Clemens Cavallin - On the Edge of Infinity: A Biography of Michael D. OBrien

Clemens Cavallin

A Biography of Michael D. OBrien

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition) copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Unless otherwise noted, the English translations of all papal documents have been taken from the Vatican website.

Cover photograph: Anton R. Casta

Cover design by John Herreid

2017 by Justin Press, Inc., Ottawa, Ontario.
This edition published by agreement with Justin Press, Inc., Canada
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-62164-260-2 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-64229-070-7 (EB)
Library of Congress Control Number 2018949820
Printed in the United States of America

Super muros tuos Hierusalem constitui custodes tota die et tota nocte perpetuo non tacebunt.
(Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. )

Isaiah 62:6

In the Beginning

The Mystery of Life

Material

The True Story

The Larger Story

Acknowledgments

The Recession

Wars

Family and Planes

An Unexpected Turn of Events

Coppermine

Residential School

Cambridge Bay

Reverse Culture Shock

The Dying Grandfathers

Terry Takes the Train

Losing His Religion

Conversion

The Drawing of a Tree

To Become an Artist

Robertson Galleries

Going West

Next Stop: Valemount

Sheila

The Retreat

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear (1 Jn 4:18)

Proposal

Marriage

The Weather Observers

The Brushes under the Altar

Icons

Life and Death

Going East

William Kurelek

The Russian Lady

The End of Times

Pro-Life

Exhibit of Sacred Art

The Altar Piece of St. Barnabas

Thinking about Art

A Novel

Discernment

Driving West

Art in the Wild

The Singing Baby and the Pope

The End of the Novel

Terry and the Bear

Igor Khazanov

The Crazy Curator and the Burning Gallery

Exhibition in Calgary

Deep Winter

Meet the Bishops

Near Death

Artists Retreat

Poor Clares

A New Style of Art

St. Francis Comes to the Village

The Dream of a Home

The Poor Clare Food Program

Mount Angel Abbey

The Pope in Canada

Novels and Essays

Homesick

Fatherhood and Motherhood

The Cosmic Christ

Alex Colville

Madonna House

Why Do the Wicked Prosper?

Joachim

Nazareth Retreat Centre

Private Revelations

A Catholic Family Journal

Missing the Boys

The First Issue

Kurelek Mountain

Homeschooling Again

The White Horse Press

The Watchman

Nazareth Resurrected

A Landscape with Dragons

Father Elijah

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Leaving Nazareth

Readers and Critics

The Real Elijah

Strangers and Sojourners

Rome

A Home

More Novels

Justin Press

The Virtual World

An Accident

LifeSite

Personality

Second Thoughts

Barrys Bay

Croatian

Italian

Gandalf on the Train

Eugenio Corti

The Meeting of Two Wise Men

French

A Prophet from Canada

Published Fiction Books

Published Nonfiction Books

Chapters in Anthologies

Selected Essays and Articles

Unpublished Writings

In the Beginning

I retrieved my luggage from the carousel and rolled the bag with its small, squeaking plastic wheels into the arrivals hall of Ottawa International Airport. Jetlagged, but relieved to have passed immigration, I saw my host, the artist and novelist Michael OBriena rather tall, lean man in his sixties with silvery, curling hairstanding at the exit. In his right hand, he held a little, red wooden horse from Dalarna, Sweden: it was a tribute to my home country, but also the agreed sign of recognition. After introduction and greetings, he smilingly beckoned me with a deep voice to follow him to his car, or not quite his car, but a vehicle belonging to one of his children.

Driving away from the airport, we entered almost instantaneously into a vigorous conversation on topics close to both our hearts; the flow of dialogue drifted from religion to art and modern society, and then back to religion again. The car was slightly unreliable as a vital part of the automatic geara small, red ballkept falling down on the floor, making it impossible to put in the reverse gear; three times during the trip we had to search for the little thing that rolled away unnoticed. On a visit two years later, I think I saw the same vehicle in a rather terminal condition parked outside his house.

We had a whole weekend to ourselves in the silent, almost lonely house, as his wife was away visiting one of their children. Outside the boundary of the garden, a seemingly limitless Canadian forest began, interrupted here and there by clear lakes. The weather was of the chilly November type before the arrival of snow. Warmed by the roaring fire in the living room, we spoke about literature, his life story, God, the calling of a Christian artist, and so on. The discourse was more structured when I recorded it and stuck to the questions that I had sent to him in advance regarding his novel writing. But it was obvious to me that this was more than merely collecting information for writing a piece of pure, disinterested scholarshipI felt included in a grace-filled moment of friendship, in a personal conversation on the Church, sacred art, and Catholicism.

This turn from my initial intention of focusing on a literary analysis of Michael OBriens novels, toward his personality and life story, became stronger the next time I arrived in Canada for fieldwork in 2013. Then I interviewed him in his studio, surrounded by his colourful paintings and energized by a mixture of intense heat emanating from the small iron stove and fresh crisp air let in through an open window. I also met his wife, Sheila, for the first time and some of their children and grandchildren.

During one of our interview sessions, he told me that his Canadian publisher had urged him to write his autobiography, but that he felt reluctant to do soindeed, he had declined. Through the interviews, I had at that point collected a significant amount of material on his life, which I deemed to be important in itself, so to focus on his life story seemed like a natural development of my project. Therefore, during this second round of interviews, we agreed that I could expand my original study into a biography. In that sense, this is an authorized biography, and I have enjoyed full support and vital encouragement from him during the whole work process.

As Michael OBrien is very much alive, assiduously writing and painting, it is not possible to summarize his life as a whole, analyzing events with the clear eye of hindsight. Every year that he continues to work, his life expands and changes, and with it the meaning of individual events, even those of his childhood. Instead, the aim of this biography is to give the essentials of his life story and to present succinctly the major themes of his writing and painting. One can say it is an introduction to Michael OBriens life and art, not the definitive work on it.

The Mystery of Life

To write a life story is in many ways a demanding task. Despite the extensive amount of work in collecting the material, organizing it, and, finally, the actual process of writing, a life is always more than what has been captured. So much has to remain untold, and one can always ask: Has the story and the analysis, really, managed to dive beneath the surface of a unique human personality? In his biography of the painter William Kurelek, Michael OBrien admonishes those tempted to embark on such a project: