This morning is the funeral of Brendan Doyle in New Orleans. Brendan was a Dominican brother for about 8 years, and we met in the Order.
We worked closely together for 17 years, and the Creation Spirituality movement owes a lot to him. Among other things, he introduced me to the work of Gabriel Marcel and Gustav and Alma Mahler. He was a musician and very fond of Mahler’s music and often cited his teaching that All of creation adorns itself continually for God. Everyone therefore has only one duty, to be as beautiful as possible in every way in the eyes of God and man. Ugliness is an insult to God.*
We wrote an album together called “Musical, Mystical Bear” (I doing the lyrics) which we published along with my book On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style. He was on the faculty of ICCS both at Mundelein College in Chicago and Holy Names College in Oakland where he was also an excellent administrator for about ten years. He received his master’s degree from ICCS at Mundelein.
Brendan taught courses in art as meditation, one being, “Singing Hildegard of Bingen’s Music” and also a very inspired course on “Artist as Spiritual Voyager.” In that course he would take a single musician such as Mozart or Mahler or Beethoven or Bach etc. and walk students through their music using the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality to draw out the deep spirituality inherent in each musicians’ music.
It was truly brilliant and I regret that he never got around to writing a book about it. But he left behind a method for bringing forth the spiritual genius of our great musicians and someday others will pick up on it, I am sure.
Brendan oversaw a “Hildegard Mass” celebrated at Holy Names College in which Hildegard was present in a deep way both in her music and in slides of her mandalas and other paintings. It was very well received and one notable feminist writer in attendance said that if she had known of Hildegard, she probably would not have left the church.
Brendan translated Julian of Norwich from medieval English in his excellent book, Mediations with Julian of Norwich, published in 1983. I saw the book for sale in her church in Norwich a few years ago. He contributed a fine summary of her musical innovations in the “Introduction” to my book on her Book of Divine Works, Letters and Songs.
Following are excerpts from an interview conducted with Bear & Company: The Little Magazine in 1983.**
Fox: You say that Julian is like a musician. Would you explain what you mean by that?
Doyle: Julian’s use of images reminds me so much of the romantic composers, Schumann, Wagner and Mahler. One of the characteristics of the romantic movement is that it rediscovered the images of the Middle Ages, particularly the image of the feminine. Wagner develops the themes of the eternal feminine in his Ring as Brunnhilde and The Flyng Dutchman as Senat. Woman as salvation. The anima.
Julian has these images of motherhood. God is mother—this could have been written in the nineteenth century at the time of Mahler and Wagner. That is basically the theme of most of Mahler’s symphonies if not of all of them. Particularly in his Ninth Symphony, his final symphony, where he takes the Brünnhilde theme and develops it, tells us that unless we rediscover the anima, we’ll destroy ourselves.
Also, Julian’s language—its beauty, its poetry, its rhythm is very musical. “All will be well,” she says. This is what Wagner says at the end of the Ring and Mahler in his Ninth.
To be continued.
*Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters, p. 168. Cited in Fox, On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style, now called Prayer: A Radical Response to Life, p. 151.
** Bear & Company: The Little Magazine, pp. 1-4, 21.
Banner Image: Hildegard of Bingen, “Cultivating the Cosmic Tree,” Scivias. Reprinted in Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you find in Brendan Doyle’s teachings that deepen and/or inspire you and your vocation as a mystic and prophet in our times? And the role that art plays in that journey?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letter and Songs, pp. 363-365
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest
Meditations with Julian of Norwich
3 thoughts on “Brendan Doyle, An Early Leader in the Creation Spirituality Movement”
I find it fascinating (and reassuring) to endlessly encounter the same fundamental truths expressed through all the human channels of communication, languages, symbols, arts, etc. In the dialogue presented in today’s DM, Brendan Doyle says that Mahler, “takes the Brünnhilde theme and develops it, tells us that unless we rediscover the anima, we’ll destroy ourselves.” The “we” in that sentence is obviously an animus-dominated, i.e. patriarchal humanity. That statement is a musical version of Luke 6:36 as discussed in the June 25 DM: “Be mother-like as your father is mother-like.” Goethe’s Faust also comes to mind: “The eternal feminine draws us upward.” So do, day after day, these Daily Meditations, thank you once again.
For me, Beauty in all its manifestations is the anchor and chain to faith.
I like the expression of John O Donahue in his book
Beauty the invisible embrace… Our human spiritual connection to divinity.
Mahler was said to have the mind of a Mystic by his assistant Bruno Walter.
I believe that is evident in his music.
Especially recommend Mahler’s Das Lied von der erde – The song of the earth for another example.
Claudio Naranjo said that the great composers are the gurus of the Western World. In this video, he talks about the great composers like Beethoven and Bach as mystics and says that music can go from the heart to the heart, that it can transform people. “Musicians,” he says, “have made the great journey. This is equivalent to saying that they are mystics.” Speaking at least of the great composers, he says the fact that they are musicians is sort of a sidelight; they are hidden teachers of humankind. I don’t know if Claudio would agree that all artists are mystics, as you have said Matthew. I’d like to think that, but speaking of the great composers as mystics appears to have been one of Claudio’s frequent teachings. This video includes translation into German. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUVFhrrzCUM