My Beloved Father Edmund

I met St. Edmund on Ender’s Island, Connecticut. To be more accurate, I came across his arm. I was attracted by the gentleness and beauty, the long, slightly curved fingers and the delicate bone structure of the hand. I marveled at the thought that a hand can tell so much about a person, because I was immediately aware of St. Edmund’s presence. I was struck by the sense of peace and loving interest in my hurts and fears. His island, possibly like his other resting place, the Abbey of Pontigny in France, is a place of beauty, peace and refuge for the burdened spirit. After observing many emotional healings in the families and people who visited the island, I became aware that there was a great saint interceding, humbly and quietly, without recognition- a great lover of Our Lord and Lady.

In preparing for this icon, I researched the life of St. Edmund. I felt the hairs stand on my neck as I met the same man in words as I met in spirit on Ender’s Island. His titles: Peacemaker, Father of Poor and Afflicted Children. Thus the icon shows St. Edmund interceding for one of his poor and afflicted children, encouraging another to reach out in charity.

St. Edmund was born in England in 1174, a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. He was primarily a man of prayer, and then a scholar. He became a priest, then was pulled up through the ranks of the Church until he occupied the Archbishopric of Canterbury, at that time, the second highest place in Christendom. Like his saintly predecessor, St. Thomas a Becket, he was forced into exile by problems of politics. On his landing in France, he blessed a young prince who would become the future King and Saint Louis. He was not a politician, but a saint, who loved his neighbor. He was not a worldly man, but made his decisions based on the justice and love of God and thus he failed in politics. His life was like a perfect mold of the beatitudes. I take many quotes from the beautiful biography of St. Edmund, Edmund Rich : Archbishop and Saint, by M.R. Newbolt (first published in 1928). I give here examples of a few of the beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“One might subtract everything else from him — all his gifts of learning and the powers of leadership which carried him from the position of a poor scholar to the Primacy of England — and still, by virtue of those long hours spent night after night in solitude before our Lady's altar, he would remain a saint, retaining what is essential in his character.”

Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land.

“Rather he knew that it becomes the servant of the Lord to suffer. "Eadmundum doceat mors mea ne timeat" ran the legend on his seal. It was Becket's martyrdom which pointed to him the true way to victory. He would strive till he could strive no more, yield till he could yield no further without sin, endure to be browbeaten, humiliated, flouted, and disillusioned, and then, since Henry was no tyrant to give him the glory of martyrdom, he chose the humbler self-immolation of retirement.”

Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.

“For saints are unaccommodating people, excessively inconvenient to live with in an evil world where Christian principles have to be elastic if they are to square with politics and economic laws...(my sic). We get the impression of a gradually growing sickness of heart, a progressive agony of resistance to forces which he could neither make alliance with nor overrule.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.

“As a bishop he stood for the very highest ideals of the churchman ; he is in the true succession of saints of apostolic life who ruled the flock of Christ, not from ambition nor for filthy lucre, but as a true shepherd, ready if need be to lay down his life for the sheep.”

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

“When according to the law he received a "heriot"—that is, the best animal from the estate of a deceased tenant — he always listened to the natural complaints of the widow. " My good woman," he would say, speaking to her in English, "this is the law of the land, and custom demands that thy lord should receive the best animal which thy husband had when alive." Then turning to his retinue he would say in French or Latin, "Truly this law was invented by the devil, not by God. After the poor woman has lost her husband, the best thing her dying husband had to leave her is taken away." He would then say to the widow in his mother tongue, "If I lend you the animal, will you take good care of it for me?" Thus the requirements of the laws of man and God were satisfied, at the expense of the archiepiscopal estate.”

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.

“He was seen to wash with wine and water the marks of the five wounds on his crucifix, then, making the sign of the cross over these ablutions, he drank them with great devotion saying the words of Isaiah, " Ye shall draw water with joy out of the wells of salvation." His love for the image of the Crucified was notable throughout his life, and in the history of Christian devotions this practice of his was famous in the development of the cultus of the Five Wounds, which finally crystallised into devotion to the Sacred Heart, in which the spear made the chiefest of the wounds of Christ.”

