The poem, "On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus', was written after Levertov had spent eight months going through the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, devoting an hour a day to prayer and journal reflection, and meeting regularly with her spiritual director. Out of such immersion in the Gospel narratives came a clearer grasp of her own spiritual tendencies.
As an intellectually engaged critic of texts she inevitably brought analytic tools to her study; as a seeking pilgrim she knew she needed to know and believe out of her own spiritual experience arising from these Gospel stories. By imagining herself into each story, the walls of time and culture between her and the original Gospel events dissolved briefly, so that she could find herself, and be found, in the encounter with Jesus.
In her journal she wrote a prayer in which she asked "keep her intellect sharp and yet not be a vehicle for the spirit that denies." She knew that belief for her consisted both in intellectual grasp and in personal commitment. Faith is both cognitive assent and affective response, both thought and emotion.
The poem is printed exactly as Levertov herself insisted; each line a step, with time to pause and feel its weight, before the next phrase. To read is to descend a stairway of thoughts, each one a step in her argument, which progresses across the page, returns and again progresses, the downward movement of a spiral of continuous, contemplative and imaginative thought.
In the encounter with the risen Christ intellectual and cognitive grasp are essential but not enough. Miracles are not established by mere reasoned evidence; that conclusion is reached by the confirmation of deeper ways of knowing; to feel the truth, taste the truth, and bear witness that a miracle such as resurrection is known because personally witnessed in its transformative power.
This is one of Levertov's most explicit testimonies about her personal experience of God. Faith is both knowledge and trust, engaging intellect and emotion, reason and feeling. The propositional truth 'Christ is risen', must find evidence in the experiential truth of personal encounter. Around the same period, in a poem about the conversion of Brother Lawrence, Levertov articulated her own experience of prayer as unending 'silent secret conversation / the life of steadfast attention."
At the foot of the stairway of this poem, is the surprised joy of Emmaus. That story of bewildered disciples, the talkative stranger, the yearning for companionship, and bread in the hands of the unknown guest, contained all that Levertov sought in her quest for peace, assurance and a faith that allowed for both questions and trust.
On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus
It is for all
‘literalists of the imagination,’
poets or not,
that miracle
is possible,
possible and essential.
Are some intricate minds
nourished
on concept,
as epiphytes flourish
high in the canopy?
Can they
subsist on the light,
on the half
of metaphor that’s not
grounded in dust, grit,
heavy
carnal clay?
Do signs contain and utter,
for them
all the reality
that they need? Resurrection, for them,
an internal power, but not
a matter of flesh?
For others,
of whom I am one,
miracles (ultimate need, bread
of life) are miracles just because
people so tuned
to the humdrum laws:
gravity, mortality–
can’t open
to symbol’s power
unless convinced of its ground,
its roots
in bone and blood.
We must feel
the pulse in the wound
to believe
that ‘with God
all things
are possible,’
taste
bread at Emmaus
that warm hands
broke and blessed.
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