Living Wittily

Category: poetry and theology

  • Attentive to a different light – Rebecca Elson, Astronomer Poet

    Hs-2005-35-a-webThe slim volume of Rebecca Elson's poetry, Responsibility to Awe, sits on my desk at College. Elson was a gifted astronomer, combining intellectual curiosity with creative cognitive insight and these focused on the vast complex questions of existence. Around the time when Hubble was sending back images of our universe that are at once beautiful and terrifying, expanding beyond previous imagination the exploding, extending immensity of what we call space, the totality of what exists. Her scientific work 'focused on globular clusters, teasing out the history of stellar birth, life and death'. She was fascinated by dark matter, "hidden mass which can be inferred only from its influence on observable objects". 

     It's no surprise she is a poet. Precise observation, imaginative reflection, contemplative gaze, the instinct not only for fact, and its significance, but also for its hiddenness, mystery and capacity to provoke questions rather than provide answers. I've often thought the fusion of intellectual penetration and empirical observation, with contemplative wonder and patient humility before what can't be exhaustively explained or dequately described, could produce a rare form of poetry – and for that matter theology! 

    This collection of poems and extracts from her notebooks was written when she knew she was terminally ill, and its contents are by turns poignant and playful, questioning and serene, drawn from recalled memory or pushed towards anticipated realities. The result is a book that invites the reader into an intimate conversation not only about dark matter, but about what matters, and why.

    The title, A Responsibility to Awe, describes the disposition of the true scientist – and though she wouldn't naturally draw the inference, it describes also the proper disposition of the true theologian, and indeed the true worshipper of the Triune God of love made known in Jesus Christ.

    Telescopes

    Those few brave pilgrims

    standing white robed

    At the edge

    of earth and sky

    On their dark mountain

    in the thin dry air,

    for all their altitude

    no nearer, really, to the stars.

     

    But hopeful

    and so patient,

    high above the traffic

    of the lowlands, tracking

    the minutiae of the Universe

    attentive to a different light.

    Now read Psalm 8.

  • Kathleen Raine, Good Friday and the Healing Reality of the Garden

    Crathes.1 The biblical narrative sometimes turns on the encounters that take place in a garden. The garden of Eden is a place of creation and destruction, of carefree joy and cosmic tragedy, of divine fulfilment and human failing. And however we read that story, it portrays in poignant poetry the two poles and entire latitude and longitude of human experience, from innocence to shame, from life affirming stewardship to earth shattering grasping. Gethsemane is the garden where the tragedies and triumphs of human  sinfulness become concentrated on the soul of the One who gathers within one human being, the cosmic and human toxins of creation alienated. The Gospel phrase for this anguish, "sweating great drops of blood", and the location of the garden of Gethsemane, make this Gospel episode a cross section of a fallen creation, exposing the age rings of human history which has sweat its own great drops of blood.

    I think it's no accident, or incidental stage setting, that the tomb was in Joseph of Arimathea's garden, and that garden the place of resurrection. There's something wonderfully playful about that line of John's, explaining Mary Magdalene's grief-stricken confusion, "thinking him to be the gardener…". Eden the place of lost innocence, Gethsemane the place of God's angst, and that morning scene of so human trauma, of grief and joy, of disbelief and scared to admit it faith – so much of what matters in our faith begins or ends up in a garden.

    Kathleen Raine wrote about the garden in terms that make it clear it is a place of healing, and not a place of unreality and retreat from the world. Her poem suggests it may be that we enounter what is most real, most urgent for our flourishing, and most telling for our humanity, in a garden.

    I had meant to write a different poem….

