THANKFUL FOR POETS

DIVINE EPIGRAMS (Richard Crashaw)

On the Miracle of multiplied Loaves.

SEE here an easy feast that knows no wound,

 That under hunger's teeth will needs be found :

A subtle harvest of unbounded bread.

What would ye more ?   Here food itself is fed.

To our Lord, upon the Water made Wine.

THOU water turn'st to wine, fair friend of life ;

 Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign,

Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife,

 And so turns wine to water back again.

HEAVEN (George Herbert)

O who will show me those delights on high?
                            Echo.         I.
Thou Echo, thou art mortall, all men know.
                            Echo.         No.
Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves?
                            Echo.         Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide?
                            Echo.         Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly.
                            Echo.         Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse?
                            Echo.         Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight?
                            Echo.         Light.
Light to the minde : what shall the will enjoy?
                            Echo.         Joy.
But are there cares and businesse with the pleasure?
                            Echo.         Leisure.
Light, joy, and leisure ; but shall they persever?
                            Echo.         Ever.

Through his essay, The Metaphysical Poets (1921), T. S. Eliot proved to be hugely influential in re-introducing the world to the 17^th Century works of George Herbert, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, and Henry Vaughn, among others. He writes of their having obtained “a fusion of thought and feeling” which we have largely lost in our world marked by what he calls a “dissociation of sensibility.”

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

He comments further …

The poets in question have, like other poets, various faults. But they were, at best, engaged in the task of trying to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling. And this means both that they are more mature, and that they wear better, than later poets of certainly not less literary ability.

The “amalgamating of disparate experience” to which Eliot refers and the “states of mind and feeling” for which ‘verbal equivalents’ must be found would have seemed neither strange nor impossibly esoteric  to the contemplative mind of early and medieval Christianity. The Metaphysical Poets and their fellow writers and dramatists were the inheritors of a great spiritual tradition which we continue to enjoy in our ancient prayers and liturgies. 

When we picture ‘a contemplative’ we imagine someone with his head in the clouds, unaware of his surroundings, taking no notice of the people near him, lost in his thoughts. However, this image is not an accurate portrayal of the contemplative life but is actually just a more intense version of the state we find ourselves in most of the time. We spend a good deal of our day lost in thought, mentally preoccupied, our body in one place and our mind in another. We rely heavily on repetition to establish routines and patterns so that as much as possible we can live life without having to be present for it.

Contemplative prayer as it was practiced in the Christian tradition in apostolic times and throughout the Middle Ages led to the reverse of what is described above. The spiritual exercises and contemplative disciplines of the church emphasized the taking up of the cross as a death unto self, and encouraged the faithful towards a diminishment of egocentrism and a lessening of self-centeredness which led them in turn to a far greater awareness not only of the truth of their inner lives but also of the world in which they lived. Being spared a little of the self-absorption narcissism craves, the contemplative became more fully conscious and far more appreciative of the greatness and beauty of creation. All of life was precious to one who felt God’s love in every blade of grass and saw eternity in a grain of sand. Not only did the contemplative notice those around him -- he sensed with great intensity the heaviness of their burdens just as he shed tears of joy over each of their blessings. Nurtured by stillness and centered in the silence of his deepest nature, the world was much more vivid and real to the contemplative precisely because he was not lost in his thoughts. Instead, he was wide awake to the beauty he saw in every nook and cranny of a created order ‘charged with the grandeur of God.’

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

The Synoptic Gospels are unanimous in declaring that a delegation of Sadducees approached Jesus with a question about a woman who had been married and widowed seven times.(1) Their question was ‘ridiculous’ in the sense that it was intended to ‘ridicule’ belief in the resurrection held by the rival Pharisees. He was asked whose wife this woman would be following the resurrection. Seven men were married to her in the course of her life and the Sadducees wanted to know to whom she would belong in the life to come. The answer given by Jesus speaks of Heaven, and because the spiritual reality of Heaven is considered our ultimate reality, it is what is most true and real about us. But what can we know of Heaven, and how should we speak of it? What does the Christian faith teach?

We who tend to view the world as an arrangement of separate objects, and picture things in images, imagine Heaven simply as an elaboration of life as we know it now, and so we see it as a defined space located somewhere; a future place of material blessing. The response of Jesus to the Sadducees is to say that resurrection is real but not in the way that they imagine. He says that in resurrection we are as the angels, “neither marrying nor being given in marriage,” and are united in a spiritual communion and fellowship which is the deepest marriage of all. Jesus speaks of Heaven as a Kingdom of Spirit in which the widow-woman in question does not ‘belong’ to anybody because as a spiritual being she is not an object to be possessed. In speaking of Heaven as a spiritual kingdom Jesus presents an understanding similar to that of St. Paul who taught that as we have a natural body in this life, we shall also have a spiritual body appropriate to our resurrection. (2) He says that the former is to the latter as a seed is to a tree. What is essential and intrinsic is not lost in resurrection but is transformed in perfection and completeness.