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

“We too need scholarship allied to sanctity, and our generation, like his, is overwhelmed with an access of fresh knowledge which requires to be assimilated by religious thought, and is assailed by an epidemic of unbelief which only doctors of the faith can conquer.”

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“The world being what it was, and he possessing the character he did, no other result of his life was possible, for, as has been said, he is one of those whom our Lord sends as lambs into the midst of wolves, and the wolves of his day were hungry and formidable. He may not have combined in equal proportion the protective wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, but no tact or subtlety could have evaded the issues he was called to face.”

St. Edmund of Canterbury, to me, is a saint akin to St. Joseph: a true father, gentle and loving, but never losing sight of the truth. His life gave a perserverant and humble glory to God.

Enclaves of Heaven

Shaw Island, part of the San Juan Island chain in Puget Sound, is truly an island from regular suburban or city life; even more so than the other islands in the chain. Shaw makes Orcas Island look like a hopping metropolis.

We traveled over on the ferry from Orcas to Shaw this morning because we were looking for a reverent Mass, and hoping that the Mass at the Benedictine Monastery on Shaw would be just that. Part of the charm of these islands is that they are like small countries unto themselves, complete with mountains and farmlands tucked in between the boundaries of the blue, cold water. The monastery is in one of these farming areas; a quiet, gravel-crunching turn under a wooden archway, with a large rust-coloured Benedictine cross melding into the red and brown trees. Along the road cows, llamas, peacocks, chickens and wheat are growing and living silently under the resplendent sunlight of a Sunday morning.

The first good sign is that a nun barrels by us in an ancient red Subaru, in full work-habit with a blue and white bandana tied like a pirate’s over her headpiece. Coming in from haying, she is hurrying to change for Mass. The chapel is the second good sign, for it is lovingly built- how can one see that? The straight lines of the roof, the carefully allowed moss on the Japanese-style gate, the trimmed bamboo reeds, the small touches here and there of both beauty and sturdiness. It is a strange combination, this San Juan-style-sturdy(pine logs and cedar siding) and the beautiful Oriental décor and garden: but somehow, it fits together: the whispering of the wind in the pines and the green, sleepy sound of the water flowing down a rock into a carefully placed pool; the island rocks placed in the cracks of the slate path, but island rocks polished to a beautiful sheen, little tiny works of art; the off-center apex of the building held aloft by a rugged pine log, left in it’s natural but shaven state- off-center in a stance of demure, subtle reverence to the altar which becomes the focus of the space rather than the building itself.

The Benedictine sisters come quietly into the cloister area of the chapel, behind a transparent grille of bamboo, and begin to sing: we look at eachother in gratitude, because it is a beautiful, simple, “Asperges me…” and the Mass begins. The quiet reverence of a Novus Ordo Missae said the way it was promulgated, complete with the priest facing the East- ad orientum-the worshipful rythym of a people looking towards the Lord with one another.

I was thinking about this, this quiet enclave, the beautiful farm with its centerpiece this little piece of heaven, and wondering how we all present got to this beauty, this intersection of ourselves and Our Lord, on this small island in the more or less pedestrian State of Washington. How can I describe these moments, whether you are in a little town in New York, or Mexico, or a makeshift altar on pilgrimage? They are moments where you look around gratefully to the serious, reverent neighbor, the wise, sacrificial and quiet-spoken priest, the plaintive air of the Gregorian chant, and the air becomes heavy with the supernatural, as if the Lord sees the feeble human attempts to worship Him and gently turns His gaze our way, filling us all in ways unspeakable.

For myself, I was thinking about this miracle, and then the Old Testament was read: “ I Myself will gather a remnant, I will shelter them in a good land, I will be their Shepherd.” I thought of how the Lord Himself grants the enclaves, the tiny pockets of real worship, real life, in the midst of the Ellulian flight from Him that is the world.

I was thinking about the small number of nuns and their age, I was thinking in a worldly way about the survival of this place with the lack of vocations; for most people cannot even see this place, they hear its name, perhaps, and look no further- for they are not looking further than convenience or of ‘uplifting service’. I myself fall into this convenience thinking very often.