    I had meant to write a different poem,
    But, pausing for a moment in my unweeded garden,
    Noticed, all at once, paradise descending in the morning sun
    Filtered through leaves,
    Enlightening the meagre London ground, touching with green
    Transparency the cells of life.
    The blackbird hopped down, robin and sparrow came,
    And the thrush, whose nest is hidden
    Somewhere, it must be, among invading buildings
    Whose walls close in,
    But for the garden birds inexhaustible living waters
    Fill a stone basin from a garden hose.
    I think, it will soon be time
    To return to the house, to the day’s occupation,
    But here, time neither comes nor goes.
    The birds do not hurry away, their day
    Neither begins nor ends.
    Why can I not stay? Why leave
    Here, where it is always,
    And time leads only away
    From this hidden ever-present simple place.

    Kathleen Raine

  • Literary criticism, love story and good poetry

    51ANHM6uS4L._SL500_AA300_
    I hadn't realised that Joy Davidman, who married C S Lewis, was such an acerbic but accurate critic in her own right.  Her letters are entertaining, educational, funny, understanding of what makes a human life well lived or not, and have a value beyond whatever light they throw on Lewis and her relationship with him. This book helps to establish her as a strong personality, and a complex rich character with her own indivoduality. An intellectually gifted woman of philosophical and literary sharpness, a writer for whom honesty and integrity  are essential for a valid and worthwhile aesthetic, and therefore a centre stage player alongside Lewis, not a foil for his cleverness nor a hanger on who eventually became a permanent fixture in Lewis's life and affections.

    These letters help explain why a man who was curmudgeon and children's writer, literary scholar and Oxbridge snob, Christian and confirmed bachelor with views that still anger even moderate contemporary feminists, ended up surrendering bachelorhood and all the other defining characteristics in the embrace of a friendship that grew into one of the great love stories that preserves love from facile romance or low commitment partnership. This was a marriage, the joining in companionship of two soul friends, a coalescing of life interests and startling life differences that had no chance of working except as two protagonists negotiated the risks attendant on an act of folly made only as secure as the commitments of love ever make anything. 

    And out of that relationship the late flowering and fulfilling of two people each having a second chance – Davidman post divorce and Lewis post bachelorhood. The love story that gave us A Grief Observed; there's a book to reckon with – little more than a long essay, but the most touching report from the far country of grief, concerning intense sorrow, theological dispute with the Almighty, and the searing honesty and bewilderment of a heart and mind cruelly robbed of their greatest treasure. The dramatisations in Shadowlands only approaches the impact of the book – but though Joss Ackland and Anthony Hopkins in two separate productions, capture the joy and grief of Lewis, neither productions does the same justice to Joy and her capacity to avoid the shadow of Lewis, and at times her ability to out Lewis Lewis.

    These letters are a delight to read. The several long ones to Aaron Kramer are amongst the most incisive criticism I've read in years. She must have been hard to keep as a friend, because she was hard on her friends. But Kramer had the sense to believe her when she tore into him "for his own good". I hadn't heard of Kramer before, and in a footnote she commends one of his 4 line poems –

    Tired

    Tired are my feet, that felt today the pavement;

    Tired are my ears, that heard of tragic things –

    Tired are my eyes, that saw so much enslavement;

    Only my voice is not too tired. It sings.

     

    How good is that. The last line is almost Isaianic in its defiant optimism, its hopeful perspective, its trust in music and the human voice as means of reconfiguring a world awry and broken by the unholy trinity of power, greed and inhumanity. This is a book that educates at different levels, and in several directions. That's often the case with the correspondence of the best letter writers.

  • Mary Oliver – a poet’s gestures towards holiness

    Images Mary Oliver at her didactic best – which means she teaches us without trying to, what we learn being a by-product of what her poems do to us, in us and for us.

    "It is salvation if one can step forth from the

    clutter of one's mind into that open space —

    that almost holy space — called work.

    I suppose only a poet would talk about work like that? Or at least someone for whom work results in the expression of the self in creation towards communication. The fashioning of meaning, ideas and image from words, touching the inner lives of others through the shared currency of a vocabulary congruent with experience, discourse with a shared language though perhaps different accents, these are indeed gestures towards holiness.

