Pilgrim’s Problem
C. S. Lewis
 
By now I should be entering on the supreme stage
Of the whole walk, reserved for the late afternoon.
The heat was to be over now; the anxious mountains,
The airless valleys and the sun-baked rocks, behind me.
 
Now, or soon now, if all is well, come the majestic
Rivers of foamless charity that glide beneath
Forests of contemplation. In the grassy clearings
Humility with liquid eyes and damp, cool nose
Should come, half-tame, to eat bread from my hermit hand.
If storms arose, then in my tower of fortitude--
It ought to have been in sight by this—I would take refuge;
But I expected rather a pale mackerel sky,
Feather-like, perhaps shaking from a lower cloud
Light drops of silver temperance, and clover earth
Sending up mists of chastity, a country smell,
Till earnest stars blaze out in the established sky
Rigid with justice; the streams audible; my rest secure.
 
I can see nothing like all this. Was the map wrong?
Maps can be wrong. But the experienced walker knows
That the other explanation is more often true.
 

 
C. S. Lewis, Clive Staples Lewis, is best known for his prose works but he wrote a fair amount of poetry as well. Born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1898, Lewis was a reader and writer from an early age. Raised in a Christian household, “Jack” (as he was always called) began to consider himself an atheist in his teenage years.
 
Always a brilliant student, Lewis received a scholarship to University College, Oxford, in 1916, on the eve of World War I. He entered the army and experienced trench warfare on the front line at the Somme Valley. He was injured in friendly fire and had a long physical and mental recovery. After the war he resumed his studies at Oxford, where, after gaining First Class honors in Latin and Greek, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English, he remained as a tutor.
 
Lewis’ rediscovery of his Christian faith was nurtured by reading—especially the works of George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton—and by conversations with believing friends, like J. R. R. Tolkien. He famously wrote of his conversion, “You must picture me alone in [my] room… night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me…. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
 
C. S. Lewis became one of the most famous and prolific of Christian apologists. He died on November 22, 1963.
 
Lewis loved the natural world, and he loved to “ramble,” taking long walks – twenty miles, sometimes—in the countryside. In this poem, he describes the spiritual journey as a ramble, and at times playfully evokes the language of a guidebook. This ramble doesn’t go according to plan. It is late afternoon, and he has been walking a while already. Lewis writes: “By now I should be entering on the supreme stage / Of the whole walk.” The difficult part of the day—the heat, the mountains, the rocks—was supposed to be over by now, and nothing before him but beautiful views and easy walking.
 
This far into his spiritual journey, Lewis expected to have arrived at the Christian virtues: “majestic / Rivers of foamless charity,” “Forests of contemplation,” “towers of fortitude,” “Light drops of silver temperance,” and “mists of chastity.” But that hasn’t happened. “I can see nothing like all this,” he writes. “Was the map wrong? / Maps can be wrong.” The conclusion of the poem is tongue in cheek. “The experienced walker knows / That the other explanation is more often true.” The map wasn’t wrong – the rambler was.
 
“Pilgrim’s Problem” makes the point that the journey doesn’t get easier. In the spiritual life, most of us do not make steady, continual progress. We do advance, but we do not leave difficulties and temptation behind. If we think we will get to a place where the virtues come effortlessly, we are fooling ourselves—we are misreading “the map,” which did not promise consolations—just the cross.
 
Lewis’s poem made me think of medieval labyrinths, like the one at Chartres Cathedral in France. When we walk the labyrinth, we do not go straight to the center. Rather, we follow a circuitous path, which takes us very close to the center from time to time, but then moves away from it again. On the spiritual journey, there are moments where we feel very close to God, but there are also moments where the end seems far away, or where we lose sight of the goal altogether. We can give in to discouragement, and blame the map—or acknowledge, as the speaker in Lewis’s poem does, that “the other explanation is more often true”—and adjust our expectations.
 

From For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
W. H. Auden
 
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
 
 
 
W. H. Auden – Wystan Hugh Auden – was born in 1907 in York, England, and died in Vienna, Austria in 1973. His family were part of England’s established minor gentry—both grandfathers were high Church clergymen, and he was brought up in a milieu of Anglicanism, private school, and Oxford. Auden began writing poetry as a teenager, but his career was never straightforward. He taught and lectured, and wrote essays, screenplays, libretti for operas, and journalism. Auden moved to the United States in 1939. Auden lived for a year in Brooklyn with a number of other artists and writers, including the composer Benjamin Britten and the novelist Carson McCullers. He also rediscovered his Christian faith through an encounter with the English writer Charles Williams, and through his study of thinkers like Kierkegaard and Niebuhr. The death of Auden’s mother, and the unfaithfulness of his partner, to whom Auden considered himself married, are in the background of For the Time Being, his most explicitly Christian work, in which he explores the basic idea of what difference the Incarnation makes in how we view the world.
 
Auden intended For the Time Being as the libretto of an oratorio to be composed by his friend Benjamin Britten. Britten only ended up setting a couple of short lyrics—it is said that when Britten saw how long For The Time Being was, he was quite angry!
 
The passage Jackie just read is from close to the end of the oratorio. Auden wonderfully captures the disconnect, which most of us have experienced by now, of putting Christmas away. “That is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, / Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes - / Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.” The holly and the mistletoe are tossed out, the children go back to school, and all our Christmas feasts have left us with cold leftovers and not much appetite. We have one more failed effort “to love all of our relatives” to put behind us.
 
We are putting away Christmas decorations and Christmas activities; but Auden goes on to suggest that, too often, that is what we do to Christmas itself—to Christ himself. “Once again / As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed / To do more than entertain it as an agreeable / Possibility, once again we have sent him away.” We have seen an “actual Vision,” the reality of Christ, and enjoyed the “agreeable / Possibility” of it, but we keep it at a distance. And thus, “here we all are, / Back in the moderate Aristotelian city / Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen.” The commonplace and the tangible dominate our reality again: the city, the chores, the schedules.
 
But even so, something has happened to us. As we return to this world of Aristotle, Euclid, and Newton—this world that can be measured and explained—it is not the same, or we are not the same. The kitchen table seems to have shrunk; the streets are narrower and the office more “depressing.” The world seems smaller because we have glimpsed something larger. The vision of Christmas has spoiled us: “To those who have seen / The Child, however dimly, however incredulously, / The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.”
 
For Auden, the Incarnation changes everything. It makes us restless. What do we do with this sense of disillusionment with the world as it is—with “the Time Being”?
 
As Auden writes at the end of his oratorio, this restlessness is also our mission: “There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, / Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem / From insignificance.” As we continue to do what needs to be done, our real task is much larger: to redeem the present from insignificance—to bring the mystery of the Incarnation to bear upon every aspect and every day of our lives.
 

In the Bleak Midwinter
Christina Rossetti
 
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
 
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
 
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
 
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
 
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
 


 
Through the musical settings of Gustav Holst and Harold Darke, Rossetti’s poem has become a standard at Christmas, including Christmas here at St. James.
 
In this Poem of the Week series, we’ve read two other poems by Christina Rossetti—“Good Friday” and “Up-Hill.” Rossetti was one of the finest poets of the Victorian era, and when Tennyson died, her name was suggested for Poet Laureate—but England wasn’t ready for a female poet laureate at that time! Her poetry is richly varied, and her work includes long narrative poems like “Goblin Market,” lyrics on both secular and religious subjects, and even nursery rhymes. Rossetti could write splendidly about joy and love. But she could also write about darkness. As someone who struggled with depression all her life, she knew dark days, and in poetry she gave voice to that darkness and struggled to reconcile it with her faith.
 
“In the bleak midwinter” is full of vivid contrasts. In the first stanza, we get an evocative description of winter (clearly, an English winter, not a Palestinian one!). It is “the bleak midwinter,” and everything is frozen and hard – “earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” This winter is deep and seems to have gone on forever—Rossetti masterfully creates that sense of winter’s duration in the line “snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,” which adds layer upon layer to this winter.
 
In the second stanza, God enters into this coldness and hardness. Rossetti describes both the first and second comings of Christ in the poem. Heaven and earth are too small to hold him, and both will “flee away” when he comes again; but at this moment in time, “in the bleak midwinter,” Christ enters in.
 
Rossetti evokes the simplicity, the poverty of the Christmas stable, again, through powerful contrasts. “Cherubim worship [him] night and day,” but here, Christ has only a “breastful of milk and a mangerful of hay.” Angels fall down in worship before him, but he accepts the homage of animals. There may have been archangels gathered around, but here in the stable, his mother’s kiss is enough.
 
Again and again, Rossetti contrasts the power and glory of heaven with the simplicity and poverty of earth. For me, Rossetti’s poem recalls the early Christian hymn in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Christ Jesus… though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7). This self-emptying love of Christ is seen in the Incarnation, and reaches its fullest expression on the cross.
 
I think that passage from Philippians also sheds light on the last stanza of the poem: “What can I give him, poor as I am?” The poem began with such a barren image of the bleak midwinter – a frozen earth, “water like a stone.” And at the end, the speaker is similarly barren. She has no role to play here – she is neither a shepherd nor a wise man – and she has no gift to give: nothing except her heart—her love, her self.  I am reminded of St. Therese’s words of self-offering: “At the close of life's evening I shall appear before you with empty hands.”
 
Christmas is so associated with joy and hope and light and peace that it can seem like there is no room for sadness or darkness. But in this poem, Christina Rossetti makes room. Christ comes not just into the sunshine and happiness, but into the “bleak midwinter” of our world. In his self-emptying love, Christ gives meaning to our emptiness.
 

The Burning Babe
Robert Southwell, SJ
 
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorchèd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defilèd souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
      And straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas day.
 
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week.  This week, I’ve chosen a poem by Robert Southwell, “The Burning Babe.” Scott Webster will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
Robert Southwell is a fascinating figure. He was born in 1561 into an English Catholic family, and lived his entire life under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when it was illegal to practice the Catholic faith, and priests were not allowed to enter England on pain of death. Nevertheless, at the age of 15, Southwell headed to Europe to study for the priesthood in Douai, France and later in Rome. He entered the Jesuits and was ordained at 23. After a few years in Europe, he asked for the difficult and dangerous assignment of serving as a clandestine missionary in his native land. His return to England was watched by spies, and over the next few years he wrote and ministered in secret, moving from safe house to safe house, often using a pseudonym.
 
Queen Elizabeth’s priest-hunters caught up with Southwell at Uxendon Hall in Harrow in 1592. He was arrested and spent the next three years in the Tower of London, where the notorious Richard Topcliffe tortured him repeatedly. In 1595, he was brought to trial and sentenced to death by hanging at Tyburn. As he died, he repeated the words of Jesus on the cross: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Southwell was beatified in 1929, and canonized in 1970.
 
Southwell lived in a great age of poets – he was a contemporary of Shakespeare (to whom he may have been related), Mary Sidney, and John Donne—and poetry was an important part of his ministry. His poems, which were very Catholic, were widely read and shared. “The Burning Babe” is one of his best-known lyrics.
 
This poem is written in long lines of 14 syllables, and it has a simple quality, almost a sing-song rhythm, like a folk song. But the imagery is anything but simple. Southwell’s poem is built around a conceit, which is a literary term for an elaborate, and often strange, comparison. The beginning of the poem gives us a vivid contrast between dark and light, cold and heat. “As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, / Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow.” The warmth and light come from a “pretty Babe all burning bright.” This infant weeps so copiously that the speaker is surprised the flames are not extinguished. The child does not weep from the pain of the flames; rather, he weeps because “none approach to warm their hearts.”
 
In a way that’s very typical of the poetry of his time, Southwell brings great meaning to every aspect of the comparison. Every detail means something. The child is the furnace. “Love is the fire.” Justice adds the fuel. Mercy “blows the coals,” making the fire even hotter. The smoke is “sighs,” the ashes “shames and scorns.” And the metal worked on in this furnace is human souls.
 
The comparison is not Southwell’s invention. The prophet Malachi uses the image of the Messiah as a blacksmith: “Who can endure the day of his coming?... He will sit refining and purifying silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or silver” (Malachi 3:3). In Southwell’s image, Christ is not the blacksmith, but the crucible itself; and the bath in which this metal will be tempered is his blood.
 
At the end of Southwell’s poem, the sudden vision vanishes, and the speaker realizes: “straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas day.” It’s such a strange image, isn’t it, and perhaps it may not seem very “Christmassy.” We are accustomed to cozy images on Christmas, aren’t we—light and warmth, for sure, but not fire. And yet, Christmas and Good Friday are not very far apart. In the familiar words of the carol, “I wonder as I wander / Out under the sky, / How Jesus the Savior / Did come for to die.” Southwell, a martyr himself who saw many friends martyred, understood that reality. Jesus is born so that he can redeem us on the cross, and in some sense, the beginning of his life is the beginning of his passion.
 
Jesus shares our life, so that we can share in his; he is born so that we can come to new life in him. In the liturgy of Christmas Day, the Church prays: “Grant…  that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” It’s a prayer for transformation—the transformation the “burning babe” came to work in each of us.
 

In Too Much Light
Jessica Powers
 
The Magi had one only star to follow,
a single sanctuary lamp hung low,
gold ornament in the astonished air.
I am confounded in this latter day;
I find stars everywhere.
 
Rumor locates the presence of a night
out past the loss of perishable sun
where, round midnight, I shall come to see
that all the stars are one.
 
I long for this night of the onement of stars
when days of scattered shining are my lot
and my confusion. Yet faith even here
burns her throat dry, cries: on this very spot
of mornings, see, there is not any place
where the sought Word is not.
Under and over, in and out, this morn
flawlessly, purely, wakes the newly born.
Behold, all places which have light in them
truly are Bethlehem.
 
(1964)
 
This past week, the Bethlehem star has been making headlines. Again! That’s because we have the opportunity to witness conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which means that they appear, from our perspective on planet earth, to come very together in the sky. It’s a phenomenon that happens about every twenty years, but there hasn’t been a visible alignment of the two planets this close since March 4, 1226! This phenomenon is known as the “Christmas Star,” because it has been speculated for centuries that the “star” that guided the Magi might have been a similar conjunction of two planets.
 
In this lovely Christmas poem, Jessica Powers plays on the idea of the “great conjunction”—in her words “the onement of stars.” She sets up her problem at the beginning of the poem – the Magi who followed the star to the infant Christ “had one only star to follow.” I love the comparison of the Christmas star to “a single sanctuary lamp hung low”—this image emphasizes how easy to spot the star was, and also what it marked—the presence of Christ. It was like a “gold ornament in the astonished air.” It was easier for the Magi, Powers suggests – they knew exactly what to look for. But now it is more difficult. “I am confounded in this latter day; / I find stars everywhere.”
 
