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2010 Series
Transformation through the Mystery of Beauty -
Sacred Art and the
Christian Contemplative Tradition

All talks are on Saturdays 10.00am - 1.00pm in North London.
Advance booking is recommended

A certain cultural and spiritual atmosphere favours the secret and spontaneous development of the inner self. The ancient cultural traditions, both of East and West, having a religious and sapiential nature, favoured the interior life, indeed transmitted certain common materials in the form of archetypal symbols, liturgical notes, art, poetry, philosophy, and myth, which nourished the inner self from childhood to maturity. In such a cultural setting, no one needs to be self conscious about his interior life, and subjectivity does not run the risk of being deviated into morbidity and excess. Unfortunately, such a cultural setting no longer exists in the West or is no longer common property.

Thomas Merton The Inner Experience - Notes on Contemplation

Reveal Your presence
And may the vision of Your beauty be my death;
For the sickness of love
Is not cured
Except by Your very presence and image.

The soul is right in daring to say ‘may the vision of your beauty be my death’, since she knows that at the instant she sees this beauty she will be carried away by it, and absorbed in this very beauty, and be transformed in this beauty, and made beautiful like this beauty itself, and enriched and provided for like this very beauty.

St John of the Cross Spiritual Canticle – Stanza 11 and Commentary