    And then these lines –

    Lord, there are so many fires, so many words, in

    my heart. It's going to take something I can't

    even imagine, to put them all out.

    As a writer, a theologian, and a teacher, I recognise in these lines that same gesture towards holiness. The sacred source of ideas, meaning, and the words that enable one mind to share with another some of those fires, lies somewhere between the intellect, the heart and the will. She is describing something deeply and definitively human.

    (From Swan. Poems and Prose Poems, Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, 2010, page 52.)

  • Hubble, Poetry, Creation and Christ

    Pillars-of-creation

    CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE

    by: Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

      • ITH this ambiguous earth
        His dealings have been told us. These abide:
        The signal to a maid, the human birth,
        The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
         
        But not a star of all
        The innumerable host of stars has heard
        How He administered this terrestrial ball.
        Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.
         
        Of His earth-visiting feet
        None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
        The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
        Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
         
        Web
        No planet knows that this
        Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
        Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
        Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
         
        Nor, in our little day,
        May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
        His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
        Or His bestowals there be manifest.
         
         
        Whirlpool
        But in the eternities,
        Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
        A million alien Gospels, in what guise
        He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
         
        O, be prepared, my soul!
        To read the inconceivable, to scan
        The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
        When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

  • R S Thomas, the Crucified God and the virtue of metaphysical humility


    1009551 Chris McIntosh is a fellow enthusiast for the poetry of R S Thomas. Indeed she is an RST pilgrim who recently went looking again for the haunts of the finest religious poet of the second half of the 20th Century (see her post for 17 July). She asked in her recent comment if I'd come upon Thomas's 1990 collection, Counterpoint, and confesses reluctance to write about them. And when you read them you can understand why the hesitation. Yet they are a remarkably important contribution to Christian thought, representing a voice too often muted in Christian spirituality. So at least some thoughts and initial reflections.

    Some of the poems in Counterpoint assert faith at its most interrogative, that is, to read them is to be interrogated, asked questions we'd rather not answer, but that won't go away. And for those who need certainty and not only assurance but chronic reassurance, some of them contain carpet pulling assertions that leave comfortable faith discomfited on the floor. And some of them contain that pastoral tenderness that was seldom sentimental, but understood and respected human fragility, shared that wistful longing to know, to really know, who God is and what God is about, in a world with so many hard and dangerous places, so many dark corners, so much that causes hurt.


    Vangogh-starry_night_edit Much of Thomas's poetry is therefore in the minor key, and much that would be called negative emotion is drawn into a vision of human existence where the negative has its positive counterpoint, and the minor anticipates the major, even when the major is indicated rather than intimated. To change the metaphor, Thomas's poetry, like Van Gogh's painting, acknowledged, even celebrated light, but against cobalt blue, implied menacing shadow, even in some paintings, impressions of unrelieved dullness or darkness. The contrast of dark and light, minor and major, despair and hope, doubt and faith, carefree joy and recurring sorrow, mirrors for Thomas the poet the task of Christian theology, which is not to explain away the negative, or deny it, or make such experience occasion for guilt. For Thomas any escapist or triumphalist theology lacks a sufficient metaphysical humility, claims more than is warranted by human experience, and simply leaves unaddressed by Christian theology those experiences inevitable in mortal existence, of ambiguity, of desolation, of existential ache for meaning, belonging and hope. You can't have Van Gogh without the cobalt blue – the starry night is glorious because as well as the swirling spheres of coarse brushed gold, there is the background of contrasting space, distance, darkness.