The speaker believes that she will have equal clarity one day – it’s rumored, she says, that one day we “shall come to see / that all the stars are one,” but this won’t happy until “midnight” –in other words, not until eternity, “past the loss of perishable sun.” We have to wait for this “great conjunction” of stars.
 
What is Powers talking about here when she talks about stars? That image of the “sanctuary lamp” in the first stanza gives us the clue. She is talking about the presence of Christ. The Magi, following a single star, found Christ himself. She ‘finds stars everywhere”—she finds Christ, but she doesn’t find him in one place. “I long for this night of the onement of stars / when days of scattered shining are my lot / and my confusion.” There are glimmers of Christ’s presence everywhere—but the light is “scattered” and at times confusing.
 
The end of the poem provides some resolution to this dilemma of hers, this being “In too much light.” Faith is saying – yelling, even—“burning her throat dry” to proclaim what this “scattered shining” means. It means that in even this place of “mornings,” where the night sky with its Christmas star is no longer visible, “there is not any place / where the sought Word is not.” The Christ she is looking for is everywhere—in every place she looks. “All places which have light in them / truly are Bethlehem.” No longer is Christ is born in just one place. Everywhere there is light—everywhere there is love, hope, truth, service, faith, reconciliation—Christ is born.
 
So if you missed the “onement of stars,” and didn’t see the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn on the horizon this week, never fear. As Pope Francis has written, “The Lord… comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours” (Laudato Si).
 
Have a blessed and merry Christmas.
 

At the round earth’s imagined corners
John Donne
 
At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

 
This week, we’re reading a poem about the end of the world – John Donne’s “At the round earth’s imagined corners.”
 
We’ve met John Donne before in this series. Donne was a remarkable figure. He started out as a Catholic and ended up an Anglican; he went from ambitious man of the world to priest. This poem, one of Donne’s “Holy Sonnets,” is a really spectacular example of Donne’s metaphysical poetry. “Metaphysical” refers something beyond the natural world. In terms of poetry, we use the word to describe poets like Donne, where the physical and the spiritual are never far apart, and where there is a penchant for intricate and sometimes downright strange imagery. In one of his most famous poems, Donne uses the image of a flea to talk about love! Whenever we encounter a poem by Donne, we know we’re going to get some pretty amazing imagery.
 
This sonnet begins with a bang. “At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow / Your trumpets, angels.” Donne draws on the Scriptures here: in the First Letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes about what the end of the world will be like: “the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (I Thess 4:16).
 
The angels blow their trumpets, and the dead are raised. Donne describes this raising of the dead in a truly epic way. The souls of the dead fly back to their earthly dwelling places: “arise, arise / From death, you numberless infinities / Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go.” These are dead of all times, all places, and all causes. They died in “the flood,” in the time of Noah. They died from natural causes – “age” and “agues” and “dearth,” or famine. And many died unnatural deaths: killed in wars, by tyrants, lost to suicide, the death penalty, and accidents. And Donne does not forget those who will still be alive at the time of the Last Judgment—“you whose eyes / Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.” The vision is vast, wide-ranging, all-inclusive.
 
In the sestet, the last six lines of the poem, all this drama and action and movement ceases suddenly and dramatically. “But let them wait, Lord.” The speaker asks God to hold off on the end of time, for a moment. Why? Because he has sins to repent of. “'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace / When we are there,” he says. This is the time of repentance, and this is the place of repentance.
 
In the passage from I Thessalonians that inspired Donne’s poem, St. Paul describes how “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together … in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (4:17). Earth will be left behind. Donne’s speaker began the poem calling on the angels to blow their trumpets and the dead to rise. But he knows he is not ready for the air yet, because once that trumpet sounds, it will be too late for repentance.
 
The poem that began with epic imagery of the cosmos ends with a quiet spotlight on one repentant sinner on earth. “Here on this lowly ground / Teach me how to repent.” All he needs to do is repent his sins, and Christ will do the rest. To repent is “as good,” Donne writes, “As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.”
 
“Teach me how to repent.” We often bristle when we hear that word, repent. Our culture prefers to talk about “choices” rather than “sins.” But we Christians know that sin is real, and that it can do damage to ourselves and those around us. The sinful choices we make can tear the fabric of family and of society. All of us are sinners, called to repentance. And when, like the speaker of Donne’s poem, we dare to look honestly at our own lives and to recognize our sinfulness—to repent—Jesus pours out mercy and forgiveness. And then we can look to his coming not with dread and fear, but with hope.
 

Advent
Jessica Powers
 
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free
from its high mooring and walks down the sky
to be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.
 
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:
someone is hidden in this dark with me.
 
(1948)
 
 
We started this Poem of the Week series with Jessica Powers. Jessica Powers—Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit—was a poet both before and after she became a Carmelite nun. Many of her poems use imagery from the Church’s rich mystical tradition, and this poem, “Advent,” is no exception.
 
“I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.” It’s such a surprising line. Advent is, when you think about it, a pregnant season. In Advent, we wait for the second coming, which is sometimes likened to a birth: “all creation is groaning in labor pains, even until now,” said St. Paul (Romans 8:22). And we wait for Christmas, our celebration of Christ’s first coming. If Christmas is about Christ’s birth into the world, then Advent is about Mary’s pregnancy. “I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.” The poet imagines herself in Mary’s womb. Here, in darkness, yet with “hope’s expectance of nativity,” she waits to be brought to birth.  I love this poem’s description of the Christmas star, swinging “free / from its high mooring,” walking “down the sky / to be the dot above the Christus i.”
 
In the second part of this poem, the sense of mystery deepens. “I knew for long she carried me and fed me, / guarded and loved me, though I could not see. / But only now, with inward jubilee, / I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge: / someone is hidden in this dark with me.” In this place—the speaker is “carried” and “fed,” “guarded and loved,” but in the darkness. And yet, not alone in the dark. Who is hidden in this dark with her? Christ, of course—her brother, even her twin!
 
“I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.” This poem is not really about the liturgical season of Advent. Rather, Advent here is a metaphor for the life of faith: a life of waiting, in darkness, yet conscious, in moments of “inward jubilee,” that we are not alone: that Christ is with us. The poem reflects the Church’s teaching about Mary. The Church calls her Mother of God, because God became incarnate in her womb. She is also Mother of the Church and Mother of believers.
 
The Church has always raised Mary high, not simply because she gave birth to Jesus, but rather, because she is the model of Christian discipleship. Mary was not a passive vessel. She did not merely consent, but actively cooperated with God’s plan, and continues to play an active role in the life of believers, just as she did at the wedding feast at Cana—“do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). As Pope Francis has written, “She is the handmaid of the Father who sings his praises. She is the friend who is ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives. She is the woman whose heart was pierced by a sword and who understands all our pain. As mother of all, she is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice…. As a true mother, she walks at our side, she shares our struggles and she constantly surrounds us with God’s love” (Joy of the Gospel, 286).
 
Mary always points us towards Christ. Incarnate once in her womb, he continues to make himself present, in the sacramental life of the Church, and in the suffering flesh of our brothers and sisters in need. In this way, Mary constantly reminds us of “earth’s most amazing knowledge: someone is hidden in this dark with” us.

Kneeling
R. S. Thomas
 
Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message.
                        Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.

 
We met Welsh poet Ronald Stuart Thomas earlier in this series. A priest of the Church of England, Thomas wrote many poems on spiritual themes, especially on the challenges of prayer.
 
In this short poem, Thomas evokes a peaceful moment, “kneeling before an altar / Of wood in a stone church / in summer.” The speaker seems to be alone in the empty church, and yet the moment has great import, great drama. He is “waiting for the God / To speak.” As Thomas describes the scene, we get the sense that everything is waiting for God to speak: the air is “a staircase / For silence”: the image gives us a sense of anticipation, as well as the potential for connection, like Jacob’s ladder, reaching from earth to heaven. The sun surrounds the speaker with light, spotlighting him like an performer on a stage, “as though I acted / A great role.” And then there’s the audience: a “close throng / of spirits waiting” with him, for whatever God will say: for the “message.”
 
After all this, the poem takes a surprising turn. “Prompt me, God; / But not yet.” Words of prayer are on the tip of his tongue, but he holds back. “When I speak, / Though it be you who speak / Through me, something is lost.” Even if God inspires what he is going to say, “something is lost.” That “something” is this pregnant silence, in the company with the “spirits,” the sun, the air, the church itself, all waiting together in a silence that is filled with God, even though God is silent. In the last line of the poem, Thomas says: “The meaning is in the waiting.” The revelation he awaits has already come, in the silent waiting itself.
 
Though the poem is set in the summer, I think this is the right poem for this time of year. This past Sunday, we began the season of Advent. The word “Advent” means “coming” and this season is all about waiting for Christ’s coming. Our Advent waiting is multi-layered. We wait and watch for the second coming, the day of Christ’s return, and the Church dares to await that day with joy and hope: we pray that Christ “may he find us watchful in prayer / and exultant in his praise” (Roman Missal). And there is another kind of waiting in Advent: we wait in anticipation of the celebration of Christ’s first coming at Christmas. Advent traditions like the Advent wreath, with its gradually increasing number of lit candles, and the Advent calendar, with its doors and windows for each day leading up to Christmas, are visual emblems of this joyful waiting. In our Advent waiting, past and future merge:  in the same moment, we look to our beginning and to our end.
 
In a lovely book on R. S. Thomas entitled Frequencies of God, Carys Walsh writes of this poem: “There is no anxiety in this waiting; nor is it something to be endured or suffered. There is simply the understanding that waiting upon God is fundamental to knowing God… Thomas opens up the paradoxical possibility that God might be revealed while we are waiting for God to be revealed.”
 
Have a blessed Advent!

Vespers
BY LOUISE GLÜCK
 
From Wild Iris (1992)
 
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week.  This week, I’ve chosen a poem by Louise Glück. You may have heard her name recently—she is the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Jackie O’Ryan will read Glück’s poem “Vespers,” and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Louise Glück is an American poet, born in 1943 in New York City to a Jewish parents of Russian and Hungarian descent. She wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and even in her early teens was sending poems and even books of poems off to publishers. As a teenager, she struggled with anorexia, and her illness and eventual cure was a significant turning point in her life. She credits her years in psychoanalysis not only with treating her disease, but with teaching her how to think.
 
Glück published her first book of poems in 1968, and many other books have followed. Glück has also spoken of years of crippling writer’s block. One critic has written: Glück’s “basic concerns” are “betrayal, mortality, love and the sense of loss that accompanies it… She is at heart the poet of a fallen world” (Don Bogen). Her language is “staunchly straightforward, remarkably close to the diction of ordinary speech….. [but with] a weight that is far from colloquial” (Dana Goodyear).
 
I think that assessment of Glück’s language is helpful in approaching this poem, “Vespers.” The poet describes something so ordinary—her struggle to grow tomato plants—and yet the stakes are high. The poem begins:
 
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
  
Clearly, the poem is addressed to God, and the speaker is giving an accounting. I am reminded of the parable in Matthew: “a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one—to each according to his ability. Then he went away” (Mt. 25:14-15). Like the servants in the parable, the speaker knows she has to do something with what God has given her.
 
Note the formal, distant language—“return on investment,” “report,” “assignment,” “principally,” all words which we would expect to see in business correspondence—not in an address to God. This gives a lightness, even a humor, to the subject: “I must report / failure in my assignment, principally / regarding the tomato plants.” But after this light beginning, the poem goes deeper. The speaker confesses her failure, but also points out to God all the circumstances beyond her control which played their part. If God wants her to grow tomato plants, why did he make it so hard? Why not provide her with dry days and warm nights, the weeks of summer others enjoy? 
 
The emotional distance of the beginning of the poem breaks down, and now we hear how deeply the speaker feels this failure. She was so aware of the beauty and promise of these plants, their “first shoots / like wings, tearing the soil,” and the disease that struck them was painful, even heart-breaking. And this heartbreak is a uniquely human experience: “I doubt / you have a heart, in our understanding of / that term.”  For God lives in eternity, and thus, Glück says in an interesting phrase, God is “immune to foreshadowing.”
 
So what are these tomato plants foreshadowing?  By the end of the poem, we know that this is not just about tomato plants: it’s about things dying before their time, the fear of failing in our responsibility towards the gifts and the living things entrusted to our care. “you may not know / how much terror we bear,” the speaker observes, to see that first diseased leaf, to see leaves falling from the trees before their time, “in August, in early darkness.” The poem ends “I am responsible / for these vines.” To be unable to protect, to bring to fruition, what we are responsible for—this is what is heart-breaking, terrifying. The title of the poem, “Vespers,” reinforces the prayer-dimension of this address to God, and also reminds us of evening, the coming of darkness.
 
This poem is a great example of Glück’s work—deceptively simple language, powerful impact. As one critic has observed, “No one writes about emotionally charged subjects with such sparse, cold, and nuanced language” (Jeffrey McDaniel). The poem is a prayer, and a difficult one. Glück prays here like Job, and asks questions the way Job does: “I would speak with the Almighty; I want to argue with God” (Job 13:3).

Spring and Fall
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
 
to a young child
 
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week.
 
This week, we’re back in the company of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Scott Webster will read Hopkins’ poem “Spring and Fall,” and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
I thought this poem was the perfect choice for this time of year, when the leaves are falling from the trees, and we are feeling winter in the air.
 
Hopkins addresses “Spring and Fall” “to a young child,” a girl named Margaret. We don’t know if Margaret was a real person – it doesn’t really matter. We do know that she is a child, and that as the poem begins she is weeping because the leaves are falling.
 
In this poem, Hopkins’ wonderfully distinctive voice and language are on display. “Margaret, are you grieving / over Goldengrove unleaving?”  The natural world is never generic in Hopkins’ poetry. A few weeks ago, we read Hopkins’ poem “Binsey Poplars,” and we talked about “inscape,” Hopkins’ word for the unique and unrepeatable individuality of everything—not just people, but animals, trees and even landscapes. In this poem, the woods are given a name, “Goldengrove.” It’s a coinage of Hopkins, one of several in this poem, and it could describe any beautiful forest in the fall. But “Goldengrove” is capitalized, giving it the individuality of a name. Clearly, these woods have an “inscape,” to which the child is responding.
 
