Meditation for Friday the 13th
The 1946 British film below (released as “Stairway to Heaven” in the U.S.) is one of my favorites. I saw it as a child. Since costar Kim Hunter died this week (on 9/11), and since today is Friday the 13th, the following material seems relevant.
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Kim Hunter in 1946 |
R.A.F pilot and psychiatrist
Alan McGlashan |
Alan McGlashan has practiced as a psychiatrist in London for more than forty years. He also served as a pilot for the R.A.F. (with MC and Croix de Guerre decorations). |
The doctor in “A Matter of Life and Death” addresses a heavenly court on behalf of his patient, R.A.F pilot David Niven:
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In the film, David Niven is saved by mistake from a fated death and his doctor must argue to a heavenly court that he be allowed to live. |
In a similar situation, I would want Dr. Alan McGlashan, a real-life psychiatrist, on my side. For an excerpt from one of my favorite books, McGlashan’s The Savage and Beautiful Country,
As Walker Percy has observed (see my Sept. 7 note, “The Boys from Uruguay”), a characteristic activity of human beings is what Percy called “symbol-mongering.” In honor of today’s anniversary of the births of two R.A.F. fighter pilots,
Sir Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes (b. 1915) and author
Roald Dahl (b. 1916),
here is one of the better symbols of the past century:
The circle is of course a universal symbol, and can be made to mean just about whatever one wants it to mean. In keeping with Clint Eastwood’s advice, in the soundtrack album for “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” to “accentuate the positive,” here are some positive observations on a circle from the poet (and perhaps saint) Dante, who died on the night of September 13-14:
In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company. Their love for God is kindled even more and grows as they find more individuals to love. Among the blessed souls are St. Thomas Aquinas and one of his intellectual “enemies”, Siger of Brabant, a brilliant philosopher at the University of Paris, some of whose teachings were condemned as heretical. Conflicts and divisions on earth are now forgotten and absorbed into a communal love song and dance “whose sweetness and harmony are unknown on earth and whose joy becomes one with eternity.”
Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and “woo with matins song her Bridegroom’s love.” Some critics consider this passage the most “spiritually erotic” of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. It is the ending of Canto 10, verses 139-148.
— Fr. James J. Collins, “The Spiritual Journey with Dante V,” Priestly People October 1997
The above material on Dante is from the Servants of the Paraclete website.
For more on the Paraclete, see
See also the illustration in the note below.