     
    Hubble-eagle-nebula-wide-field-04086y At times in the Counterpoint collection, there is a sense of a Christian holding on to faith by fingertips and precarious toe-holds. But taken as a whole they are poems of astonishing grasp, a profound Christian theology in which God is neither trivialised nor analysed, but acknowledged as the overwhelming Reality that permeates and penetrates a universe in which all human existence would otherwise be fleeting accident registering for nanoseconds in a story bleakly eternal. Thomas's poetry has as its theological sub-structure the Christian story. And the four suites of poems in Counterpoint demonstrate a soul that has learned metaphysical humility, not docility, not resignation, Thomas is not God's 'yes-man'; but in his questioning he will accept neither trite answers nor final negations. Because at the heart of Thomas's poetry, as the glowing core from which his creative energy was drawn, is the cross, the crucified Christ, the God who scandalises all theology by being born human, suffering, dying, and thus through love defiant in resurrection, contradicting the tendency of the universe to atrophy and die. Wherever else the universe is going, according to Thomas it will not outrun the grasping arms of the crucified God. Here is just one poem, whose last clause captures in six words, the eternally patient movement of God, outwards in Love, towards a recalcitrant but cherished creation.

    They set up their decoy

    in the Hebrew sunlight. What

    for? Did they expect

    death to come sooner

    to disprove his claim

    to be God's son? Who

    can shoot down God?

    Darkness arrived at midday, the shadow

    of whose wing? The blood

    ticked from the cross, but it was not

    their time it kept. It was no

    time at all, but the accompaniment

    to a face staring,

    as over the centuries

    it has stared, from unfathomable

    darkness into unfathomable light.

    R S Thomas, Collected Later Poems, (Bloodaxe, 2004), page 108.

    Four question marks in one poem. And those last six words. Van Gogh's starry night again?

  • Mary Oliver, Staff Retreat and learning to pay attention to our lives.

    Been away from here for a few days.But been doing other things that brought me into good company, lovely countryside and conveyor belts of rain! Been at Grasmere with the good folks of Northern Baptist Learning Community sharing their staff retreat and helping provide guidance and stimulus towards renewal and refreshment after a long demanding year. So we had some of Mary Oliver's poems, an eclectic choice of music that reflects my own enthusiasms, a number of pictures and images which express beauty and the joy or sadness that intermingles with our lived experience. And I shared a few soliloquies inspired by several biblical encounters with Jesus – never been sure if they were worth doing more with, but the consensus seems to be a yes. So we'll see.

    41CU6Z6Ij7L._SL500_AA300_ What became evident though is that on a retreat occasion, a poet like Mary Oliver has the ability to open new doors of perception, encouraging a more attentive, less cursory viewing of the world – to gaze rather than glimpse, to notice rather than merely register, to greet whatever and whoever we meet, with "Hello", rather than to act ignorantly, that is in a way that shows we do not really know or want to know those other presences that would grace our lives if we gave them the time of day, and a little space.

    Throughout her recent work there are a number of light-hearted but not insignificant poems about her dog Percy. Here's one that I find irresistible because it is about a dog and books, or in any case about a dog impatient with stupid humans who bury their face in paper instead of looking at the beauty, the fun and the excitement of a colourful world laden with smell and sound.

    Percy and Books (eight)

    Percy doesn't like it when I read a book.

    He puts his face over the top of it and moans.

    He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.

    The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.

    The tide is out and the neighbour's dogs are playing.

    But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!

    The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories

    that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.

     

    Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.

    Let's go.

    With summer here, an academic year formally completed tomorrow, I'm with Percy. Let's go! Need a holiday and it will come in a few weeks. Meantime in order to enjoy it, I'm going to try to decelerate gently, a foot movement that doesn't come naturally to me. To help me I'll slowly work through several thin books of Mary Oliver's poems, and learn again how to pay attention, to say hello, and give time of day to whoever asks it, or even whoever doesn't.

  • Poetry, the hidden treasure of the heart, and being made to feel differently

    Amongst the subsidiary blessings of being a staff member at the Scottish Baptist College, is a generous books allowance to underpin our personal research and help us keep abreast of new work in the subject areas we teach. Of course there are those who call such blessings a perk – but that's cos they don't have the high vocational commitment of the bibliphiole for whom a book is synonymous with blessing, and reading an activity that Philp Toynbee called "the royal way to God".