Hopkins marvels that a child like Margaret can be sad because of the “unleaving” of the trees. He asks, “leaves like the things of man, you / with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?” How is it she can care so much for the natural world, he wonders, at her young age?  And yet, he knows that “as the heart grows older / It will come to such sights colder.” Most adults never “spare a sigh” to grieve, “though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.” Isn’t this a fantastic description of the world at this time of year – “worlds of wanwood,” countless leaves, lying “leafmeal”—still another coinage, but we know exactly what Hopkins is talking about.
 
In the second half of the poem, Hopkins does not answer Margaret’s question, “why.” Instead, he answers his own question of why the child cares, why she weeps at the falling of the leaves. “Now no matter, child, the name: / Sorrow’s springs are the same. / Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed / What heart heard of, ghost guessed.” Margaret’s sorrow, Hopkins muses, comes from the source of all sorrow. It is not something Margaret could express aloud or articulate to herself. But the heart and the “ghost,” the spirit within her, know the answer: “It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.” Margaret weeps for Margaret: the falling of the leaves is the annual reminder that she will also die one day.  Margaret is the spring; but autumn will come. Most of the poem is quite intricate in its diction, especially with the playful coinages so typical of Hopkins. But that last line is simple and direct: “It is Margaret you mourn for.” The straightforward language intensifies the impact of the realization that she, too, will die.
 
Gerard Manley Hopkins was far from the first to compare the falling of the leaves to the passing away of generations. In fact, one critic has written: “The simile is quite likely the oldest readily identifiable poetic artifice in European literature.” Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton—all of these poets used the image of leaves in the fall to suggest the numberless dead. In the Iliad, we read:
 
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.   (II. 6.146-49)
 
In this short poem, Hopkins takes a classic, even a hackneyed image, and breathes new life into it. Viewing the change in seasons through the eyes of a child, Hopkins does not see a generic forest shedding its leaves, but a unique and wonderful place—“Goldengrove unleaving.” And it is not merely faceless generations that come and go; it is an individual, Margaret, who, without fully understanding it, feels and knows that what happens to the leaves will one day happen to her—to each of us. This is the destiny we have in common with all who have ever lived, and yet it still has power to shake us:  “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
 

Dawn Revisited
By Rita Dove
 
Read the poem here:
 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51663/dawn-revisited
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the poem of the week.
 
This week, I’ve chosen a poem by Rita Dove, entitled “Dawn Revisited.” Jackie O’Ryan will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Jackie.
 
Rita Dove is an American poet born in 1952. As a child growing up in Akron, Ohio, Dove’s parents encouraged her to read early and widely. She was a brilliant student—a Presidential Scholar, a National Merit Scholar, and later a Fulbright Scholar. She earned her MFA at the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop. In 1993, she became the United States Poet Laureate, not only the first African American but the youngest person ever named to that post. She transformed the office of Poet Laureate, traveling the country and using her position to promote the arts. Dove is best known as a poet, but she has written in other forms as well, including a novel, short stories, plays, essays, and lyrics. Dove has said: “There’s no reason to subscribe authors to particular genres. I’m a writer, and I write in the form that most suits what I want to say.” She has received many accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize, and teaches at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
 
“Dawn Revisited” was written in 1999 and appeared in Dove’s collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks. It’s a wonderful meditation on past and present—on history and renewal. “Imagine you wake up / with a second chance,” the poem begins. In this second chance, some things stay the same—looking out the window, “the blue jay / hawks his pretty wares / and the oak still stands.” But, the poet says, “if you don’t look back / the future never happens.” This new dawn is not an erasure of the past, of history, because without the past, there is no future.
 
Dove captures the freshness of a new day. Familiar things take on wonderful depth and newness. “How good to rise in sunlight, / in the prodigal smell of biscuits - / eggs and sausage on the grill.” The smell of biscuits in the morning is not just good—it’s “prodigal,” suggesting a reckless generosity. These homey details are juxtaposed with more conventionally poetic images: “The whole sky is yours / to write on, blown open / to a blank page.”  For a writer, what better image of fresh possibility than that? In this “second chance,” the familiar and the unknown are both present.
 
I find the end of the poem surprising. “Come on, / shake a leg! You'll never know / who's down there, frying those eggs, / if you don't get up and see.” When we wake to the smell of breakfast cooking, we usually have a pretty good idea of who’s cooking it!  But the poet says “you’ll never know / who’s down there… if you don’t get up and see.”  The poem invites us to be open to the surprise of the world around us, including—perhaps especially—the most familiar things and people. The renewal this dawn brings extends to our relationships, too.
 
Dove’s poem is called “Dawn Revisited.” In the Scriptures, dawn is a very significant image. In Isaiah, dawn is associated with works of justice: God says that when we care for the naked, the homeless, and the hungry, our light shall “break forth like the dawn.” In the New Testament, dawn is specifically associated with the coming of Christ: Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, prophecies that “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us.” Christ, who was “in the beginning with God,” is also as new as the dawn. In the familiar words of St. Augustine, Christ is “ever ancient, ever new.”
 
To live in Christ, ever ancient, ever new, is to be invited to renewal—not just once, but again and again. As Pope Francis has written, “with a tenderness which never disappoints, but is always capable of restoring our joy, he makes it possible for us to lift up our heads and to start anew” (Joy of the Gospel, 3). This renewal is not about forgetting our history. The believer, Pope Francis has said, is “one who remembers” (Joy of the Gospel, 13). We need memory, because, as Dove says, “if you don’t look back, / the future never happens.”
 
St. Paul invites us, “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). It’s not unlike the invitation we get in this poem by Rita Dove: “The whole sky is yours / to write on, blown open / to a blank page. Come on, / shake a leg!”

From In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
 
XXXII
 
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
      Nor other thought her mind admits
      But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
 
Then one deep love doth supersede
      All other, when her ardent gaze
      Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
 
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
      Borne down by gladness so complete,
      She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
 
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
      Whose loves in higher love endure;
      What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week. On November 2, the Church keeps the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed—All Souls. To mark this day of remembrance of the dead, I’ve chosen a poem from Tennyson’s In Memoriam, one of the most celebrated elegies in English. In this poem from In Memoriam, Tennyson imagines the thoughts of Mary, the sister of Lazarus, after Jesus raises her brother from the dead. Scott Webster will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, in Lincolnshire, England, in 1809. A poet from a young age, he first won acclaim while a student at Cambridge, where he was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for an early poem. It was also at Cambridge that Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, another aspiring poet, who became his closest friend. Everything was going well for Tennyson: in 1830, he published a well-reviewed collection of poems; and in 1831, his friend Hallam became engaged to Tennyson’s sister Emilia. But then it all fell apart: his 1833 collection, which included “The Lady of Shalott,” was panned by the press; and on September 13, while on holiday in Austria with his family, Hallam died very suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was just 22 years old. As one of Hallam’s friends wrote, his death came as “a loud and terrible stroke from the reality of things upon the faery building of our youth.” Tennyson sank into grief and depression. He published nothing for ten years, though he continued to write—especially the lyrics which eventually became In Memoriam A. H. H. (the initials of Arthur Henry Hallam).
 
In Memoriam consists of 133 cantos or shorter poems in which the poet reflects on his loss and seeks some sort of resolution. There are moments of deep faith and also expressions of doubt. All the poems are written in the same meter and rhyme scheme, which has come to be known as the In Memoriam stanza. Tennyson did not invent it, but it is an appropriate choice—the ABBA rhyme scheme forces us to wait for resolution, reflecting the circuitous process of grief.
 
In this section of the poem, Tennyson meditates on the miracle of Jesus in raising Lazarus from the dead. In the Gospel of John, the story of the raising of Lazarus is followed by the anointing at Bethany, when Jesus, with his disciples, is having supper with Lazarus and his sisters in their home. During this gathering, Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with costly perfume.
 
Tennyson beautifully imagines the scene from Mary’s perspective. “Her eyes are homes of silent prayer” as she looks from her brother, who was dead and now lives, to Jesus, the one who brought him back. Without saying anything, Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with “spikenard and with tears.” “One deep love doth supersede / All other,” Tennyson says: she loves her brother, but she loves Christ more—or rather, her love for her brother leads her to Christ. The poem ends by marveling at this faith. “Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,” he says—people like Mary, who pray without words, who go straight to the heart of things, “whose loves in higher love endure”—whose human loves find their origin and their fulfillment in love of Christ. “What souls possess themselves so pure,” Tennyson asks at the end of this short poem, “Or is there blessedness like theirs?”
 
It’s a wonderful meditation on the Scripture story. I think the way Tennyson concludes this lyric is also significant:  it ends with a question mark. Tennyson wishes for faith like Mary’s, but he always has more questions than answers. Through the poems of In Memoriam, we see the process of Tennyson’s grief, as he moves from the first raw stages of grief to peace and hope. We also see the way this grief shatters his faith, and puts it back together again. Grief forces him to reckon with death, to acknowledge his doubts, and ultimately to return to God, with a faith that is less sure of itself, perhaps, but deeper and more authentic than before.
 
As he writes in another poem:
 
I falter where I firmly trod,
      And falling with my weight of cares
      Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
 
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
      And gather dust and chaff, and call
      To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
 

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621)
 
Psalm 70
 
Lord, hie thee me to save;
      Lord, now to help me haste:
Shame let them surely have
      And of confusion taste,
            That hold my soul in chase.
                  Let them be forcèd back,
                  And no disgraces lack,
            That joy in my disgrace.
 
Back forcèd let them be
      And for a fair reward
Their own foul ruin see
      Who laugh and laugh out hard
            When I most inly moan.
                  But mirth and joy renew
                  In them thy paths ensue
            And love thy help alone.
 
Make them with gladness sing:
      To God be ever praise.
And fail not me to bring,
      My downcast state to raise.
            Thy speedy aid and stay
                  In thee my succour grows:
            From thee my freedom flows:
                  Lord, make no long delay.
 

Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week.
 
This week, I’ve chosen a Psalm – which is, of course, the poetry anthology that is part of the Bible!  Jackie O’Ryan will read Mary Sidney Herbert’s translation of Psalm 70, which dates to the end of the 16th century, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Jackie.
 
This poem is fascinating on a number of levels. First, there’s its author. Mary Sidney was born in 1561. Upon her marriage at the age of 16, she became the Countess of Pembroke and one of the wealthiest and most influential women of her time. With her wealth and status, Mary Sidney had access to education which was extremely rare for women of her time. She was exceptionally well read, and fluent in French, Italian, and Latin. Her poetry was circulated widely among her friends.

Mary’s older brother was the poet Sir Philip Sidney. When Philip died at the young age of 31, Mary (just 25 years old at the time) became his literary executor and completed his unfinished translation of the book of Psalms. She not only edited her brother’s work on the first 43 psalms, but translated the remaining 107 psalms herself. It is an extraordinary achievement. Every one of the psalms is in a unique meter and rhyme scheme, some of which had never been attempted in English before. The translation had a significant impact on English poetry. John Donne called it “the highest matter in the noblest form,” and said of the Sidneys: “they tell us why, and teach us how to sing.”

And then there’s the Psalm itself.  The Book of Psalms is an anthology, a hymnal, if you will—a collection of prayers and hymns which were used in worship at various times during the year. The Psalms include a huge range of moods, from festive joy to lament. There are prayers of repentance, prayers of trust and confidence in God, and prayers of praise.

Psalm 70 is a lament. It begins with an urgent prayer for help:  “Lord, hie thee me to save” – “now to help me haste.” (In parentheses, these lines have a significant place in the liturgy—they are used at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Hours – “O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.”) What might surprise us is where the Psalm goes from there. The Psalmist asks God to punish enemies – “Let them be forced back / And no disgraces lack, / That joy in my disgrace”; “For a fair reward / Their own foul ruin see / Who laugh and laugh out hard / When I most inly moan.” The Psalmist asks that those who mock and pursue him be punished with shame, disgrace, and ruin.

Typical of the laments in the Book of Psalms, the text doesn’t stay in this place of imprecation, but moves in a new direction, as the psalmist asks God’s blessing on those who trust in God: “mirth and joy renew / In them thy paths ensue”; “make them with gladness sing.” The Psalm ends with an expression of hope and a renewal of the speaker’s plea for help. “Fail not… / My downcast state to raise… Lord, make no long delay.”
 
It’s easy for us to get distracted by the imprecations in Psalm 70 and other psalms of lament—wait, we’re not supposed to be asking God to punish our enemies, are we?! I think the more important thing to recognize here is the honesty of this prayer. The Psalmist doesn’t hold back, but brings everything to God—including feelings of resentment, abandonment, and betrayal. When we pray, whether on our own or as a community, I think we sometimes feel like we need to be on our best behavior, burying our resentments, our anger, our frustration, or our fear. The Psalms teach us a different way to pray: they urge us simply to be ourselves with God, and to say what’s on our mind and heart. They also remind us to keep coming back to the foundation of our prayer, trust in God, and God’s time: “In thee my succour grows: / From thee my freedom flows: / Lord, make no long delay.”
 
 
Read a contemporary Catholic translation of Psalm 70 from the Revised Grail Edition.
https://www.giamusic.com/sacred_music/RGP/psalmDisplay.cfm?psalm_id=282
 
Read the King James version of Psalm 70, and explore many other translations:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+70&version=NIV
 
 
 

Malachi Black, "Entering Saint Patrick’s Cathedral" (2020)
 
Read the poem here:  https://poets.org/poem/entering-saint-patricks-cathedral
 
Explore more poems by Malachi Black here: http://www.malachiblack.com/
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the poem of the week.
 
This week, I’ve chosen “Entering Saint Patrick’s Cathedral” by Malachi Black, a brand-new poem which appeared earlier this year. Scott Webster will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
Malachi Black is a young poet. Born in Boston, he now teaches at the University of San Diego, a Catholic university, and themes of faith are woven through a number of his poems.
 
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is the Cathedral church of the Archdiocese of New York. Of course, it’s much more than that. In many ways, it’s an icon for the Catholic Church in the United States. It’s welcomed Popes and countless visitors—not only Catholics but people of all faiths. It’s also an icon of the Church in this country in its setting—it’s not set among fields or in the middle of a park. It’s in the heart of midtown Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers, cultural landmarks like Rockefeller Center, and Fifth Avenue shops like Louis Vuitton, Sak’s, Cartier, and even Victoria’s Secret. Amid the comings and goings, the buying and selling, of one of New York’s busiest streets, St. Patrick’s is a reminder of the presence and of the beauty and importance of faith amid all the other aspects of life that demand our attention.
 