I was wondering about the mystery of these small enclaves of heaven, compared with the busy, alternating current of suffering and entertainment of the world. But I was, again, thinking in a worldly sense.

But these enclaves are the Lord’s, it is His will that allows them, grows them and leaves them in the hands of His creatures: they remain His. When we ignore them, or do not look for them, we are poorer and we are culpable.

As we left, the little valley spreading below the road, I saw a peacock sitting majestically on the balcony of the nun’s house, across from the barn. As he spread his wings and moved in his silvery, slow way, I was forcefully reminded of the loss of Eden- and the Deep Beauty that must have been there. It was the combination of the light, the reverent Mass, and the Presence of God that made me see an ordinary day as a slice of Paradise. It was a grace.

If you seek, you will find.

The Cure of Narcissism

She waited there, by the sandy window ledge, as the clouds beyond the desert mountains caught the last light like white cloth hung behind the oil lamps. The darkness of her unbound hair covered the side of her face as she leaned down on one arm, still attending the glorious colours of evening; she mused that it seemed the world was underwater, and that somehow this glorious sky was the real land, that the heavens that caught light were somehow like the glowing shore surrounding the blackness that was the fallen world.

As she focused on a certain cloud sculpture, her peripheral vision seemed to catch a movement in another part of the sky, like a sudden whirlpool in water. The next instant she felt a presence at her back, and she peeped out from under the strands of hair as slowly as she could. She felt a sudden rush of fear, and love, and glory, as if indeed all the beauty of that sky had pulled itself together into a person, who was now addressing her: “Hail, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee”.

Immediately she got herself turned around, still in a half-sitting position. Her face became white, even in that soft pink light of sunset; and any admiration or fascination she might have entertained on this creature’s behalf was immediately stifled by both her awe and outright fear, and also by her habitual practice of looking for the unknowableness of the Lord. She was not distracted by earthly beauty- and even this unearthly beauty could not entice her to want it for herself. She was afraid because she did not know who this was or what this meant for her soul.

Gabriel, or Power of God, knew all this about the young woman humbly looking at the floor, and so he said gently, “Be not afraid, for the Lord has found favor with thee.” She did not speak, but waited. The angel continued, and each word seemed very heavy to the young woman, a heaviness of massive, bright diamonds. She had to take in each syllable, and they almost hurt because of their immensity, as if they were actual physical things. He said, “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David His father; and He shall reign in the House of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end.”

The corners of the room were darkened, but between Mary and the Gabriel there was a strong focus of all the light in the heavens. She looked up with a mixture of timidness and holy, solemn joy, her faith in the power of God already evident in her features: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?" The question had come from a heart lost in the mystery of God, a heart lost in the highest love, a love of passionate, loss-of–self humility and sacrifice. A heart like unto God, because He had filled her with His grace and prepared her for this moment and all others after. A helpless creature’s heart, but one He had transformed into a vessel of supernatural beauty, a heart inflamed with all loves coming out of the fiery furnace of charity, like the rays of the sun.

The angel inclined his glowing features a little, and lifted his hands: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Mary tried to take in all these words. But she only understood them in the realm of her soul which is beyond words, the part of all of us that simply trusts God. In that realm, she was pondering a real question of love, but from One Whom she could not see or know in the way a maiden expects to know before acceptance. In the place beyond words, however, she’d lived in prayer for most of her young life; she had waited, a servant of the Living God, she had practiced virtue and forgot her self in contemplation of the beauty of the Lord as she understood Him in a myriad of ways. Here was no selfishness, no errant sensuality, no thought of a place in the world at all: only room for a clear, pure stream of servanthood that was fashioned by the Lord Himself, unbeknownst to the object of His grandest plan. In that silence-full place, Mary’s answer had been formed over all the hundreds of days that comprised her life to this point: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word."

Each day thereafter, her life was that answer, over and over, from the long journey to Bethlehem and the cave, to the Holy City and the Cross, to the Empty Tomb and the Upper Room of Pentecost. She was, and is, a true Echo of True Beauty: and she calls in full tones the rest of us to the cure of narcissism.

