Heroes Not Zombies

John O’Donohue used to talk about “invisible nearnesses” –

He said “…the mountains, particularly in Connemara, are huge dark mountains. There’s a lot of moisture and a lot of rain and a lot of mist. And some mornings you’d get up, and the fog would’ve come half way down the mountain, rendering the top of the mountain invisible. You’re in the presence of the mountain, and half the mountain has vanished. It’s there, but not visible to the eye. And I often think that it’s a wonderful image of the imagination, that image. In other words, that there are around every life a series of huge nearnesses, a whole invisible world that we can’t see with the eye but that is absolutely crucial to who we are. And I think that the imagination is the faculty that brings you in touch with these presences that are around your life. That’s where I think the divine, and the soul, and the magic of the world between us all, the world of betweenness – that’s where they all reside. And that’s where the imagination loves to dig its furrow and to disclose these hidden, oblique kind of presences.

Every morning for the last few years, when I’ve been at home, in Stirling, I’ve looked out at a mountain – Ben Ledi, but sometimes it’s not there.

Recently, it wasn’t just invisible, the way John O’Donohue describes it, but there was a rainbow there instead! I immediately remembered his idea of “invisible nearnesses”, so I browsed around and found the original text I remembered from his film, “Anam Cara”.

Now I read that again, I’m struck by another of his points – “the world of betweenness” – and how that is exactly what Iain McGilchrist talks about when he describes the right hemisphere of the brain’s approach to the world.