St. Paul writes of what he calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” (3) He mentions ‘love,’ ‘joy,’ ‘peace,’ ‘endurance,’ ‘kindness,’ ‘goodness,’ ‘faithfulness,’ ‘meekness,’ and ‘temperance.’ In order to understand the nature of our ‘spiritual body’ and what Christians mean by resurrection we should consider the qualities of Spirit.

 “God is love,” proclaims St. John, “and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”(4) The Torah declares that God created human beings in his “own image and likeness” and then brought us to life by breathing his own Spirit into us and thus animating us. (5)  Moreover, the Catholic Creeds speak of eternal life as a ‘communion of saints’ (sanctorum communionem), an eternal fellowship transcending friendship and family while losing nothing that is good and true about them. This is the unity of Spirit in which there is union and communion, fusion without confusion, relation without separation, and distinction without division.

Given the materialist mindset of our time it is not surprising that we speak of love in terms of ‘relationships.’ The language of relationships is the language of physics in which objects in space are seen in relation to each another. Neither is it surprising in such a society where our differences are emphasized and our divisions magnified for political purposes that there should be epidemic levels of violence, bullying, and callous behavior. While our attempts to redress these failings correctly stress human rights and individual dignity, it seems to me we need to begin with the even more fundamental realization of our spiritual union and oneness. Without this understanding you simply cannot know what it means to love your neighbor ‘as’ yourself. This unity consciousness is not just wishful thinking. It isn’t some special insight to be arrived at eventually over time; it is the vision which begins our journey. Our end is in our beginning. “Home is where one starts from.”(6)

‘Joy’ is love knowing itself. It properly belongs to us as spiritual creatures. It isn’t a thing we earn; it is what we are. It isn’t derived from anything or anyone but is what we bring to people and events. ‘Peace’ is eternal. We’ve forgotten that. We’ve forgotten a lot. Peace isn’t merely the absence of conflict; it is perfect stillness - rest and motion reconciled by love. It is the perfection of completeness. It is not something static; it is forever young and always new.   

Finally, when we see ourselves merely as separate, individual bodies we tend to operate out of a sense of lack, but to realize our spiritual nature is to be moved by abundance. Anyone who loves knows that the joy of love is in giving. Having someone love us isn’t as thrilling if it isn’t reciprocated by us in the same way. Instead, we know that the real joy of love is found in offering it; in giving. Love is always for giving; it is boundless, profuse, ample, and overflowing. It is the eternal life of Spirit.

 1: Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27, and Luke 20:27-40

2:  I Corinthians 15

3: Galatians 5

4:  1 John 4:16

5:  Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7

6:  T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, (East Coker)

WAKENED BY KINDNESS

I was never required to write an essay for school about how I spent my summer vacation and I don’t think I’ll do that here. Besides, my holiday occurred from the middle of September to mid-October, and that hardly feels like summer even here in Oklahoma. In a nutshell, I visited my brother and his family in Ontario where I got to see a number of old friends. I then headed for New Brunswick to visit with my sister and her family in Moncton where I enjoyed:

~ quietly watching the sunrise and the sunset

~ going for a walk each morning and each afternoon

~ site-seeing in Saint-Louis de Kent, Richibucto, Bouctouche, and Sainte-Marie-de-Kent

~ seeing the Petitcodiac River from Beaumont

~ doing the dishes and then going for a walk around Victoria Park after supper

~ visiting the Farmers’ Market in Dieppe on Saturday and having a poutine râpée for breakfast

~ visiting the Farmers Market in Moncton on Saturday and having fish cakes for breakfast

~ going to Mass on Saturday afternoon with my niece

~ having dinner with old friends at my favorite restaurant, The House of Lam

~ writing two new songs (both of which mention molasses)

~ eating pork cretons with my great-nephew

~ attending early morning Holy Communion on Sunday at the Anglican Church of my youth and hearing a great homily from one of the finest priests I know

~ watching surfers ride the Tidal Bore

~ going for coffee at my favorite pizza café (Harry’s)

~ eating fish and chips with my godson who had been reading Plotinus earlier that day

~ eating my sister’s boiled dinner (pot roast)

As I mentioned, my holidays began in Ontario. I was there to attend a Memorial Service for a dear friend. I called her my godmother.

One Sunday morning when I was a teenager I was walking home from church when a doctor and his wife who were fellow parishioners asked me if they could give me a drive. (They literally came to me in “a sunbeam” – a Chrysler Sunbeam to be exact, the first car they owned as a married couple.) I discovered that they lived just around the corner and we quickly became the best of friends. They were mentors to me. I came to think of them as godparents, and I still do. They inspired me in every meaningful way one can imagine and I simply would not have pursued higher education without their influence and moral encouragement. Their great charity, patience, and hospitality revealed to all who knew them the deepest qualities of Spirit. The best way I can express the influence these wonderful people had on me is to quote an old hymn by Fannie Crosby.

Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.

 In their company by God’s grace I was “wakened by kindness,” and I am thankful.