old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies

Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?

- John Dowell in Ford Maddox Ford's, The Good Soldier (1915)

The narrator, John Dowell, in Ford Maddox Ford's famous novel The Good Soldier, poses this rhetorical question in light of the personal changes that have shaped his own life and relationships against the background of the massive social changes of the early 20th century. Things change, especially the known and the lovable, and the circumstances in which we have been happy (or at least comfortable). In this passing life there is much opportunity for regret, melancholy and sorrow. For a broken heart. This tragic knowledge is encoded in the wisdom of most cultures down through the ages.

The early Christian author Boethius attempts to make the best of this, with a sort of hopeful counterpoint. He writes: Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away... (The Consolation of Philosophy)


St Gregory of Nyssa offers a rather deeper, more explicitly Christian and optimistic understanding of mutability, this mood and and its significance: But in truth the finest aspect of our mutability is the possibility of growth in good; and this capacity for improvement transforms the soul, as it changes, more and more into the divine. And so what appears so terrifying (I mean the mutability of our nature) can really be as a pinion in our flight towards higher things, and indeed it would be a hardship if we were not susceptible of the sort of change which is towards the better. One ought not then to be distressed when one considers this tendency in our nature; rather let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being “transformed from glory to glory” [2 Cor 3:18], and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our perfection by any limitation.

The feast of the Dormition - the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God - already points towards the Christian experience of the transformation of tragedy in Christ. This is not simply improvement but transformation. As we have noted over the past few weeks, we see in the death of the Mother of God that she by grace, has made of death an act of life. Death has been taken up into the Paschal mystery. Since all that is good, and all love, is rooted in God and finds its reality, stability, meaning, purpose and hope in Christ, we are allowed to think, to hope that all that is known and lovable in this life will be gathered up and mysteriously present in Christ, in the Kingdom of God. There God will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Revelation 7:17, 21:4). There the old beautiful dances, the old beautiful intimacies having passed away will find their ultimate truth.

Between Transfiguration and Dormition

Between Transfiguration and Dormition

Both these feasts are connected with death. The first comes before the death of Our Lord and anticipates it. The second commemorates the death of the Mother of God, and comes after His the death and resurrection.

We are told in the liturgical hymns for the feast that the Transfiguration was a gift to the disciples Peter, James and John in anticipation of the suffering and death of the Lord. It was meant to give them something - some hope - to see them through their experience of holy week, in order to strengthen them: Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they
could see it; so that when they would behold Thee crucified, they would understand that Thy suffering was voluntary.... (Kontakion)

The Dormition is a death that becomes a gift, a gift of hope, because it reveals that death is no longer the master of our life, but is itself subject to the power of the love of God in
Christ. It is as if the theory of Resurrection is here manifest and demonstrated in practice. The reality and power of the resurrection of Christ is applied to our common human life in the person of the Mother of God. What is proclaimed as Gospel - the risen Christ, the Lord of Life, trampling down death by death - is experienced here in the reality of the believer's new life in Christ. For being the Mother of Life, she was translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb (Kontakion)

Both are therefore feasts of hope. The hope of the Transfiguration is that in spite of appearances, the Lord is Lord, and on the other side of His betrayal, suffering and death is the resurrection, ascension and glorification - in which we are called to share. The hope of the Dormition is that in spite of appearances, death is for believers a falling asleep, a letting go in an act of love and trust, a departure or 'translation' into the arms of the risen and glorified Life-Giver.

Christ did not enchant men

Christ did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while, Peter, James, and John were permitted to see Him in His glory. For that brief while they had no need of faith. The vision vanished, and the memory of it did not prevent them from all forsaking Him when He was arrested, or Peter from denying that he had ever known Him.
- W. H. Auden in A Certain World (London: Faber and Faber, 1971)

our mutability is the possibility of growth

But in truth the finest aspect of our mutability is the possibility of growth in good; and this capacity for improvement transforms the soul, as it changes, more and more into the divine. And so what appears so terrifying (I mean the mutability of our nature) can really be as a pinion in our flight towards higher things, and indeed it would be a hardship if we were not susceptible of the sort of change which is towards the better. One ought not then to be distressed when one considers this tendency in our nature; rather let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being “transformed from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18), and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our perfection by any limitation.

- St Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection