The One Evening in Eden audiobook gives insight into the spiritual goals and progression of the poet-philosopher John Moriarty, including readings from the booklet Serious Sounds. Blending Eastern and Western philosophies, Moriarty seeks to unveil the innate connection between religion and spirituality. 'Seeking to Walk Beautifully on the Earth' details Moriarty's exploration of six Indian-American stories, capturing the time when Moriarty de-Europeanised himself and lived through the Native American myths, as he felt they had more resonance than some European myths. Here are stories that permit us to stand in a new way and a better way upon the Earth. There is an outer journey and there is an inner journey with an inner Eucharist that we can listen to, to help us on our way. There is a self-singing Sanctus that is un-fallen at the core of our being.
'Tridium Sacrum' is our transition back into the divine and back into the Earth as well. Moriarty did not believe that the Christian way was the only way to God. However, he remained Christian because Jesus pioneered a way for everyone and everything by starting below in the canyon - the lowest point in the Earth. Moriarty wanted to put the bright angel trail (the path that leads down to the floor of the grand canyon) back at the heart of a new culture. Moriarty proclaimed a new Christian epoch called canyon Christianity - where Jesus took on not only the sins of the world but also the impulses and the energies of the human psyche and of animals.
'Six Stories' do not ask too much or too little of ourselves. Moriarty inherits his humanity in all its awkwardness and crookedness and all its contradiction and as long as he does not hurt anyone else he allows his nature to happen to him. The vernacular is very important - the author believed that Theology, or the words Theo Logos meaning discourse or an account of or an understanding of God, was a contradiction in itself. We cannot talk about God at all but we can talk about the journey back to God. These six stories are about the journey back to God.
'The Eden Collection' is a set of poems in which Moriarty confronts his own darkness as Faust did - consciously. At the age of twenty eight Moriarty underwent Ragnorok (Nordic for 'the end of the world') after which he wrote no more poetry. Feeling there was "too much happening between the lines ?" Moriarty returned instead to prose. Modern poetry read to Moriarty like crafted prose. He liked cadence and rhythm and felt it was absent in modern poetry. He wanted to write poems that were almost incantatory. Moriarty believed that cadence and rhythm were essential to poetry and he challenged modern poets to produce poetry like this again.
These philosophies and beliefs culminate into a sensuous world of lyrical mysticism, told only as John Moriarty could.