In his poem, Malachi Black vividly captures two contrasting worlds: the world outside the Cathedral, and the world inside. He steps out of the rain, and as the door slowly closes, the sounds of the city fade and the quiet of the church takes over. The rapid movement of the city—Black mentions cars, bicycles, trucks, and taxis—gives way to stillness. The difference is stark—the door seals out the world “like a coffin lid.”
 
We know from the beginning that the speaker isn’t here as a tourist. He comes in respectfully, carrying his coat, dripping from the rain. He stands there and clears his throat, about to speak. But first he takes a moment to get accustomed to the atmosphere, so different from the haste of the exterior world. We get the sense that the Cathedral is filled—not with people, but with something else. The chill he feels is “dense” with “old Hail Marys,” like whispered by the people in the pews. It’s as if every prayer uttered here has left its mark, become part of the place. Above him, the stained glass windows gather “the dead and martyred” in vivid color, and before him is “the golden holy altar” and the pipes of the organ, both of which are silent now, but which are filled with potential. The altar holds “its silence like a bell,” and the organ, too, is “alive with a vibration tolling / out from the incarnate / source of holy sound.” The altar, on this quiet, rainy day, is like a bell, waiting to ring; and the organ—like those “old Hail Marys”—has left its imprint on the place, and is “alive” even when silent.
 
At the end of the poem, as the ceiling bends above him, “like an ear,” listening, he does not speak. In this place, so filled with presence—of those who have come before, of saints, of God—simply being present to all this is in itself prayer. The poem ends with a simple statement: “My body is my prayer.”
 
I am reminded of some favorite lines from Emily Dickinson on prayer: “awed beyond my errand — / I worshipped — did not ‘pray’ —“ (F525, 1863).
 
Although this poem is about Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, I think it says something about all great cathedrals, and of course, I include our own St. James Cathedral among them! A cathedral, by its nature, stands in the heart of the city, immersed in the world, yet it invites us to glimpse the world that is yet to be, the heavenly city. When we pray here, we are never alone: we are surrounded not only by the images of saints, but by the saints themselves, and those who have gone before us—what the letter to the Hebrews calls “a great cloud of witnesses.”
 
 

"Mediterranean Blue"
Naomi Shihab Nye
 
Read this week’s poem here:  https://poets.org/poem/mediterranean-blue
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the Poem of the Week. This week, I’ve chosen a poem by a contemporary poet, Naomi Shihab Nye. Jackie O’Ryan will read the poem, then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and an American mother. Now based in San Antonio, Texas, she is one of America’s best-known poets, the recipient of countless awards and fellowships. Her poetry highlights the experience of women, of Arab-Americans, of her Mexican American neighbors in San Antonio, of Muslims, and of refugees and immigrants. She has written poetry and prose for children and young adults as well. Nye has also devoted considerable energy to sharing the voices of other poets, editing anthologies that bring poets from around the world to an English-speaking audience.
 
Nye has said: “to counteract negative images conveyed by blazing headlines, writers must steadily transmit simple stories closer to heart and more common to everyday life. Then we will be doing our job.”  This poem, “Mediterranean Blue,” written in 2019, is a perfect example of that approach.
 
Back in 2013, the Italian island of Lampedusa made headlines when a ship carrying more than 500 asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea in North Africa, sank just off the coast. 366 people died. The death toll was higher partly because the boat was so overcrowded, partly because those on board did not know how to swim. One survivor said, "I'd never been in a body of water before. I was trying to stay afloat by splashing my hands like a dog."
 
Many of us may not realize that this influx of migrants is ongoing. On one day, September 20 of this year, 26 migrant boats landed at Lampedusa in 24 hours, bringing 263 asylum seekers to Italy. At the island’s intake center for refugees, over a thousand people are crowded into a facility designed for 192.
 
This is some of the context for this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. The words “Mediterranean Blue” evoke a beautiful color—we are used to seeing these words on a paint tube or a crayon, perhaps. But here, our attention is immediately drawn to the sea crossed by refugees like those wrecked off the coast of Lampedusa. The poem is as much about Nye’s own experience as it is about theirs: “If you are a child of a refugee, you do not / sleep easily when they are crossing the sea / on small rafts and you know they can’t swim.” She thinks of her own father, and the deep sorrow that is part of the refugee experience: Though he cast aside everything he knew, “tried to be happy, make a new life,” there was something in him “always paddling home,” clinging to things that reminded him of where he began, as a drowning person holds on to whatever is floating in the water. Leaving home has internal consequences as well as external ones.
 
Only in the second part of the poem does Nye speak directly to the reader about the experience of modern-day refugees. “They are the bravest people on earth right now,” she says; “don’t dare look down on them.” Nye reminds us who these people are—people like us, “each mind a universe,” filled with detail and with memory, and with “love for a humble place” – love for their home. They have let go of all that to risk the sea in which they can’t swim. How could we not “reach out a hand,” if we can?
 
I think part of what makes this poem so compelling is that Nye unapologetically involves herself and her own story in a poem about refugees crossing the Mediterranean today. Looking at them, she sees her own father, and she recognizes the humanity of each of these people, the value of their individual experience, their memory. For me, this poem is a reminder that compassion doesn’t come automatically: it’s something we need to work at and to foster in ourselves, by intentionally recognizing ourselves and our own immigrant histories in the headlines around us.
 
For Nye, this active compassion is an essential part of the poet’s task. I want to let Nye conclude our reflection today – this is part of an interview with the poet from 2015, in which she talks about the poet’s civic responsibility.
 
https://poets.org/text/video-naomi-shihab-nye-poets-civic-responsibility
 
 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Binsey Poplars, felled 1879"
 
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
  All felled, felled, are all felled;
    Of a fresh and following folded rank
                Not spared, not one
                That dandled a sandalled
         Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
       
  O if we but knew what we do
         When we delve or hew —
     Hack and rack the growing green!
          Since country is so tender
     To touch, her being só slender,
     That, like this sleek and seeing ball
     But a prick will make no eye at all,
     Where we, even where we mean
                 To mend her we end her,
            When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
     Strokes of havoc unselve
           The sweet especial scene,
     Rural scene, a rural scene,
     Sweet especial rural scene.
 
 


 
We have met Gerard Manley Hopkins—poet and Jesuit priest—a couple of times in this series. In his poem “God’s Grandeur,” which we read back in April, we saw the strong ecological bent of Hopkins’ poetry, which comes through in this poem as well. “Binsey Poplars” is a short lyric, an elegy for a grove of aspen trees.
 
In the first part of the poem, Hopkins evokes the distinctive beauty of the aspen tree, a type of poplar tree with fluttering leaves (which appear with some frequency in English poetry!). Hopkins describes them as “airy cages” that “quelled” or “quenched” the “leaping sun,” beautifully evoking the way the sun shines through the trees. The Latin name of these trees, populus tremula, arises from the distinctive movement of the aspen’s leaves, and Hopkins evokes that playful movement in the poem, describing how the trees “dandled a sandalled shadow.”
 
Even as he evokes their beauty, we sense the poet’s shock and sadness. His “aspens dear” are “felled, felled, are all felled”: the repetition of the word suggests the blows of the axe which cut them down. Hopkins laments, “if we but knew what we do / When we delve or hew.” Nature, he says, is “tender,” and her “being” is “slender” – nature has the delicacy of an eye, and is as easily harmed or destroyed.
 
Why does Hopkins mourn the loss of these trees so much? Aren’t there still plenty of aspens in England? In a journal entry written about six years before “Binsey Poplars,” Hopkins wrote: “The ashtree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. It was lopped first: I heard the sound and looking out and seeing it maimed there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more.”
 
That word “inscape” is one of Hopkins’ coinages. It could be defined as the distinctive inner nature or shape of a thing – its uniqueness. That’s why he laments the Binsey poplars—because even though there are many trees left, there’s nothing quite like those particular trees – “after-comers cannot guess the beauty been.” Just ten or twelve strokes of the axe and the trees are gone. Worse than gone, they are “unselved,” another Hopkins coinage which points to the destruction of their distinctive identity.
 
The poem ends with a series of repetitive phrases—“the sweet especial scene / Rural scene, a rural scene, / Sweet especial rural scene.” That repetition has a musical quality, almost like a song fading away. The words are simple, but they highlight, once again, the reality that something unique, something “especial,” has vanished in the destruction of this row of aspen trees.
 
I chose this poem at this time because Hopkins so beautifully captures the real sadness we experience when we witness the destruction of the natural world. A few weeks ago, the row of elm trees along Marion Street, planted about the time of the Cathedral’s dedication, was cut down. The trees had to be removed because of Dutch elm disease, but knowing that did not make it much easier to see them taken away. On a much larger scale, we have all experienced a sense of loss at the destruction caused by the wildfires across the west coast—millions of acres destroyed; trees and animals gone; countless “inscapes,” as Hopkins would call them, lost to us.
 
Hopkins looked at the world with an artist’s keen awareness of the beauty around him. In his encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis says that this faculty of seeing the beautiful in nature is not tangential to the ecological movement – it is key to protecting the earth and its creatures. Pope Francis writes: “By learning to see and appreciate beauty, we learn to reject self-interested pragmatism. If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple. If we want to bring about deep change,” he says, we all need to learn to see the world with a poet’s eyes.

Emily Dickinson, “These are the days when birds come back” (130) c. 1859
 
These are the days when Birds come back —
A very few — a Bird or two —
To take a backward look.
 
These are the days when skies resume
The old — old sophistries of June —
A blue and gold mistake.
 
Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee —
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.
 
Till ranks of seeds their witness bear —
And softly thro’ the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.
 
Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze —
Permit a child to join.
 
Thy sacred emblems to partake —
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!
 
 
For these days of late summer and early fall, I’ve chosen a favorite poem by Emily Dickinson, “These are the days the when birds come back.” Jackie O’Ryan will read the poem, then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Jackie.
 
Emily Dickinson never went far from home. Indeed, for most of her life, she never left her house and garden. That being said, it wasn’t just any garden. From a very young age, Dickinson learned to love gardening. As an adult, she maintained an extensive garden, and even had a conservatory for rarer plants indoors. She also kept an herbarium, a common hobby at the time—an album in which she collected pressings of more than 400 different plants, each labeled with its Latin name. When she was a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Dickinson was pretty miserable—except when she was studying botany!
 
Dickinson’s niece, Martha Bianchi, left a description of Dickinson’s garden. “There were long beds filling the main garden, where one walked between a succession of daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths in spring—through the mid-summer richness—up to the hardy chrysanthemums that smelled of Thanksgiving, savory and chill, when only the marigolds... were left to rival them in pungency.”
 
All of this found its way into Dickinson’s poetry, which is full of close observation of the natural world. She saw more in her small corner of New England than most of us see in a lifetime!  She describes a hummingbird as “a resonance of emerald.” Bees are “black, with Gilt Surcingles – Buccaneers of Buzz.” A snake is “a narrow fellow.” A frog is the hoarse “Orator of April.” Dickinson’s descriptions of nature are as accurate and carefully observed as they are idiosyncratic.
 
In this early poem, written when she was about 29, Dickinson captures the feeling of the transition between the seasons, when fall has arrived but summer is not quite gone. The birds are there—but just “a Bird or two.” The skies are still “blue and gold,” but this is not really summer—this is “sophistry,” a “mistake,” a “cheat.” The bees are not fooled by this “fraud.” And yet, the poet is willing to be deceived and to believe it is still summer, until the falling of the leaves, and the flying of seeds through the air, and the change in the atmosphere put the question beyond any doubt--summer is over.
 
In the last two stanzas, the diction changes. Instead of language of deception and fraud, Dickinson describes this in-between time in much more elevated terms: “Sacrament,” “sacred,” “consecrated,” “immortal.” She begs to join in this “communion,” to be herself a partaker of the “bread” and “wine” of these last of the summer days.
 
This poem shows us Dickinson’s careful attention to the natural world. She speaks of nature in a way that is both playful and reverent. Nature is like a sacrament—a means by which God’s grace comes to us.
 
Dickinson was a contemporary of the Transcendentalists—people like Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and others. But Dickinson was never really a Transcendentalist—for her, nature was never interchangeable with God; nature was rather a gift of God, a sign of God’s reality and presence. And in that belief, Dickinson, always a non-conformist, is actually quite Catholic! In his encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis has written: “The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things” (233).

The monks chant their prayer in the hot church
but their heart is not in it.
Only their vows bring them and keep them
at the hot and useless task.
 
Gone are the sweet first good days
when prayer and singing came easy
Gone as well many brothers
who used to stand here singing
              the feasts with them.
 
They know there are ways to beat this heat
and that Americans everywhere are finding them
but they beat instead the tones of psalms
              and, by beating,
              fall through the layers of heat
              and the layers of prayer
 
              And are standing there now
              only with their sound
              and their sweat
 
everything taken from them
except the way that this day in August has been.

(1989; first published in The Night of St. John, reprinted in Some Other Morning, Story Line Press, 1992)

 
Hello there! Corinna Laughlin here with the poem of the week. For this week, I’ve chosen a poem by a living poet – Jeremy Driscoll, who is the Abbot of Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon. Scott Webster will read the poem “August Prayer” and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
Jeremy Driscoll is a monk, priest, theologian, liturgist, scholar, and now Abbot at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon. He’s also a poet. This poem, “August Prayer,” was published in 1989.
 
The motto of the Benedictines is “ora et labora,” “prayer and work,” which is reflected in the “horarium” or daily schedule of the monks, which follows a fixed rhythm of just that – times for prayer and times for work.  At Mount Angel, the monks gather for prayer in the church six times each day, in addition to time set aside for quiet reflection and lectio divina at other times during the day. In addition to daily Mass, the monks chant the Liturgy of the Hours.
 
In his Rule, St. Benedict wrote that “nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God”—his way of referring to the shared worship of the community. Driscoll’s poem captures how difficult this work can be at times—the weariness, the discouragement, the boredom that can set in. The monks are in the church chanting, Driscoll says, “but their heart is not in it. / Only their vows bring them and keep them / at the hot and useless task.” They remember the “sweet first good days” when this way of life felt easy and pleasant; and they remember those who have gone away.
 
