THE BOOKS that we tend to put aside for our next retreat (if we can manage one) often end up being the ones that we should really be spending time with when we are busily caught up in stressed-out work days and fraught home time. Prayer can be a bit easier when on a little break in a quiet convent. When we really need its discipline, however, is when life is overtaking us.
I naturally put aside The Virgin Eye by Robin Daniels to look at between vespers and compline in my usual retreat spot. Reading it, I painfully realised that I need its insights and reminders every single day and hour of my life.
Daniels worked as a Jungian analyst for 30 years, and was a supervisor for St Marylebone Healing Centre. This book started out as initial thoughts on the interface between psychology and spirituality. He expanded on those notes over the next 20 years, and the result is, though slightly quaint in style, a wise companion to the Christian life. It is more of a poetic fountain to draw from than a river of prose full of argument.
Daniels sets out the main challenges of contemporary living, not least our solitary confinements in social media, which can make us overexcited and, ironically, under-informed. He then calls us to wash our eyes and look out, and in, with the eyes of a child. If Christian faith is a school for learning how to relate more deeply to God, ourselves, and each other, then Daniels is a trustworthy teacher, as he shows how this school is practical and not conveniently theoretical.
He explores the importance of taming the tongue, for instance, and our lamentable eating habits. His emphasis on prayer is like that of the ancient Assyrians, who used the same word for this relationship as they did for the act of opening a clenched fist. Daniels clearly understands prayer as a restorer of innocence, a movement of our green shoots towards the sun. The spiritual life, for him, is one of attention and praise.
In a moving introduction by his wife, who sees this book published after her husband’s death, she describes the man she knew as living “a rhythmical life, at an adagio pace. He was a very pure man; rather quiet, spacious and simple; always grateful.” He is easily read between his lines. Packed full of rich quotations and distilled loves, this is a Wunderkabinett for any apprentice of Christ.
The Revd Mark Oakley is Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral.
The Virgin Eye: Towards a contemplative view of life
Robin Daniels
Katherine Daniels, editor
Instant Apostle £9.99
(978-1-909728-52-3)
Church Times Bookshop £9