‘Mono no aware’
This morning while dressing up I looked through the half-opened door at the light rain falling on the terrace. I thought of nothing in particular and just gave myself to whatever might come. A freshness cooled my breathing, the drizzle’s gift. Now and then a cock crowed, perhaps to call me back to the moment, and I became alert again, and even tried, without the use of triangles, to calculate the rooster’s location, twenty meters due east, more or less.
Oh it seemed like another wet day, a gray morning in the soul, a perfect time to waste in a coffee shop with a cup of cappuccino.
But, of course, there was work, and there was the wife’s gentle reminder of a nudge. And then came—in somewhat this order— a pull on the socks, a slip into shoes, a furious many-handed fumble for keys, the wallet and cell phone, already flashing on its face two unanswered text messages. And before leaving house the prayer to St. Raphael for safe conduct.
The way ahead was by no means hostile country to negotiate which one would need to be flanked by chariots of fire. We knew the territory. Not to brag, but from here the wife could hit town eyes closed, if someone else was driving, which was now the case, the car being in sick bay.
We lucked into a suitable taxicab with a neighborly driver, and without delay, as we entered the road that wound beside the sea, the young man transported us to Japan with stories about that country, which he had heard from his mother who had married a Japanese.
Why Japan of all places? His account of the cherry blossoms only reminded me of “mono no aware” in Japanese art—the “ahh-ness of things,” the feeling ever so tender of sadness at the world’s transience. Virgil’s version of it is “lacrimae rerum”—the tears of things. As the line from the “Aeneid” from which it comes goes in translation—”The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.”
Article continues after this advertisementThe days before Jesus’ departure must have filled the disciples with much the same feeling. Seeing their grief, Jesus told them, “I will not leave you as orphans.” And he assured them of his constant presence nonetheless, and promised to ask the Father to give them another Advocate to be with them always, “the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it.”
Article continues after this advertisementMay that be the reason why the world is a world of tears, why there is in things a cryingness? The world does not see or know the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the Root of Life, to whom Hildegard of Bingen sang, “O Holy Wisdom, Soaring Power, encompass us with wings unfurled, and carry us, encircling all, above, below, and through the world.” The world yields to the embrace of the Holy Spirit when it abandons its lies and self-seeking for the truth, love.
The concept of “mono no aware” had its origins in Japanese literature. In no time it spread and became part of the whole cultural tradition of Japan. A Japanese director known for this sensibility in his work usually had a character saying in the end, by way of comment after a life-changing turn of events, “Fine weather, isn’t it?”
Sure enough it was fine weather when we reached the city. And perhaps, because the rain had stopped, the driver stopped talking too, gripped by a sense of—because he received our money—gain, not loss.
Really I should make the same comment about the weather, too, no matter the time of day or the season. Because with the Holy Spirit it is glorious summer, always—nothing fades, withers or dies. That is the way of love and the nature of God, who, Ecclesiastes tells us, “has made everything beautiful in its time.”