The “heat” in this poem is not that of an August day in Mount Angel—which can get very hot indeed!  The “heat” stands for all the circumstances, internal and external, that make it hard to live the religious life in our times. Our culture extends all kinds of promises for happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Driscoll evokes the language of advertising: “there are ways to beat this heat / and… Americans everywhere are finding them.” But the monks, weary though they are, decline these offers. “They beat instead the tones of psalms.” And eventually, persevering in the “Work of God,” they get somewhere. Not to a vision of the heavens, but to a place where “everything [is] taken from them / except the way that this August day has been.” They are left with nothing, nothing but the present moment—and that in itself is transcendent.
 
I think this is an appropriate poem as our local Church observes a Year of the Eucharist. Participating in the liturgy is not always “sweet” and easy. The rhythms of the Mass are so different from anything else we do during the week; the culture in which we live has many ways of hinting to us that liturgy, and worship itself, is useless or irrelevant. We are surrounded by voices telling us that there are better ways to “beat the heat,” to use Driscoll’s phrase. And there are challenges from within us as well: weariness, impatience, or just busy-ness can make it hard to continue to put in the effort to participate in the liturgy.  In those times, we need to do like Driscoll’s monks: pray anyway, letting our vows—our baptismal promises—“bring” us and “keep” us, not because of what we can get out of it, but because it is who we are.
 
“August Prayer” was published in a collection called The Night of St. John. St. John of the Cross described the spiritual life as a journey in the dark, an ascent of Mount Carmel. He described this journey in these words: “nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And on the mountain, nothing.” “August Prayer” reflects this deep reality of the spiritual life: that even in prayer, we need to let go of our desire for results, for completion, our desire to feel something. There will be moments of exhilaration, moments where we feel close to God, and such moments are gift, but they are not the goal. All we can do is continue at the “hot and useless task,” knowing that it is not our work, but the “Work of God.”
 

The Servant-Girl at Emmaus
(A Painting by Vélasquez)
 
Denise Levertov
 
She listens, listens, holding her breath.
Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
 
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
 
Surely that face—?
 
The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
 
Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
 
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.
 
 


 
The Emmaus story in the Gospel of Luke is one of the most familiar, and one of the most mysterious, of the Resurrection narratives. Two of Jesus’ disciples—we don’t know their names—are on their way out of Jerusalem, headed for the village of Emmaus. Along the way, they meet a stranger, and fall into conversation. Of course, all the talk is about the news - about Jesus, who has just been crucified. The two disciples talk about the destruction of their hopes that he was the Messiah, but the stranger responds to the news differently. He points them to the Scriptures and explains how all of this was foretold to them—this is the only way the Messiah’s destiny could unfold. Only when the three pause at an inn for the night, and the stranger breaks bread with them, do they recognize Jesus – and he immediately vanishes. And they hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the others what has happened.
 
It’s a colorful story, and has been a favorite for artists. There’s the journey and the conversation with the stranger… and that moment of recognition, when the stranger breaks bread and gives thanks, and the two disciples realize who he is.
 
“The Servant-Girl at Emmaus” by 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velazquez, also depicts the moment of recognition—but from quite a different perspective. At first glance, the painting is of a servant girl working in a kitchen, perhaps about to fill that pitcher she is touching. In the foreground we see a wonderful still-life, where the artist showcases his ability to capture many different textures – silver, earthenware, enamel, linen, wood, weaving. We may need to take a second look before we notice the Emmaus story unfolding in the upper left, where Jesus is about to break the bread. Only then do we start to notice other details rich in meaning: a dove that looks like it is about to break free, and a white napkin or rag, suggesting the burial cloth left behind in the empty tomb.
 
The center of the painting, of course, is the girl. From her attentive expression, we know she is listening to what is happening in the room beyond—and we know that she knows something!
 
Denise Levertov’s poem imagines the girl’s thoughts during this moment of suspense. In her telling of the story, Jesus is no stranger to this young woman. She has encountered him before. “Surely that voice is his—the one who had looked at her, once, across the crowd, as no one ever had looked? Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?” She recognizes his voice because she has spent time listening to his teaching. She recognizes his hands—“hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well”—because she has witnessed Jesus at work. The disciples will come to recognize Jesus when he breaks the bread, but this young woman—who has brought the bread to the table—already knows who he is. Velazquez’s painting beautifully captures a moment of stillness and recognition. Levertov’s poem lets us see what happens next, when the girl “swings round and sees / the light around him / and is sure.”
 
There is a theme that runs through the Resurrection narratives, and indeed, through the Gospels: Jesus chooses women, often women who are outsiders,
to be his witnesses. They are the first to recognize him as the Risen Lord, the first to tell the apostles the good news. And that sends a clear message to every Christian:  we need to listen to each other, especially the voices of those we might consider to be “outsiders.” Because when we really listen to the witness of others, we aren’t just learning about them; we are glimpsing God in them. Both the painting of Velasquez, and the poem of Levertov, invite us to recognition: to see Christ in the breaking of the bread, and in each other.
 
 

Caedmon
 
Denise Levertov
 
All others talked as if
talk were a dance.
Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet
would break the gliding ring.
Early I learned to
hunch myself
close by the door:
then when the talk began
I'd wipe my
mouth and wend
unnoticed back to the barn
to be with the warm beasts,
dumb among body sounds
of the simple ones.
I'd see by a twist
of lit rush the motes
of gold moving
from shadow to shadow
slow in the wake
of deep untroubled sighs.
The cows
munched or stirred or were still. I
was at home and lonely,
both in good measure. Until
the sudden angel affrighted me––light effacing
my feeble beam,
a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
but the cows as before
were calm, and nothing was burning,
nothing but I, as that hand of fire
touched my lips and scorched my tongue
and pulled my voice
into the ring of the dance.
 
 
Hello there. Corinna Laughlin here with the poem of the week.
 
This week, we’re reading Denise Levertov’s “Caedmon,” in which she takes on the voice of Caedmon, who is honored as the first known poet to write in the English language.  Scott Webster will read the poem, then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Scott.
 
It is thanks to St. Bede the Venerable, the 7th and 8th-century English monk and historian, that we know Caedmon’s story. Caedmon was a herdsman, entrusted with the care of animals at the abbey presided over by St Hilda in Whitby. Under her leadership, the arts flourished, and Bede describes evenings when the harp would go round the room, with each person singing and playing to the best of their ability.
 
I think many of us can identify with Caedmon, who, when he saw his turn coming, would slip quietly away and go back to his place among the animals. But one night, he had a dream in which an angel appeared to him and asked him to sing about God’s creation. And Caedmon did. When he woke from this dream, he remembered what he had sung. Not only that, he found the gift persisted, and he was able to compose verse on all kinds of sacred subjects. At Hilda’s invitation, he became a monk of the abbey, and the author of many poems.
 
Levertov tells Caedmon’s story in the first person. Talk, he says, is a dance, something the others do gracefully, but he is just a clodhopper, getting in the way. He seems to be more at home among the animals—“dumb,” that is, silent, “among body sounds,” not voices. But he is not quite comfortable there, either. He is “at home and lonely,” “both in good measure.” He is drawn both to the lighted hall and to the dark stable. Caedmon sleeps among the animals, but I think we can sense that Caedmon is already a poet - he can see by the light of a rush bits of chaff from the hay, floating in the breath of the animals like motes of gold.
 
Into this peaceful scene comes an angel—a fiery vision, with feathers of flame, a forest of torches and sparks. But nothing is on fire—except Caedmon himself. The fire touches his mouth, scorches his tongue, and Caedmon joins the dance.
 
Levertov uses here an image right out of scripture. In the sixth chapter of Isaiah, we hear of the prophet’s call. In a vision, an angel takes a burning coal from the altar of God, and touches the prophet’s mouth with it. It is a purifying fire, but also suggests the urgency of his mission. He will speak God’s words, in his own voice. The poet’s call is like the prophet’s call, a collaboration between God and the individual. And like other prophets—Jonah, for example—Caedmon runs from his call, a reluctant prophet, until at last, with some prompting from God!, he lets himself be “pulled… into the ring of the dance.” Caedmon’s story is a story of vocation—where our gifts and abilities meet God’s mission.
 
To conclude our reflection, let us listen to the poem traditionally called “Caedmon’s hymn”—considered the oldest poetry in the English language, and the only poetry of Caedmon that survives. This translation from Old English is the work of Elaine Treharne of Stanford University.
 
Now we ought to praise the Guardian of the heavenly kingdom,
The might of the Creator and his conception,
The work of the glorious Father, as he of each of the wonders,
Eternal Lord, established the beginning.
He first created for the sons of men
Heaven as a roof, holy Creator;
Then the middle-earth, the Guardian of mankind,
The eternal Lord, afterwards made
The earth for men, the Lord almighty.

Variation on a Theme by Rilke
(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 4)
 
Denise Levertov
 
All these images (said the old monk,
closing the book) these inspired depictions,
are true. Yes—not one—Giotto’s,
Van Eyck’s, Rembrandt’s, Rouault’s,
how many others’—
not one is a fancy, a willed fiction,
each of them shows us exactly
the manifold countenance
of the Holy One, Blessed be He.
The seraph buttress flying
to support a cathedral’s external walls,
the shadowy ribs of the vaulted sanctuary:
aren’t both—and equally—
the form of a holy place?—whose windows’ ruby
and celestial sapphire can be seen
only from inside, but then
only when light enters from without?
From the divine twilight, neither dark nor day,
blossoms the morning. Each, at work in his art,
perceived his neighbor. Thus the Infinite
plays, and in grace
gives us clues to His mystery.
 
Corinna Laughlin's commentary
 
We met Denise Levertov earlier in this series, when we read her wonderful poem “Annunciation.” Levertov was a 20th-century master, born in England in 1923, who died in Seattle in 1997. Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to read three poems by Levertov for this series. These are all poems in which she responds to other works of art—both poems and the visual arts—in interesting ways.
 
In this poem, Levertov reacts to a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke—in fact, she is responding to Rilke’s poem “You, Neighbor God” we read last week.  As you’ll recall, Rilke’s poem, spoken in the voice of an old monk, questioned the images we make of the divine, which can stand like a wall between us and God—getting in our way when we try to connect with God. In this poem, Levertov responds to that concept.
 
As Levertov’s poem begins, the “old monk” closes a book, perhaps a book of images of Christ, and roundly declares—contradicting Rilke’s old monk!—that “all these images… these inspired depictions, are true.” Even more, “each of them shows us exactly / the manifold countenance / of the Holy One.” Far from distracting us or deflecting our attention from God, Levertov’s speaker says, these “true” images reveal to us “the manifold countenance” of God. God has one face, but it is “manifold”—so these contrasting images can all be said to be true. Giotto – Van Eyck – Rembrandt – Rouault – artists with such different visions, such different ways of seeing the world – all had something in common: they all depicted the true, though “manifold” image of God.
 
In the second part of the poem, Levertov distances herself still further from Rilke. She uses an extended metaphor here—the image of a cathedral. She speaks of the flying buttresses, the exterior supports which are such a prominent feature in some of the great Gothic cathedrals, and the ribs of the sanctuary—in other words, the exterior and the interior of the building—and she asks, aren’t both of these, equally, intrinsic to “the form of a holy place”? Without one or the other, the building cannot stand.
 
Where Rilke described a wall of framed images, Levertov describes stained glass windows. The flying buttresses of a Gothic cathedral developed to allow for ever-larger stained glass windows. You could even say they are at the service of the windows! Stained glass doesn’t look like much from the outside—it has to be viewed from within. And yet, the windows require light from the outside, in order to be seen. The light does not “glance off the frames like glare,” as Rilke described. Instead, it shines through, and brings the windows to life.
 
The stained glass windows of a great cathedral demand an interchange between outside and inside which, for Levertov, suggests the interchange between earth and heaven, human and God. Art is a way to glimpse God, and in fact a way to play a holy game with God: “Thus the Infinite plays, and in grace gives us clues to his Mystery.”
 
In 1999, Pope St. John Paul II wrote a letter to artists which resonates with Levertov’s response to Rilke and her faith in the power of art.
 
“Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the inmost reality of humanity and of the world. It is therefore a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning…. In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God…. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery.”

You, neighbor God
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
 
From The Book of Hours, written 1899-1903, published 1905
Translated by Babette Deutsch (1941)
 
You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe;
and I know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
 
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.
 
The wall is builded of your images.
 
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.
 
And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.
 
 
Corinna Laughlin commentary

Rainer Maria Rilke was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in 1875 in Prague, in what was then known as Bohemia. He was a citizen of Europe, who traveled widely and lived in Germany, France, and Switzerland, and who wrote in both German and French. A significant figure in European literature of the 20th century, Rilke associated with some of the major artists of his time, including Rodin—as a young man Rilke served as a secretary to the great sculptor. Rilke was drafted into service in World War I, a traumatic experience for him. He died of leukemia at the young age of 51.
 
Rilke was raised by a devoutly Catholic mother, and though he did not practice his faith as an adult, faith in God was at the heart of his life and art. “You, neighbor God” is an early poem from Rilke’s first book, called The Book of Hours. These poems were inspired by Rilke’s extensive travels in Russia, and the poet takes on the persona of an old monk in several of the poems, including the one we just heard.
 
The first part of the poem is quite playful. It’s easy to picture the scene – as he knocks on the wall to check if an elderly neighbor needs anything—" I know: you are alone. And should you need a drink, no one is there to reach it to you.” Notice how the roles are reversed: here is the speaker offering to help God if God should need help in the night! But the tone shifts, as the speaker pleads for some indication of God’s presence. “Always I hearken. Give but a small sign. I am quite near.” God and the speaker are so close together, but there is a separation – one which, surprisingly, either of them could break through. “it would take merely a call from your lips or mine to break it down.”
 
The turning point of the poem is the line: “The wall is builded of your images.” The thin separation between the speaker and God is made of his images of God. Rilke is perhaps thinking here of the iconostasis which is often the most prominent feature in Orthodox churches. The images get in the way, Rilke says, hiding God – and when the internal light by which he knows God shines within him, that light is “squandered on the frames” of these images instead of illuminating God himself. The human senses are “exiled” from God, “homeless.”
 
As Catholics, we are firm believers in images. We surround ourselves with statues and images of saints, and even of God. Our use of images is firmly grounded in the theology of the Incarnation – as St. Paul said, Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
 
But the images we make can be limiting, and, yes, get in the way, like Rilke’s wall. I think of recent debates about images of Jesus, who, though he was, obviously, a person of color, is most often depicted with European features and skin color. If these are the only images of Christ we can imagine, they can distort our understanding of who Jesus is.
 