Narcissus’ true sin was to miss True Beauty and put something, a reflection of himself, in the place of God. The genius imbedded in the naming of the nymph, “Echo” is multi-layered: Echo not only provides Narcissus with more of his own reflection in a symbiotic relationship, she also, like the echoes, or ripples from a splash of water, spreads the narcissism into a society. Narcissus can be renamed Nemesis, or inverted image, for he is symbolic of the fallen part in all of us that wishes to invert the image of God in ourselves into a self-image. This is idolatry, plain and simple, and wreaks havoc upon the world, because it destroys and absorbs others into itself like Echo. It is like a virus, numberless absorbent selves trying to remake creation in their own creature image.

True Beauty once walked in Palestine, and His Echo was Mary. He is the only one with the right to love His own image in others, for He created them all, and Him loving Himself is, by its essence of Charity, loving the other and transforming them into true beauty. He is the Source of Love. Real love begets love and builds up on a strong foundation; and selfishness begets selfishness and destruction.

The cure for narcissism, both on a personal and cultural level, is not a thing like a pill or a method or a social program- it is a Person, the Person of Christ. This sounds like an unattainable answer until we understand the true role of religion (Latin, to tie). Like the weaving of a net which pulls men to safety, religion slowly and surely ties us to the Person of Christ: and if it is true religion, it does not bind into selfishness, but into the freedom of a disciple and a slave of Love. This slavery is joy, this discipline is gratitude and celebration, and ultimately freedom from the pit of living for self.

The daily practices, the examples of those who have gone before heroically (the saints), the architecture, the liturgy, the prayer books, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the different members of the body both clerical and lay, the chant, the spiritual direction, the holy education: all these little pieces work together to form a religion that ties one to the Person of Christ- or, if it is a man-made religion and thus false, again to self. These pieces must all work together, they must be informed by the Person of Christ in order to lead back to Him. That is why these seemingly small things, like prayer books and liturgical norms, are so very important. They become like the individual ropes of the net; if one of them is weak, many fish will fall back to the sea of destruction.

It is, of course, not left to chance that Our Lord used the parables pertaining to the fishing barques, the nets, and the fish. In His choice of First Apostle, He chose a master fisherman. It is also no accident that in mystical writing, the Church is called 'Peter's Barque'. The sea is murky and a dangerous place for fish, but they cannot see this at all, being unable to survive anywhere else: they are helpless as prey. The fisherman lowers his net, and is careful to lower a mended one, lest his work be in vain; and he pulls in a catch ordained by forces greater than himself. In pulling the fish out of the water, he is putting them in a position to die- they will no longer be fish, but in order to be born to a new life, they must come into the fisherman’s boat and die to self. The more resistant may jump out, but those that die will be changed in the confines of the boat, they will begin to become new creatures in Christ, creatures meant for heaven.

Narcissism, which is really just a precursor to hell, is cured by a death to self and an infusion of supernatural charity. This is brought about not usually by a single act of extraordinary grace from God, although this does and can happen. The most usual way, nonetheless miraculous, is through accepting the net of true religion, in order to be brought into Peter’s Barque, in which the Lord is waiting to transform us into fires of charity(Religion is like a slow-motion miracle). When we finally become Echoes of Truth, rather than of self, we can begin to transform the narcissistic culture we live in.

The Culture of Narcissism

Part Two of three

Most of us, without knowing it, swim like tadpoles in a sea of narcissism. We grow up, absorbing the public school culture, the TV, the movies, the news, the street culture in modern Western life. We are formed, in large part, by the seemingly random and existential accidentals around us: and they form us more deeply the less we are aware of their presence.

We are the child who sits watching a Disney movie of a young woman who strives to break the bonds of natural authority in order to plant her image on the world around her; we are the middle school student who suddenly realizes that in order to matter to our peers, we must conform by asserting ourselves with the clothing we wear (which, by the way, ends up looking as a facsimile of the clothes that everyone else is wearing). We are the teenager who knows nothing of the word vocation and ‘lives for the weekend’- a weekend of trying, via some substance or another, to reach intimacy but never to build true friendship. We are the young adult on a gap year, feeling that the loss of identity in the midst of a European twilight is somehow our right; and we are the twenty and thirtysomethings, feeling the weight of new responsibility as if it were meant for someone else, and not really seeing the importance of it beyond what it means for us, as an ‘autonomous individual’. We are the middle-aged sixties washouts who cannot commit to anything, because it threatens our boundaries of surface happiness: and it directly threatens our false view of ourselves as loving individuals. We are the citizen who cannot see that our own secular government, founded on deep pluralism, can and does commit evil (although even a numbskull free of narcissism could put that together). We are the adults who cannot think for ourselves, or think abstractly, because the culture we live in does not produce freedom, but rather narcissists and their symbiotic Echoes.

