village in India where the natives wove the most beautiful shawls. The art of weaving was highly prized there. The workers wove the shawls amidst conversation with each other about local events and old stories. Weaving was their secret skill, and its methods had become like second nature. The anthropologist observed them for weeks. Then one morning, he came there and told them that he had worked out exactly how they did it. He made explicit the implicit skill they exercised. He showed them the secret of their artistry. In that disclosure, he robbed their artistry of all its magic. With that he changed them from surprised artists of emergent beauty into helpless, impoverished workers. This story could stand as a metaphor for the massive transformation in the modern world. The natural and ancient creativity of soul is being replaced by the miserable little arithmetic of know-how.
Creativity is rich with unexpected possibility. Know-how is mere fragmented mechanics which lacks tradition, context, and surprise. Analysis is always subsequent to and parasitic on creativity. Our culture is becoming crowded with analysts, and much of what passes for creativity is merely clever know-how. When creativity dries up, the analysts turn on themselves and begin to empty out the inner world; this has contributed to the terrible loss of soul in our culture. It is wise to recall that “analysis” comes from the Greek word “ana-luein,” which means to break something complex into its simple elements. When the embrace and depth of creativity are absent, analysis becomes destruction. It can break things apart, but there is nothing now to put them back together again. Nature always maintains this balance between breakage and new life.
Among the most delightful features in the West of Ireland landscape are the stone walls. These walls frame off the fields from each other. They bestow personality and shape on the fields. These walls are more like frontiers than hermetic boundaries. When you see a wall on the mountain, you see the different styles of openings between the stones. Each wall is a series of different windows of light. Rabbits, hares, and foxes have favourite windows in these walls through which they always cross. Each wall is frontier and simultaneously a labyrinth of invisibility. Often, as children, if we were herding cattle on the mountain, we would shelter during showers by these walls. When we looked out from one of these windows between the stones, we would see the whole landscape beneath us in a new way; everything was framed differently. These walls, called “foiseach” in Irish, are also often shelters for all kinds of growth: grasses, plants, briars. They became home to a whole subculture of insects, bees, birds, and animals. Because of the shelter and kindness of the walls, you would often find the sweetest grasses there. Sheep and cattle were never slow to find out the sweetest grass. Wouldn’t it be interesting if instead of hermetically sealed barriers, the areas of beginning and ending in our hearts and lives could be such rich and latticed frontiers? They would be windows to look out on alternative possibilities; in other words, the freshness of other styles of being and thinking could still be somehow present even if they were not directly adjacent or even engaged. The natural shelter that grows on both sides of such frontiers would be left alone, to grow according to its own instinct. The most trustable shelter around the human mind and heart is the one that grows naturally there.
Every life has its own natural shelter belt. So often our severity with ourselves cuts that to shreds. Then we wonder why we feel so naked and unsheltered when the storm comes. The wisdom of folk culture always recognizes that when the storm of suffering rages one should not go out there into single combat with it. Rather, one should lie in and shelter close to the wall until the storm has abated. There is a lovely humility in the idea of lying low and sheltering. It recognizes that the storm comes from the penumbral unknown; it has a mind and direction of its own, and the vulnerable individual can but shelter until the time of tranquillity returns. The modern tendency to safari into subjectivity to find the cause of everything was alien to the folk mind.