Images of the divine are an essential part of how we pray and worship as Catholics. But perhaps Rilke’s poem can invite us to think about the images of God we depend on. Are they helping us pray—or do they sometimes get in the way? The Bible invites us to think of God not in one way, but in many ways. Creator, Light, Rock, Stronghold, Husband, Mother, Rescuer, Father.  All these images reveal something of God to us—but of course, none of them says it all.

“My own heart let me more have pity on”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ (1844-1889)
 
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
 
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.
 
We met Gerard Manley Hopkins earlier in this series, when we read his wonderful poem “God’s Grandeur.” Today we read another Hopkins sonnet. Scott Webster will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a tremendously gifted man. An extraordinary and innovative poet, a brilliant classical scholar, a gifted musician, a talented artist, a faithful and conscientious priest—Hopkins was all of these things. And yet, through much of his life, he was tormented by a sense of failure and inadequacy. His poems were seldom understood, much less published; several of his assignments as a Jesuit were in inner-city parishes where he felt exiled from the natural world he so loved, or in schools where his humbling inadequacies as a teacher were always on display.
 
“If I could but get on, if I could but produce work, I should not mind its being buried, silenced, and going no further,” he wrote to his friend, the poet Robert Bridges, “but it kills me to be time’s eunuch and never to beget. After all, I do not despair, things might change, anything may be; only there is no great appearance of it…”
 
In 1884, Hopkins was assigned as professor at University College, Dublin, which was not the great academic institution it is now. It was a poor, struggling college, and Hopkins was overwhelmed with a sense of isolation and failure and entered what we would recognize now as a deep depression. “My spirits were so crushed,” he wrote, “that madness seemed to be making approaches—and nobody was to blame, except myself partly for not managing myself better and contriving a change” (to Robert Bridges, 1 September 1885).
 
Out of this experience of darkness came a series of remarkable poems, which Robert Bridges called “the terrible sonnets” because of their content. Of these poems, Hopkins himself wrote that they came after long silence “like inspirations unbidden and against my will.” In these sonnets, Hopkins addresses himself directly to God with great honesty, with language that resembles some of the psalms and the prophets. He writes of his sense of uselessness, of impotence, and of difficulty in praying—in one poem, he describes prayer as being like undelivered letters to a loved one far away.
 
We don’t know the exact order of the terrible sonnets, or sonnets of desolation, as they are sometimes called, but the poem we just heard is usually placed towards the end of the sequence, because it expresses a glimmer of hope.
 
In this poem, Hopkins addresses himself, entreating himself to be kinder to himself. The first lines give a vivid picture of his helplessness and mental anguish. He begs that he might “not live this tormented mind / With this tormented mind tormenting yet.” The repetition in those lines—“tormented mind, tormented mind, tormenting yet”—vividly suggests the endless cycle of negative thoughts. This state of mind is like a prison – Hopkins gives an unforgettable image of “groping round my comfortless.”
 
In the second part of the sonnet, Hopkins addresses himself as “Soul, self,” and then shifts the tone—“poor Jackself.” “Soul, self,” are grand, impersonal terms; “poor Jackself” is humbler, more human, more conscious of weakness. Hopkins is doing here just what he begged for at the beginning of the poem: having pity on himself in his humanity. “Call off thoughts awhile,” he says, and leave room for comfort, for joy, and for whatever God has in mind: “God knows when to God knows what.” The poem ends with a remarkable image of God smiling. God’s smile is “not wrung”—we can’t force it. It comes unexpectedly, like sky appearing “betweenpie” mountains, shedding light on “a lovely mile.” At the end of the poem, nothing has changed—but hope has entered in.
 
In this poem, and in the other terrible sonnets, Hopkins acknowledges the darkness he is experiencing, but he does so with the tools and the language that his faith gives him. He never stops wrestling with God. As one commentator has said, “Like Jesus’ cry on the cross, Hopkins’s sonnets of desolation are addressed to God and are themselves consolations.”

Love (III)
George Herbert
 
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.
 
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?
 
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.
 
Last week, we read Herbert’s poem on the Holy Scriptures, which prompted reflection on the Liturgy of the Word at Mass. With today’s poem by Herbert, “Love,” we’ll reflect on the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Scott Webster will read the poem, and then I’ll be back with some brief commentary.
 
This poem, like all of Herbert’s work, is rich in Scriptural allusion and full of evocative imagery. Herbert sets up an almost romantic scene, as the speaker is invited in for a meal by Love, but draws back, before being urged to come in and eat. Think of the Song of Songs, the great love poem of the Bible, which describes a similar encounter between love and the lover at the gate, coming close and then moving away. Of course, meals have great resonance in the New Testament. Think of the miraculous feedings and the Last Supper accounts. Think of some of the parables of the Second Coming: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them” (Luke 12:37).
 
Herbert imagines what that moment would be like, when Love—which is, of course, another name for God—becomes the servant, waiting at table. And he finds it very uncomfortable. The speaker of the poem hangs back in the doorway, “guilty of dust and sin.” It’s an odd phrase, “guilty of dust.” Herbert is alluding to original sin—the propensity to sin that is part of our human condition. This awareness of sin pulls him back as soon as he is invited into the divine presence. It’s a pattern in the Scriptures, whenever someone encounters God. Think of the prophet Isaiah, or St. Peter after the miraculous catch—“depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
 
The speaker inches forward, then draws back. At the same time, there is a wonderful intimacy in the language used – “ah, my dear,” he says to Love, “I cannot look on thee.” This is not the meeting of strangers, but of intimate friends. Love does not brush away the speaker’s concerns, or say that there has been no sin or wrongdoing; instead, Love reminds the speaker simply that God is God: “who made the eyes but I?” Sinful though we are, we were made for this – our eyes were made to look at God.
 
In the last stanza, the speaker continues to hang back. “Let my shame / Go where it doth deserve.” Even that is no argument, Love says, because Love has already borne “the blame.” The cross has taken away everything that would prevent us from approaching God. The speaker is running out of excuses! “My dear, then I will serve,” he says: you sit down—let me serve you. It’s Peter’s response to Jesus’ washing of the feet. But that is not what Love has in mind. “You must sit down and taste my meat.” Love is going to do the serving here. It is for love to give, for us to receive. At last, in the final, and shortest line of the poem, the speaker gives in: “so I did sit and eat.” The sinner lets go and Love prevails.  I am reminded of the words of the great 13th century mystic St. Catherine of Siena: “By this light I shall come to know that you, eternal Trinity, are table and food and waiter for us.”
 
As I mentioned last week, we have begun a Year of the Eucharist in this local Church, the Archdiocese of Seattle. For me, Herbert’s “Love” is the perfect meditation on this central mystery of our faith. If you think of the pattern of the Mass, it is not unlike this poem. We have come to the table at God’s invitation, but again and again we pause and acknowledge our sinfulness. “Lord, have mercy.” “Forgive us our trespasses.” “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” We do not do this to beat ourselves up or prove anything. We do this because this awareness of our own sinfulness is the natural human response to being in the presence of God!  Throughout the Mass, Love is leading us to the table, where all we can do is receive the free gift of the God of love. There is no earning this gift. As Archbishop Etienne said in his homily at the beginning of this special year of the Eucharist, “we can be deceived in thinking that the Eucharist is what we do. It’s what God does. It’s the work of God upon us. It’s the work of God for our redemption.” (Read or listen to that homily here: http://www.nwcatholic.org/news/local/year-of-the-eucharist-begins-in-archdiocese-of-seattle.html) All we need to do—all we really can do—is what the speaker of Herbert’s poem does: respond to the invitation, and let God work in us.

George Herbert
The Holy Scriptures II
 
OH that I knew how all thy lights combine,
             And the configurations of their glorie!
             Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.
 
This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
             Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
             Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destinie:
 
Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
             And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
             Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.
 
             Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse:
             This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.
 
 
We met George Herbert earlier in this series, when we read his poem “Easter Wings.” Herbert was many things—a well-born and well-connected man of the world, and a country parson. His contemporaries marveled at his faith. One biographer wrote that Herbert “never mentioned the name of Jesus Christ, but with this addition, ‘My Master,’” and that when it came to the Bible, he would say “That he would not part with one leaf thereof for the whole world.” He called the Bible “the book of books,” “the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort.”
 
In this sonnet about the Holy Scriptures, Herbert gives us an insight into how he himself read the Bible. Anyone who has been scanning the skies looking for Comet Neowise will appreciate Herbert’s metaphor at the beginning of the poem. “Oh, that I knew how all thy lights combine, / And the configurations of their glory!” The verses of the Scriptures are likened to stars, which are beautiful in themselves, but which also relate to each other in wonderful ways—forming “constellations.” The Scriptures mean more in relation to each other: just as different herbs, mixed together, become a healing medicine, a powerful “potion,” so different verses, combined, “make up some Christian’s destiny”—in other words, reading the Scriptures makes sense of our lives. And our lives make sense of the Scriptures: “such are thy secrets, which my life makes good, / And comments on thee…. Thy words do find me out, and parallels bring.”
 
The right way to read the Scriptures, Herbert suggests, is with open eyes and imagination, letting the Scriptures speak to one another—since one passage can shed light on another. But we also need to let the Scriptures read us, since we can only understand our own lives, our “destiny,” in light of the Scriptures. “Stars are poor books,” Herbert concludes, but the Bible, “this book of stars,” shows the way to “eternal bliss.”
 
I thought this poem was especially appropriate as we have begun a Year of the Eucharist in this local Church, the Archdiocese of Seattle. Every time we gather around the altar to celebrate the Eucharist, we first gather around the ambo—the table of the word of God.  And when the Scriptures are proclaimed, something happens. As it says in the introduction to the Roman Missal, “God speaks to his people, opening up to them the mystery of redemption and salvation, and offering spiritual nourishment; and Christ himself is present through his word in the midst of the faithful.”
 
The Liturgy of the Word at Mass is not a review of salvation history. It is a conversation. We are invited to a way of reading, praying, and reflecting on Scripture that is not unlike what Herbert describes in his poem. The readings from the Old and New Testaments speak to each other and shed light on each other—and they speak to us and shed light on our lives, too. As Archbishop Etienne wrote in “The Work of Redemption,” his Pastoral Letter for this Year of the Eucharist, “When we allow ourselves to listen, really listen, to what the Scriptures are saying to us in our own lives and to the reality we are living in, extraordinary things can happen. When we honestly reflect on our lives and the challenges we face as a society in light of the Scriptures, we open ourselves up to God’s transforming power.”
 
One of Herbert’s first biographers wrote, “Next God the Word, he loved the Word of God.” May the same be said of each of us!

St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
The Pillar of Cloud (“Lead, Kindly Light”)
 
Lead, Kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
 
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
 
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
 
(Written at sea, 1833)
 
John Henry Newman was born in London in 1801 into an upper middle class family with strong Protestant roots: his mother was from a family of French Huguenot refugees. He dated his spiritual awakening to the age of fifteen, when he felt an “inward conversion of which I was conscious (and of which I still am more certain than that I have hands and feet).”
 
For Newman, the way to God was always through books. His autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua – the “apology for his life”—is as much about what Newman read as what he did. He writes in intricate detail of the thinkers and ideas that fascinated and shaped him.
 
Newman was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825 and became a curate in Oxford, where he was also a fellow at Oriel College. His specialty was Patristics—the study of the Fathers of the early Church—and what he read slowly led him towards the Roman Catholic Church.
 
For Newman, becoming Catholic was not a quick or easy decision. He knew that if he became a Catholic it would cost him friends as well as his livelihood, since he would not be able to function as a member of the Anglican clergy nor retain his Oxford fellowship. But for Newman, simply setting aside difficult questions was never an option. Newman wrote, “The one question was, what was I to do? I had to make up my mind for myself, and others could not help me. I determined to be guided, not by my imagination, but by my reason.” Newman wrote in a diary in 1829, “I am now in my rooms in Oriel College, slowly advancing and led on by God's hand blindly, not knowing whither He is taking me.”
 
It was during this time of uncertainty and exploration—two steps forward, one step back—which lasted more than ten years—that Newman wrote the poem we just heard, which he entitled “The Pillar of Cloud,” but which is known more familiarly as “Lead, Kindly Light.”
 
In the book of Exodus, the pillar of cloud leads the Israelite people in their wanderings through the desert. It is the very presence of God in their midst, both showing the way and protecting them in their wanderings. In this poem, Newman invokes God as the “kindly light,” the one thing shining in the midst of the darkness. There is no view of the “distant scene,” nor is the path clear—there is just enough light to take one step at a time.
 
Newman acknowledges how difficult this is, this taking one step at a time. “I loved to choose and see my path,” he says. But that sense that he could direct his own course was an illusion, rooted in “pride.” Now, he says, “Lead thou me on.”  He has to yield his own will and trust in God’s guidance, trust that the God who has blessed him in the past will be with him in the future. The poem ends with a glimpse of the end of this journey – “with the morn, those angel faces smile, / Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.” The sense of loneliness, darkness, and uncertainty we feel in the first two stanzas ends with a wonderful sense of recognition and light.
 
In 1845, Newman entered the Catholic Church. He became an Oratorian priest, and was named a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. He made many contributions to theology, which have had an enormous impact, especially at the time of the Second Vatican Council—hence Newman is sometimes called “the absent Council Father.” Newman’s concept of the “development of doctrine” is one of those contributions—he argued that Church doctrine, while unchanging, does get developed and refined through the ages as human reason engages with divine revelation.
 
It’s no surprise that the same man who wrote “Lead, kindly Light” would argue that the Church’s understanding, too, can advance step by step, in pursuit of the “Kindly Light” that is the living presence of God in our midst. As Newman said in a homily, “Let us beg and pray Him day by day to reveal Himself to our souls more fully, to quicken our senses, to give us sight and hearing, taste and touch of the world to come; so to work within us, that we may sincerely say, 'Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after that receive me with glory."
 

The Kingdom of God
By Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
 
“In no strange land”
 
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
 
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?
 
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
 
The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
 
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
 
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
 

Commentary by Corinna Laughlin
 
Francis Thompson was a remarkable figure by any measure. Born in 1859, he was compared to Keats and Shakespeare in his lifetime, and although his reputation declined after his death, many of his poems, in particular his masterpiece, “The Hound of Heaven,” have never gone out of print.
 