In the fifties, a Muslim cleric named Kutu came to the United States to study our school system and lived in a small American town. He came to a devastating revelation: even in the American heyday of law and order, the philosophies of radical individualism would produce a people who could not see beyond themselves; they would become selfish, to the point of seeing reality in the image of themselves- and that this was the great danger of the future to his fellow Muslims.

In time, Kutu himself became unattached to reality, in that he was the founder of a radical group of Muslims who came to the (ironically) rather narcissistic conclusion that they were allowed to kill anyone who didn’t practice the faith the way they did. However, amongst the false religious views producing fanaticism were some valid observations. At the time of his American sojourn, Kutu was an educated, moderate Muslim: he was a religious man, who understood something correct and fundamental: that the truly religious person could not be selfish, and that selfishness (narcissism) can be cultural and not just an individual problem. He saw the devastating effects that narcissism, or radical individualism, would produce on a culture at large: it would destroy the ability for people to have faith.

The Latin root of religion is religare, which means “ to tie”. In religion, which is the way in which we practice our faith, we are tied to God: we are obedient to Him, we are the feminine soul in relation to the Creator, the I to the Thou, face to Face. A truly religious person is in the process of forgetting self, or "losing one's life to gain it (in Christ)". But a radical individual, one who “has the right to create the universe as he or she sees fit” (paraphrase from Planned Parenthood vs. Casey) becomes fundamentally a narcissist. And when our own Supreme Court makes statements anywhere close to the one paraphrased above, we have a narcissistic culture. We begin to lose the very ability to see beyond our own image to the other, most importantly to the most Other, God. We cannot think in terms of abstraction, or principles, or faith, because everything is immanentized, everything is reduced to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”- or the modern version- “As I think, therefore everything is”.

M. Scott Peck wrote a great book titled The People of the Lie in the late seventies or early eighties. In it, he documents that people who are evil are essentially narcissists, those who cannot see beyond the image that they have of themselves. This way of life is not only diametrically opposed to a truly religious life; it is necessarily propped up by bundles of lies. Dr. Peck also describes how a group or nation can become narcissistic, and thus begin to see that making the rest of the world in their own image is somehow righteous and necessary. It makes a person, and a nation, unable to see beyond themselves to reality, and unable to see those whom they are remaking in their own image. Others simply become echoes outside the veil of self.

The Myth of Narcissus Retold

Part One in a Series of Three

Narcissus was a beautiful young man, it is said; and he was given such physical beauty that he was a living picture of the Platonic form of Manly Beauty. He walked alone in the woods on a summer evening and was attracted to the smoothness of the darkening water. As the last rays of creamy sunlight caught his face, he looked into the water and fell in love. He sat curled on the side of the lake, staring at the elusive image on the surface until the light deserted him; he slept, then awoke in the morning sparkle to look at his reflection in this new aspect, the tentative light of dawn.

All day, he watched his beautiful countenance changing in the water: Here, this was the answer to his need for love, for the ideal, for the hunger after perfection, so often thwarted in the ugliness of daily life in the town and farm. Here, here was simplicity of form, crafted like a seamless garment, with no blemish, perfect in its predictability: his reflection was not only perfect beauty, it was something he could love and control at the same time. For Narcissus, the world was a terrifying place of chaotic particularities and blind duty; there had been no soil of love in his growth as a young sapling: only exposed and raw roots clinging to rock and drops of water. His physical beauty combined with his deep and abiding hunger for love had made a deadly potential mix: and the paint-base was the lake, the reflection. Narcissus had found a psuedo-love, a love which both answered his hunger and a controllable image which assuged his deep fears.

