About James Joyce
James Joyce was a prolific reader with a gargantuan memory who spent much of his university life at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. He is regarded as an Irish Liberation Theologian who gives us the freedom to experience the mysteries of human life, examine our access to those mysteries by sharing our own stories and thus raise our consciousness to as high a level as possible. What is delightful about this approach is that nobody knows what Joyce was trying to say most of the time. He leaves us free to explore and to share what we think life is about and in the dialogue reveal aesthetics — what is true, good and beautiful — on our way to dialogue with God.

What is fantastic about James Joyce is his sense of humor and the tricks he plays with language through analogy and metaphor. He invites us to become mystics through transcending our rationality through the magnificent stirrings of the heart. 

About the James Joyce Seminar
The James Joyce Seminar calls us to reflection, not only on his writings but perhaps more importantly to uncover and discover where, when and how God is present and active in our lives. The seminar is an attempt to provide a table for dialogue where each person is a gift and our lives conduits to the divine.

While touching on many quotes and insights from all the works of Joyce, the primary source of the seminar is James Joyce's famous semi-autobiography: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Fr. Niall hopes to expand the readings through consultations with other authors and sources that may perhaps facilitate a more in-depth appreciation of what Joyce is saying.

Implicit in our approach to Joycean studies has been the emphasis on theology as a consistent foundation on what Joyce was about and what we are about. It might be more forthright to say that this class is more about theology than about Joyce. And by theology is meant not theological information, but rather a dialogue of each of us not only with the Joycean text, but also with the human and faith experience that each of us bring to the discussion. The pedagogical approach is not so much didactic (meaning getting information), but rather dialogical - interior and external interchange conversation with ourselves, Joyce and one another. Thus, for this year our emphasis will not be so much on what Joyce has to say, but how our own experience of life can be a more primary text for our deliberations. We will adopt James Joyce as our companion to explore as much as possible the reality of experience and "to forge in the smithies of our souls the uncreated conscience of our own souls and of our race." This is a take-off of the famous Joycean statement quoted from the end of Portrait: "Welcome O life! I go for the millionth time to encounter the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

As we proceed along these lines, we will try to keep before our minds our quest to connect our secular life with God and spirituality. We are hopefully about a raising of consciousness, an exploration of our personal and the collective unconscious and more importantly the possibility of our transformation into more alive and full human beings. With regard to transformation, it is important to remember, taking our clue from St. John of the Cross, a central figure in Joyce's writings, that transformation involves more being done to us that we ever do. This forces us in a sense to dwell on the contribution of the mystics who invite us to contemplate the "night of the senses" and the "night of the spirit" which means we are to transcend our senses and our intellect by dispossessing ourselves of all attachments, relax and be at peace, enter into silence or as John of the Cross suggests "begin again from ‘nada'" as the opening of Genesis states "In the beginning" as John's Gospel repeats "In the beginning." For most of us who are so involved with life in this world, being together in the Joycean group may be one special chance of experiencing mystery, mercy and peaceful happiness. 

Contact
Pastoral Center
(626) 799-8908