Thompson was raised in a devoutly Catholic family. His family hoped he would be a priest, and he was sent to a minor seminary, but he was awkward and shy and was deemed unsuitable. He was sent to study medicine, a subject for which he had no vocation and little interest. He was too timid to tell his family that he wanted to be a writer—all they wanted to talk about was “cricket” and “wars,” he later said—and things began to go downhill for Thompson. After an illness, Thompson became addicted to opium. Things got so bad that Thompson ended up on the streets. He was homeless in London for three years and could only be reached by general delivery to the “Post Office, Charing Cross, London.”
 
It was poetry that eventually pulled him back from the brink. All this time, Thompson had continued to write. He submitted some poems to a Catholic editor, Wilfrid Meynell, which were published. When Meynell met the author, and realized that he was totally destitute, he and his wife Alice helped Thompson get off the streets and (at least for a time) overcome his addiction.
 
Thanks to the Meynell’s intervention and support, Thompson became a writer—though never a prolific one. He wrote essays and reviews for various journals, and he continued to write poetry as well, eventually publishing three books.  At the same time, he was never what you might call “normal.” He would suddenly get up from the table and disappear at mealtimes, and a friend wrote that “No money... could keep him in a decent suit of clothes for long. ...He passed at once into a picturesque nondescript garb that was all his own and made him resemble some weird pedlar or packman.”
 
In spite of all the darkness Thompson had experienced in his life, and his repeated bouts with depression, his faith was ultimately full of hope.  “I do firmly believe that none are lost who have not wilfully closed their eyes to the known light: that such as fall with constant striving, battling with their temperament, or through ill-training circumstance which shuts them from true light, &c.; that all these shall taste of God's justice, which for them is better than man's mercy.”
 
Thompson died of tuberculosis on November 13, 1907 at the age of 48.
 
The poem we’re reading today, “The Kingdom of God,” was one of Thompson’s last poems, not published until after his death. The poem begins with a series of paradoxical assertions – we see the invisible, we touch the intangible, we know the unknowable, we take hold of the “inapprehensible.” We have access to the world of the spirit. It is not far away--we do not need to look to the stars to find God. In fact, we need not go elsewhere to seek God any more than the fish needs to search for the water or the eagle the air. In other words, God comes to us in our own element—God is our element. 
 
The divine is close—if we were listening, we could hear the wings of angels beating at our “clay-shuttered doors.” But with our “estranged faces”—not looking for God—we don’t see “the many-splendored thing.”
 
Nevertheless, God is everywhere, accessible to all who call upon him. At the end of the poem, Thompson alludes to his own experiences on the streets of London. In the depths of sadness, he says, “cry,” and there will be Jacob’s ladder, linking heaven and Charing Cross. Ask for help, and Christ will walk on the water, not far away on the Sea of Galilee, but nearby: on the Thames.
 
In this poem, Thompson’s very Catholic imagination is at work. As Catholics, we firmly believe that we can touch the invisible through the tangible—anointed with oil, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit; bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Thompson reminds us that the divine presence is everywhere. The poem reflects the words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel: “The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.” The kingdom of God unfolds in our own circumstances, in our own place and time. We just need the eyes to recognize it.
 

Song Silence
 
By Madeleva Wolff, CSC
 
Yes, I shall take this quiet house and keep it
With kindled hearth and candle-lighted board,
In singing silence garnish it and sweep it
                For Christ, my Lord.
 
My heart is filled with little songs to sing Him—
I dream them into words with careful art—
But this I think a better gift to bring Him,
                Nearer his heart.
 
The foxes have their holes, the wise, the clever;
The birds have each a safe and secret nest;
But He, my lover, walks the world with never
A place to rest.
 
I found Him once upon a straw bed lying;
(Once on His mother’s heart He laid His head)
He had a bramble pillow for His dying,
A stone when dead.
 
I think to leave off singing for this reason,
Taking instead my Lord God’s house to keep,
Where He may find a home in every season
                To wake, to sleep.
 
Do you not think that in this holy sweetness
Of silence shared with God a whole life long
Both he and I shall find divine completeness
Of perfect song?
 
 
Sister Madeleva Wolff was a renowned educator and administrator, a poet, and a scholar who in her lifetime rubbed elbows with Edith Wharton, G. K. Chesterton, Helen Hayes, Thomas Merton, and many other luminaries. She was also a religious, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross for more than fifty years. She is a figure who deserves to be better known!
 
Eva Wolff was born in Cumberland, Wisconsin in 1887. She had a fairly conventional childhood—except for her exceptional intellect. Her gifts were so obvious that her older brother dropped out of college so the family could afford to send Eva to St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana.
 
Eva had been planning to study mathematics, but she soon switched to medieval literature, and discovered a love for poetry—both studying it and writing it. It took everyone by surprise, including Eva herself, when she decided to join the Sisters of the Holy Cross. She entered the novitiate in 1908, when she was nineteen years old. In religious life, she was given the name Madeleva, and soon embarked on a distinguished career of study and teaching. Sister Madeleva was among the first women religious to receive a Masters degree from Notre Dame; she went on to complete a doctoral degree at Berkeley. Later, she did post-doctoral study at Oxford with the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. All this time, she was a full-time teacher and administrator, eventually being appointed President of her own alma mater, St. Mary’s College, where her innovative leadership gained the college nationwide acclaim. She developed the first graduate study program in theology for women religious and laypeople in the country, and was instrumental in the Sister Formation movement, which advocated thorough and high-level education for women religious. She was a force to be reckoned with: “Moderation is a colorless, insipid thing,” she wrote. “I know its practice to be well-nigh impossible. To live less would not be living.”
 
Throughout her busy life, Madeleva wrote poetry, publishing a number of books, some of which were considered controversial for the passionate language she used in writing about God. Given the busy life of a sister, time was hard to come by; Madeleva came to be grateful for her chronic insomnia which gave her time to compose. “I love words because I love the Word,” she would say. “I know of no discipline more merciless, more demanding, than the writing of good verse—even if it doesn’t reach the levels of great poetry.” Madeleva died in 1962 at the age of 77.
 
Knowing a little of Madeleva’s story, I think we get a better sense of both the sweetness and the underlying tension of this poem, “Song Silence.” It’s a poem about poetry—and about renunciation. “My heart is filled with little songs to Him-- / I dream them into words with careful art,” she says in the second stanza. But, she wonders, would it not be a better gift to prepare “a quiet house” for the one who was laid in a manger as an infant, who had no place to lay his head as an adult. “I think to leave off singing,” she says, and dedicate herself instead to this quiet work of contemplation, which she compares to the traditional domestic (and typically feminine) task of housekeeping. In the last stanza, she asks a question: “Do you not think that in this holy sweetness / Of silence shared with God,” she and God both will find “perfect song”?
 
There is a sweetness in the poem, and an intimacy with God, whom she calls “my lover.” But there is also a certain tension here, one that many women felt at the time Madeleva was writing, in the 1940s and 1950s. She loves to “sing,” to write poetry, but wouldn’t silence be better, after all? Wouldn’t her life be better spent in contemplation, rather than in words—in keeping house, rather than singing? Madeleva tells herself that she will dedicate herself to this sweet domestic housekeeping for God. And yet, though the poem begins with a decisive “yes” it ends with a question mark. Renouncing poetry is something she is contemplating—but not doing, at least, not yet.
 
I think this poem illuminates what Madeleva’s biographer Gail Porter Mandell sees as a keynote in Madeleva’s approach to life—what Madeleva herself referred to as the “relaxed grasp.” Madeleva held on to what mattered—but, in keeping with her vow of poverty, she held even precious things like poetry with a certain lightness, a “relaxed grasp,” a “holy indifference,” always preparing herself to let them go if God willed it. For Madeleva, this “relaxed grasp” was true freedom. In speaking of her own vocation, she wrote: “Only when one has given not only all his actual self, but all his potential self, is he free.”

Read more about Madeleva here.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (236)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
 
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
 
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
 
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

Hello there! Corinna Laughlin here with the poem of the week.
 
For this week, I have chosen a classic by American poet Emily Dickinson. Jackie O’Ryan will read the poem, then I will be back to offer a brief commentary.
 
Thank you, Jackie!
 
You can see why we need this Emily Dickinson poem right now! Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest American poets; indeed, she is one of the greatest poets in the English language. Born in 1830 in western Massachusetts, her childhood was quite a normal one. Her father was a prominent attorney who even served in the US House of Representatives. He was an imposing figure. Dickinson admitted to a friend that she did not learn to tell time until she was fifteen because she was too intimidated to tell her father she didn’t understand his explanation.
 
As a young woman, Dickinson went off to school—Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, now Mount Holyoke College, in nearby South Hadley. Established in 1837 by Mary Lyon, an extraordinary figure, it was one of the first and best colleges for women in the United States. It was an intensely religious environment, and the school proudly displayed the names of graduates who had gone on to Christian missionary work around the world.
 
During Emily Dickinson’s year at Mt Holyoke, the students would be regularly questioned about whether they were “saved” or not, and categorized as “professors,” “hopers,” and “no hopers.” Emily Dickinson landed among the “no hopers.” The preaching and the emphasis on an emotional conversion experience was constant. This is a sample of one of Mary Lyon’s addresses to the students: “Do you not know that you are now exposed to God’s wrath, that a miserable eternity awaits you?” This religious language was not unusual; in fact, it was typical of New England religious experience at the time.
 
The emphasis on conversion may have been part of the reason she left Mt Holyoke after just one year, still classed among the no-hopers. Back home in Amherst, a religious revival was underway. Over the years, many members of the Dickinson family had conversion experiences and became active members of local congregations, but Dickinson did not. She gradually became a recluse, living in self-imposed isolation from her community and even from much of her family. There were many reasons for this, but her sense of religious isolation surely played its part.
 
So was Dickinson a “no hoper”? I think her poetry gives us the clear answer to that—no! She was nourished by the Bible, and her writing is profoundly imbued with Christian themes. In one poem, she wrote simply, “I know that he exists.” God is ever-present and a number of her poems are addressed directed to Christ.
 
But when it came to church, Dickinson remained profoundly skeptical. That is clearly evident in this short, playful poem. While others go to church, Dickinson stays home and keeps the sabbath in her own way. She has everything she needs—a chorister, a dome, and even a noted clergyman - God.
 
I have always loved this poem, but I have always mentally argued with Dickinson at the same time. What about community? We need each other! We need our shared worship. During this lockdown, however, I have found this poem to take on a whole new meaning. Now, when we cannot gather as community, “keeping the sabbath” in our accustomed way, we can learn from Dickinson other ways to keep the sabbath. In particular, we learn that God speaks to us through the beauty of the natural world, with birds as our choristers, trees for a dome, even a little sexton or sacristan—and of course, God, the most noted clergyman of all, doing the preaching. Most of us hopefully have had a chance to do a little more walking, a little more looking around, and have been able to sense in new ways God’s presence in creation.
 
In the final lines of the poem, Dickinson says, “instead of getting to heaven at last, I’m going, all along.” This attitude is so different from the theology she heard from the religious leaders of her day. Heaven is not a reward for the few, bestowed by a judging and reluctant God. Heaven is quite simply being in God’s presence.
 
I am reminded of the words of the French Carmelite mystic, St Elizabeth of the Trinity: “It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, because my heaven is you, my God, and you are in my soul.”
 
I think Elizabeth and Emily might have a lot to say to each other!

The Virgin at Noon | Paul Claudel
 
It is noon. I see the church, open. I must go in.
Mother of Jesus Christ, I do not come to pray.
 
I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.
I come, Mother, only to look at you.
 
To look at you, to weep for happiness, knowing that
I am your son, and that you are there.
 
Just one moment while everything stops.
Noon!
To be with you, Mary, in this place where you are.
 
Not to say anything, but only to sing
Because the heart is too full;
Like the blackbird that pursues its idea
In impromptu couplets like these.
 
Because you are beautiful, because you are immaculate,
The woman at last restored in Grace,
 
The creature in her first dignity
And in her final glory,
Just as she came forth from God in the morning
Of her original splendor.
 
Ineffably intact because you are
the Mother of Jesus Christ,
Who is the Truth carried in your arms, and the only hope
And the only fruit.
 
Because you are the woman,
The Eden of the old forgotten tenderness,
Whose glance finds the heart suddenly
And makes the pent-up tears overflow.
 
Because it is noon,
Because we are in this moment, today,
Because you are there, always,
Simply because you are Mary,
Simply because you exist,
 
Mother of Jesus Christ, thanks be to you!
 
Translation by Corinna Laughlin

Corinna Laughlin's reflection:

Paul Claudel was born in 1868 into a typical bourgeois French household. Though baptized a Catholic, religion was not really part of his life and by his teens he was a non-believer. At the age of 18, he went on a whim to Notre Dame in Paris for Mass on Christmas Day.  As he later wrote, he thought the ceremonies might give him some good material for a few decadent poems. Later that afternoon, he returned for Christmas Vespers. And something happened.
 
“I was towards the front of the crowd, close to the second pillar at the entrance to the choir, to the right on the sacristy side. It was then that the event happened which has dominated my entire life. In an instant, my heart was touched and I believed. I believed, with such strength… that ever since, no books, no reasonings, none of the vicissitudes of a restless life, have been able to shake my faith, nor, truth to tell, even to touch it.” Claudel tried to join the Benedictines, but was turned down. He entered the diplomatic service instead, and served all over the world, including the US, where he made the cover of Time magazine! His prolific writing—poetry, prose, and drama—was deeply imbued with his Catholic faith. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize six times.
 
For Claudel, that transforming moment of conversion was closely associated with Mary. Though he did not know it at the time, he later realized that his conversion had taken place as the choir began to sing Mary’s song, the Magnificat.
 
Claudel wrote, tongue in cheek, “After all, woman, it was you who made the first move…. Everything that has happened since, I can’t help it, you are responsible!”
 
Something of that same loving and playful tone comes through in today’s poem Claudel describes entering a church at Noon, which is of course the hour of the Angelus, a traditional Catholic prayer to Mary. But Claudel says, surprisingly, “I do not come to pray. I have nothing to offer and nothing to ask.” So why is he there? “not to say anything, but only to sing.” He simply wants to be in Mary’s presence, as in the presence of a mother.
 
In the second half of the poem, Claudel meditates on the uniqueness of Mary. Mary is the New Eve, giving us a glimpse of God’s creation in its “first dignity,” before the fall; and she is also God’s creature “in her final glory,” for in Mary’s Assumption, we glimpse the dignity of each human person, destined to share in the Resurrection of the Body.
 
