Ġo Baħar Jiskura sad-Dlam 

by Gioele Galea

published by Horizons, 2024

For all of us who were biting our nails, waiting for the sequel to In-Nar Għandu Isem, where the writer leaves us in awe at a supernatural experience that propelled him onto a road of deep conversion, wondering what came next, the recently published Ġo Baħar Jiskura sad-Dlam does not disappoint.

Excelling expectations, it keeps the reader’s eyes glued as to what’s coming next in the autobiographical rendition of the writer’s riveting saga towards the hermitage where Mirela still sits wide eyed, waiting to hear the story. The narrative in his new book picks up from the divine gaze that had just transformed him (“Kienet ħarstu li tatni l-bidu”).

With typical unshackled verve the author proceeds to describe his journey towards his goal step by step, giving us a blow-by-blow description of his intimate experience. The result is a veritable ode to life in the Spirit, where the experience of God throughout life’s journey is wholesomely exposed as a life worth living.

In Ġo Baħar Jiskura sad-Dlam, Galea renders his prose with the balancing skill of a tightrope performer. Choosing his words carefully, he weaves through his story line simultaneously revealing what was happening on his outside as well as his inside: how the one was propelling the other, unveiling two sides of the same coin (his life) in the process.

He is careful, however, to intimate that while on the outside it is he who is acting on his decisions, on the inside it is God who is the agent and actor of his (the author’s) existence, and the arduous episodes he describes occur in reaction to the Divine.

Despite the suffering this existence entailed, the author still decides that life, and his existence in God are both “tremendous”, his living from the bottom of the abyss (il-qiegħ) “beautiful” and “profoundly calm”. And ensconced in the lush green lull of the forest at the abbey he finds love, peace and hope.

Galea’s allegorical style returns in his new book; so does his imagery as well as his rare but precious aphorisms. As we follow him at the start of his journey through light, joy, prayer, sweetness, a sense of direction, and a song that danced in his heart, the road becomes deeper and the darkness denser.

He explains to Mirela how “Everything became a metaphor for me, that is to say, everything [outside me] started to inform my interior” (Kollox beda jsirli metafora, jiġifieri kollox beda jkellimni minn qagħda ġewwiena).

Striking metaphors that bubble up from the stream of Galea’s script include: dark solitude, God’s tears, blinding light, the desert, the anchor, the sea lurking around gnawing at [his] naked roots, the clamp, the nail which for him represents the will of God, profound littleness, and intimate silence.

Renders his prose with the balancing skill of a tightrope performer

Ravished by his call to silent solitude, the protagonist successively mulls over silence as desert, as refuge, as beginning, and as the space for the Presence. The silence at the bottom of the abyss which he describes with aplomb, would perhaps be his most intimate articulation of this particular metaphor.

Because the bottom of the abyss is for him a paradoxical reference to the top of the mountain whereto he has set his eyes. For Galea, the paradox is a most convenient figure of speech when it comes to his interior life, as he explains to Mirela: that for him the ascent is descent, the apogee is the bottom [of the abyss], death is life, and the true light is that which blinds him unto the densest of darknesses.

Among his vibrant metaphors, all laden with meaning, the one that stands out is the darkness, a figurative expression that appears in the very title of the book. It is the darkness that he experiences at the bottom of the abyss to which he refers as the pinnacle of God, a darkness experienced as abandonment, which in turn became his refuge. Hence his explicit reference to his journey towards God as through a darkening sea.

The author likens his journey towards God as one through a darkening sea. Photo: Shutterstock.com

The interior darkness on the spiritual road evokes the words of the mystical doctor St John of the Cross, who explains the way towards God as through a dark night, for when God is spiritually near to the soul, the soul experiences him as “intolerable darkness... for the supernatural light darkens with its excess the natural light” (Spiritual Canticle, stanza 13, 1).

The aim of the spiritual life, as the mystical doctor elucidates, is the state of perfect union with God through love, a journey he compares to climbing a mountain (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, prologue).

Which brings us to the mountain our protagonist is trying to ‘climb’ but is experiencing as “the bottom of the abyss”.

This in turn echoes the words of another doctor of the Church, St Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, who in her autobiography writes about her own experience of ‘climbing’ towards the ‘top of the mountain’ not by scaling it on the outside, but going forth as through a dark tunnel: “one would have to travel through this dark tunnel to understand its darkness” (Story of a Soul, manuscript C, 5v).

For Galea, God is the Absolute, the Creator who hides in his heart, and the Cross is central to his personal spirituality: “My God is a God of fire, who carved his face on the central spot of the cross, there where the vertical beam meets the horizontal one” (Alla tan-nar hu l-Alla tiegħi – Alla li wiċċu naqqxu hemm, fil-punt fejn l-għuda l-wieqfa tiltaqa’ mal-għuda mimduda).

Ravished by the Love that attracts him, he is adamant that his ultimate goal is nothing short of complete union with God.

Wrapped within the intimate account of his spiritual journey, a message of hope shines through Ġo Baħar Jiskura sad-Dlam: that when the Spirit is poured upon us, the wilderness truly becomes a fruitful field (Isaiah 32, 15); that the dream for union with God can be fulfilled despite all obstacles; the key attitude required on the part of each person called to it being one: surrender.