From the purple recesses below the surface of the water, a nymph saw the angelic face staring, as if at her through a window. She loved him immediately, and thought rashly but understandably that the look was meant somehow for her. Was her look for him born of true love or a desire to share beauty?- for she, Echo, was very beautiful, and had never found her equal until, she surmised, now. Here he was, his rich curls tapered gently around a golden, strong jawline, the eyes like the mystical waters in which she lived. In her nymphlike way, she came very close to the surface, and blew soft bubbles upward, globes resplendent in color and reflective power: painting a complex and symphonic picture for him of the foliage, the water, the sky. She was fecundating his mind, she was beginning to show him the divine fingerprints in nature all around. This, for her, was a primordial offering to budding love.

Narcissus only saw his reflection garbled by the disturbance in the water. His face grew harsh. He pulled away from the lake and threw in a stone contemptuously, hitting Echo on the cheek. Frozen in the unexpected nature of this abuse, Echo retreated and the water again was glasslike. Narcissus smoothed his own features and again poured his soul into conversation with the reflection.

Echo, from behind a submerged tree, saw him speaking and with timid strokes, came to answer. Surely, she thought, he must be teasing me and now is trying to talk with me. She came out of the water and began to sing, in small, childlike tones, the story of her soul, of her hopes in his regard, her new discovery of love, a love that would fill the world around them. It was like the song of many leaves, but if one listened closely, the words were clear and delicate, small pictures of the glory of life. It was the best gift she had to offer: it was herself.

Narcissus heard her, he heard the beauty and he smiled; but strangely, he did not look at her. He was taking her song and applying it dextrously to the reflection. He was assimilating her song into the image he'd chosen; and when he sang in reply, a song with all the beauty of his Imago Dei, it was to the reflection. Echo was only the instrument to fulfill Narcissus' deep desire: that his reflection would indeed love him in return. He was already feeling the loneliness of his choice, and so he began to use the sounds and smells of reality to fuel his tyrannical dream. Echo was a perfect source for fuel and he used her easily, greedily: and without guilt: because he never really knew she was there, in his focused blindness.

After many minutes, each an epoch of delight and pain, Echo began to understand: but the truth was too horrible to accept. Surely someone as beautiful could not be a cold serpent inside. This was a paradox of nature, one that she did not want to understand, nor could she shoulder it along with her own loneliness.

Perhaps if she could put herself in the place of the reflection, perhaps he would see her in time and begin to love her. Perhaps she could be a bridge to reality, perhaps her heart could be used as a means by which the reflection would lose its power. So, steathily, she placed her face under the water at the very point of the reflection: eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. Like a warm breeze off the tropical sea, she felt his glance connecting with hers. It was like manna, it was like succulent fruit, it was pure feelings of joy.

She, too, was caught. She and he stayed there in a time-limbo. As the time slipped away, so did her understanding of herself. She began to thin, like fine reed-paper left on the water. She was dying, giving all of herself to try and reach him through the reflection in the water. Finally, she had no strength to keep herself afloat, and she let a gasp of air escape her mouth. The water once again bubbled, moving with the last strength of the nymph. Narcissus grew desperate, the loss of the reflection threw him into a panic- because unbeknownst to him, Echo had become the very lifeblood of the reflection's power. He reached downward to pull her up and held her there for another long minute. Her heartrate was slowing into the erratic rythym of the near-dead.

Finally, he fell on the bank, asleep. Echo floated up to the surface, and began to take in the cool night air. She saw once again, the trees and the voluminous sky, the ripples on the water she'd loved so much as a child. She saw the night bird cut across the ink expanse, the homely sounds of the racoon along the tree roots. She began to breathe again, to live again. She was hungry.

She did not look back at the still form on the bank as she began to tear joyfully away through the undergrowth, for she knew that Narcissus would not, perhaps, ever miss her. He would have his reflection. She grieved finally, for the loss of her own ideal, her own dreams of love with Narcissus: but later, wiser, she grieved for the real loss of his soul; she felt pity, finally, for the soul trapped in it's own reflection: in fine, she appealed to Divinity for his rescue. The mystery, cloaked in the girds of providence, is whether or not even the Most High was able to reach Narcissus.