At the end of the poem, Claudel steps back from the grandeur of this theologically rich imagery about Mary, and returns to the simplicity with which he began. He gives thanks, simply because Mary is there—simply because Mary is.

Denise Levertov, “Annuciation”

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
 
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
         God waited.
 
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

                  ____________________
Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
 
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
  only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
 
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
                     Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–

but who was God.
 
 
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
 
A breath unbreathed,
                                Spirit,
                                          suspended,
                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
                                                       raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
                                  consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
                               and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
              courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
 

Corinna Laughlin's reflection
 
During this month of May, we are exploring poems about Mary. This week, we’ll explore “Annunciation” by 20th century poet Denise Levertov. We have a special guest reader this week, Cathedral parishioner Jackie O’Ryan. Jackie will read the poem, then I’ll be back to offer a brief commentary.

Denise Levertov was born in 1923 in Essex, England, and died in 1997 in Seattle, Washington. Her mother was Welsh and her father was a Russian Jew, who converted to Christianity and became a minister of the Church of England. It was a very artistic household.   [ QUOTE FROM LEVERTOV ]
 
As a young woman, Levertov moved to the United States and considered herself an American poet. She was always very engaged with justice issues, and served as the poetry editor for the magazine The Nation for a number of years. She wrote about spiritual themes all her life, though it was not until she was teaching at Stanford in the 1980s that she began her own journey from agnostic to Christian. In 1989, she moved to Seattle, where she lived near Seward Park and fell in love with Mount Rainier. The mountain became a symbol of God for her, always present, whether “out” or not.  [QUOTE FROM LEVERTOV]
 
Levertov entered the Catholic Church at St. Edward’s Parish in Seattle in 1990. She died in 1997 at the age of 74, and is buried in Seattle’s Lakeview Cemetery.
 
In this poem, Levertov evokes familiar paintings of the Annunciation—“we know the scene,” she says – the room, the book, the lily, the angel. But then she delves into the part of the story we may not focus on. This is not a story about “meek obedience,” she says, but “courage.” God did not require anything of Mary—she was free to accept or to reject. That choice, Levertov says, is “integral to humanness.”
 
In the central part of the poem, Levertov asks whether there are annunciations in everyone’s life—but not everyone responds as Mary did. “Some unwillingly /undertake great destinies, / enact them in sullen pride, / uncomprehending.” Others simply turn away when a difficult path opens in front of them – “in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair / and with relief. Ordinary lives continue.” When we refuse, Levertov says in a wonderful insight, “God does not smite” us. But nevertheless, something is lost. “The gates close, the pathway vanishes.”
 
At the end of the poem, Levertov comes back to that room where the angel is awaiting Mary’s answer. Levertov gives us a unique and very relatable idea of what it meant for Mary to be free from original sin: “she had been a child… like any other child—but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy, not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.” It was this freedom which allowed Mary to consent to God’s plan, not reluctantly, but with total openness and trust. At the end of the poem, Levertov imagines what happens next, after Mary’s consent, and the light and transformation it brings: “The room filled with its light, / the lily glowed in it, /                                and the iridescent wings. / Consent, /               courage unparalleled, / opened her utterly.”  Mary’s “Yes” to God is not passive: consenting to God’s will is, rather “courage unparalleled.”

William Wordsworth “The Virgin”
 
 
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

Corinna Laughlin's reflection

 
May is Mary’s Month, so this month we’ll be reading poems about Mary, from classic and contemporary poets. For this first week of May, I’ve chosen William Wordsworth’s sonnet, “The Virgin.”
 
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 and died in 1850. There was a lot of sadness in Wordsworth’s life, starting with the death of his parents – he was orphaned by the age of 13. Three of his five children predeceased him. He found his joy in the glorious landscape of the Lake District, where he spent most of his life. That landscape filled his poetry. Wordsworth, with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, became one of the great English Romantic poets. They were pioneers of a new approach to poetry, characterized by close observation of the natural world, simpler language, and an emphasis on subjectivity—the interior life of the poet.
 
“The Virgin” is a later poem, part of a sequence of 47 sonnets written in 1821 and 1822, when Wordsworth was in his early fifties. The sonnets tell the whole story of the Christian faith in England. Wordsworth was a staunch Anglican—who would, he said, shed his blood for the Church of England.
 
In this sonnet, Wordsworth expresses great sympathy for Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The poem is addressed directly to Mary. Wordsworth uses ideas and images that recall Catholic beliefs about Mary: she is the Immaculate Conception – in the poem’s most famous line, Wordsworth says she is “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”—the one person free from original sin. The imagery he uses to highlight Mary’s purity—comparisons to the ocean, daybreak, the moon –all resonate with Catholic prayers about Mary, whom we invoke as “Morning Star” and “Star of the Sea.”
 
All of this makes the turn the poem takes halfway through more shocking:  “Thy Image falls to earth.” Wordsworth is talking here about the English Reformation, what has been called “the stripping of the altars,” when statues of Mary and the saints were destroyed in an effort to purify the faith of English Christianity. While later, images of Mary and the saints, and tabernacles, would return to Anglican worship, at the time Wordsworth is writing, that had not yet become common.
 
At the end of the poem, Wordsworth expresses his gentle sympathy with those who turn to Mary in prayer. His language is quite tentative—“some… not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,” he says—notice the double negative. Wordsworth understands why we Catholics are drawn to Mary, and perhaps wishes that he, too, could turn to her in prayer. For Wordsworth, Mary is the best of both worlds—she combines a “mother’s love” and “maiden’s purity,” high and low, earthly and heavenly—“our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

R. S. Thomas, “Folktale” (1986)
 
Prayers like gravel
flung at the sky’s
window, hoping to attract
the loved one’s
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down for the believer
to climb up,
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.
 
Corinna Laughlin's commentary:
 
Today, we’re going to explore a poem by 20th century Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. Scott will read Thomas’s short poem “Folk Tale” and then I’ll be back to offer a brief commentary.
 
R. S. Thomas is probably the most renowned 20th century poet no one has ever heard of. He was born in Wales in 1913 and died there in 2000. Ordained a priest of the Anglican Church in Wales in 1936, he spent much of his life as a priest in small parishes in rural Wales.
 
In 1940, he married Mildred “Elsi” Eldridge, a gifted artist. Her renown as a painter inspired him to “wish to be recognized as a poet.”  His first collection of poems appeared in 1946, and many more followed. In 1996, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Thomas was a bit of a Luddite, and his son Gwydion later recalled sermons in which he railed against refrigerators and other modern appliances. The only modern convenience the family ever owned was a vacuum which they never used because it was too noisy.
 
The primary themes of Thomas’s poetry are the landscape and seascape of Wales, the country people with whom he ministered, and the elusive nature of faith and prayer.
 
In “Folk Tale,” Thomas evokes the familiar story of Rapunzel, who lived in a tower, and let down her hair to admit her mother—and, later, her prince. In Thomas’s poem, God is Rapunzel, hidden from view. Unlike Rapunzel, there are no “visible plaits to let down for the believer to climb up”—so why open the window at all?  “I would have refrained long since,” the poet says, “but that peering once through my locked fingers I thought that I detected the movement of a curtain.” Looking through “locked fingers”—through hands folded in prayer—he sensed movement in that far off window, and this glimpse was enough to keep him tossing gravel at the window, to keep him praying.
 
In this poem, Thomas playfully evokes the hard work that prayer is sometimes, and how elusive God can seem. Only by recalling that “movement of a curtain,” that sense of God’s presence, do we keep going, keep tossing gravel at the window, like Rapunzel’s prince, and longing for union.

God’s Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
 
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
 
And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Corinna Laughlin's commentary:

On April 22, we observe the 50th annual Earth Day. So this week, our poem is one with a strong ecological theme:  Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur.” Scott Webster will read the poem, then I’ll be back to offer a brief commentary.
 
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in 1844. In 1866, as an Oxford undergraduate, he was received into the Catholic Church by now St. John Henry Newman. This was a momentous decision, as Hopkins knew he would face significant opposition from his devoutly Anglican family, and indeed his entry into the Church cost Hopkins friendships and caused estrangements in his family which never fully healed.
 
Hopkins had always loved poetry, but he gave it up when he resolved to become a Jesuit. "By God's grace,” he wrote, “I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it." For seven years, he wrote almost nothing, until one of his Jesuit superiors asked him to write a poem. This opened the floodgates of his creativity, and Hopkins developed his unique voice and style in extraordinary poems for the rest of his short life—he died at age 44 in 1889.
 
In this sonnet, Hopkins describes the world being as being “charged” with the grandeur of God. The word “charged” can mean “full” or “loaded”; it can also suggest an electric “charge”—Hopkins is playing on both meanings here. It’s characteristic of Hopkins to use a wonderful variety of images to capture his meaning. The world is so full of God that divinity flashes out, like light on a shaken piece of foil; it oozes God, as a crushed olive oozes oil.
 
Why, then, Hopkins asks, do men not “reck his rod”—why do people not recognize God’s power in creation?  Instead, they keep at their destructive work, exploiting creation, making it less divine and more human—the earth has taken on our “smudge,” our smell. At the same time, ironically, we are becoming ever more alienated from nature—we no longer touch it directly, like a foot in a shoe.
 
In the second part of the sonnet, Hopkins gives a glimpse of hope. “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” This idea of the deep, unique life that all living things have, is one of the hallmarks of Hopkins’ thought. No matter how dark things get, there is the hope of dawn, because God has not abandoned the world—the Holy Ghost broods over the earth like a dove on her nest.
 
Hopkins’ ecological vision resonates with that of another Jesuit—Pope Francis. In “Laudato Si,” his encyclical letter on Care for our common home, Pope Francis writes: “The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God…. The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things.”

Good Friday by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
 
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
 
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
 
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
 
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Corinna Laughlin commentary: 
 
Christina Rossetti was born in London in 1830 and died in 1894.  She was from a remarkably talented family. Her siblings all did remarkable things – her brother Dante Gabriel was a renowned poet and painter; her sister wrote a book on Dante; her brother William a noted critic and editor. Through her brothers, she was closely linked with the PreRaphaelite movement, and she appears as the Virgin Mary in Dante Rossetti’s famous Annunciation, and as St. Elizabeth of Hungary in a painting by James Collinson, to whom she was briefly engaged.
 
Rossetti had a happy childhood, but in her teenage years she experienced the first of several serious bouts with depression, something she would struggle with all her life. Her Christian faith was at the center of her life and of her writing.
 
In her poem “Good Friday,” Rossetti asks herself a question. “Am I a stone,” she asks, that she can stand beneath the cross and yet not weep? She draws on details from the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion and notes that everyone reacted to Christ’s suffering—the women wept; Peter wept; the good thief was moved; even the sun and moon “hid their faces in a starless sky” in eclipse. She feels like she’s the only one who can’t seem to feel anything.  Why can’t she feel?
 
Rossetti isn’t just beating herself up here. She’s giving an accurate description of “acedia,” a spiritual torpor or apathy which we all experience sometimes. Rossetti responds in a healthy way to acedia: she acknowledges it and she prays about it. At the end of the poem, she addresses Christ, saying, “Greater than Moses, turn and look once more / And smite a rock.” Just as Moses, at God’s command, struck the rock so that water flowed out for the Israelites to drink, Rossetti prays that Christ will break her open, so that she can feel with him and for him in his Passion.
 
This year, as we celebrate Holy Week under unprecedented circumstances, let’s not beat ourselves up if we find it hard to feel through our distraction, busyness, or anxiety. Instead, let’s pray with Rossetti for the grace to be broken open, to see and to feel with Christ during these Holy Days. Have a blessed Holy Week.

Enclosure
Jessica Powers  (1905-1988)
 
Gypsy by nature, how can I endure it—
This small strict space, this meager patch of sky?
What madness once possessed me to procure it?
And deed it to myself until I die?
 
What could the wise Teresa have been thinking
to set these bounds on even my little love?
This walling, barring, minimizing, shrinking—
how could her great Castilian heart approve?
 
And yet I meet the morrow with composure.
Before I made my plaint I found the clue
and learned the secret to outwit enclosure
because of summits and a mountain view.
 
You question, then, the presence of a mountain?
Yet it is here past earth’s extravagant guess—
Mount Carmel with its famed Elian fountain,
and God encountered in its wilderness.
 
Its trails outrun the most adept explorer,
outweigh the gypsy’s most inordinate need.
Its heights cry out to mystic and adorer.
Oh, here are space and distances indeed.
 
(1944)
 
Reflection
 
Hello there! Corinna Laughlin here. I’m the Pastoral Assistant for Liturgy at St. James. Over the years, parishioner Scott Webster and I have offered many literary evenings at the Cathedral, reading and discussing stories and poetry. Since we can’t do that right now, we’ve decided to offer a poem a week, virtually. Scott will read the poem, and then I’ll offer a short commentary. The first poem I’ve chosen is “Enclosure,” by Jessica Powers, also known as Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, a Carmelite nun who lived from 1905 to 1988. I think her experience of “enclosure” will resonate at this time when so many of us are confined to our homes.  Here’s Scott reading Jessica powers’ “Enclosure.”
 
Thank you, Scott!
 
The poem begins with a question—“gypsy by nature, how can I endure it?” Jessica Powers was a bit of a gypsy. She grew up in an Irish Catholic household in rural Wisconsin but after studies at Marquette, she moved to Chicago and later to New York City at the age of 32. She spent five years in the New York literary scene – writing for the New York Times and publishing poetry. Then, in 1941, she moved back to Wisconsin and entered the Carmelite Monastery of the Mother of God in Milwaukee. Jessica Powers became Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit.
 
Carmelites are cloistered, which means they do not leave the monastery grounds, or “enclosure,” except for essentials, like doctors’ appointments. Visitors are traditionally seen at a distance, through a grille or screen. In these days of sheltering in place and social distancing, we are all getting a taste of Carmelite enclosure! 
 
Jessica Powers wrote “Enclosure” about seven years after her entrance into the monastery. In the first part of the poem, she humorously expresses the frustration that comes with being enclosed—“walling, barring, minimizing, shrinking.” What, she asks, could she have been thinking? What could St. Teresa have been thinking?
 
But in the second part of the poem, Powers answers her own question. How can she endure enclosure? Because God is present. She draws on the rich imagery of Carmelite spirituality—mountains, wilderness, flowing water—to point towards the rich interior landscape which is always accessible, even—or perhaps especially—when we are “enclosed.”

Corinna Laughlin