    This week the book allowance for the next academic year becomes available. And I don't have what I often have, a long list of waiting to be bought goodies – perks – ehhh – blessings. Which said, there are a few essentials that are food for the soul, the heart and the spirit – before we ever get to the mind.

    51gbTlRCfvL._SL500_AA300_ Mary Oliver is a poet entirely comfortable swimming in the emotional depths, yet possessed of an uncomfortable and discomforting instinct for bringing our own more hidden emotions to the surface; not to embarrass or frighten, but to reconcile us to the richly textured, gloriously ambiguous world of our own deep feelings. And she does this in ways so deceptively simple that only because I know her ways with words, am I expecting to feel differently by the time I reach the end of one of her poems. But how I then feel, is still a surprise, because the reading of the poem becomes a medium of self-discovery, the poem itself a field in which, ploughing, I discover hidden treasure. Then again my own reading self is also the field in which the treasure is hidden – there but undiscovered, till her ploughshare turns the soil and there I am, laughing, or crying, daring or caring, restored or reconciled, interested or integrated, convinced or content, – the alternatives are endless, but the point is, I seldom read one of her poems without thinking and feeling differently about life, the world, me, those I love, problems I have or that have me, hopes fiercely cherished or disappointments that weigh heavy.

    I've often enough said that the poets are the ones who take us to the heart of things, and to the heart of our own hearts. Mary Oliver's best poetry performs such cardiac surgery using words as both scalpel and needle, skillfully healing and repairing that centre of our being which gives our lives rhythm, oxygen and the vital energy for life. And in the process, she brings to the light of our days, treasures we did not know we had, treasure we did not know we were. Tomorrow I'll post one such poem – read earlier in the week, in the middle of a jaded afternoon to each of our staff members, read and heard by each as a benediction framed in loveliness, and welcomed as a gentle corrective for lives perhaps too prone to self-important anxiety about getting the job done. Whatever is true of my colleagues, Mea culpa! 

  • Why we are not a waste of time and space

    I like this. Not the final knockdown argument that demolishes Dawkins et al. Too subtle for such intellectual dogmatism. And why demolish straw anyway?

    No. This is affirmation, hopefulness, trustful optimism that this glorious, beautiful, perplexingly addictive world around us, is more than the collisions of infinite variations of chance. I like the thought that beautiful music skillfully played is a crucial clue to why life matters, and matters to more than ourselves. 

    For today let's pause

    At my first groping after the First Cause,

    Which led me to acknowledge (groping still)

    That if what once was called primeval slime

    (in current jargon pre-biotic soup)

    Evolved in course of eons to a group

    Playing Beethoven, it needed more than time

    And chance, it needed a creative will

    To foster that emergence, and express

    Amoeba as A Minor. 

    Martyn Skinner, Old Rectory, (Michael Russell Publishing), 1984, Quoted in This Sunrise of Wonder, Michael Mayne, (London: DLT, 2008), p. 110

  • Mary Oliver on why life should be lived with energy and intentionality.

    _42815935_dorsetgardener_203 The photo is of a gardener whose 100th birthday has passed. And he is sowing seeds with the expectation of organic veggies next year!

    A poem. About why life is good, and why it is important to receive it as a gift and enjoy it as a blessing. Mary Oliver understands that mixture of hard-headed strategy and wistful longing that recognises life only happens once, and is precious and is not ever to be devalued as mere routine, or wasted through unamazed disdain. We are ourselves God's investment, created by a love that knows our possibilities, capax dei, "dust, but glorious dust", as Richard Holloway once wrote in a magnificent reflection.

    When Death Comes

    When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

    I was a bride married to amazement:

    I was a bridegroom, taking the world

    into my arms.

    When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

    if I have made of my life something

    particular, and real.

    I don’t want to find myself sighing

    and frightened

    or full of argument.

    I don’t want to end up simply having

    visited this world.