Poetry
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Poem: Visiting Rowan on Easter Sunday
Rowan laughs and smiles, but he is plainly sad.
Emma has been gone for a long time now.
Emma has been gone for a long time now.
Beside him, an electric photo frame shuffles images of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
All of whom keep him anchored here.
But he cannot eat, he says, as he holds a white plastic bag
With a blue plastic ring to hold it open for vomit.
We brought him a red egg, hard-boiled, in the Orthodox tradition.
He is glad to receive it with a sad smile,
But we both know he will not eat it.
Mother asks him if he would like communion, and he thinks;
Thinking is hard right now, and his eyes won’t focus
Though he tells us he can see through the doorway beyond
And make out the picture frame in the next room.
We turn to look but we don’t see it,
Unless he means the mirror, or the window, in the room across the hall
Or perhaps he sees something beyond our vision that we cannot yet see.
Richard is coming soon for lunch with his father,
Of course Rowan won’t eat, he tells us,
But he will be glad to see his son.
The phone rings. One of his daughters, calling to check in.
They all check in with me every day, he says,
With a laugh that makes him cough a little.
“They’re so good to me.”
He tells her he has guests, and that everything is fine.
The egg starts to roll off his lap, and he quickly catches it
With his knees, and it does not break.
Which reminds me that he learned to ski in his fifties
And only gave it up in his eighties when his balance started to go.
He hangs up the phone and Mother offers him communion once again.
He cannot focus his eyes, so we read the liturgy for him,
And then he takes the bread with fingers that have grown dark and thin and knurled like wild oak branches.
I am surprised by his speed and agility as he takes the bread.
And he chews it, and drinks the wine,
While his right hand clutches the white bag with the blue ring.
But he does not need to lift it to his lips.
The bread and the wine stay with him, and he laughs,
And stretches out a thin hand to each of us
And thanks us for coming to visit.
Would you like us to shut the door, Mother asks.
He is quick to reply:
No, please leave it open.
And he wishes us a happy Easter,
And we walk out through the lobby, where twenty gray heads in wheelchairs stare at the television screen, and wait.
∞
One Word
One Word
One word to the finches
Who perch on my towering sunflowers,
Who fling golden petals,
Who drop a thousand husks
On the garden below.
Who dive at my coneflowers, talons out
And then peck and pull and shred
Those spiny, spiraled heads.
It is September now, but I know
That you and others of your kind
Will be back again, and again
Perching in the branches
All fall, and all winter too.
And you will continue to feast
On the dry seeds that remain.
What was a colorful garden is becoming
Your harvest meal, your stores for winter,
And you don't care how much I worked
To make this garden grow.
The earth I turned, the soil I amended,
The compost churned, the toil.
The seeds I raised inside while you sat
On brown stems, looking in my windows.
The seedlings planted, and watered,
And watched until they grew.
I have just one word for you:
Welcome.
When you leave today I'll gather
A few of those seeds myself
And I'll set them aside to dry
So that next spring you, and I
Can begin to grow again.
—-
David L. O'Hara
19 September 2020
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On Paying Attention To Bear Poop - My recent TEDx talk in Fargo
My TEDx talk in Fargo, summer 2019. It's about bear poop, and other things you don't need to know.
The allegedly unnecessary things - like bear poop, and poetry - are often the things you most need to know.
I'm grateful to my friend Greg and his team for making this possible. I had no plans ever to do a TEDx talk until I met Greg through some mutual friends. We were having coffee here in Sioux Falls a few years ago, and I said something about the ecology of fish and forests. It must have resonated with Greg, because when I was done, he said "You should come to Fargo to give a TEDx talk!"
Some of the best things happen when you take time to have a cup of coffee or tea with friends, or when you meet new people, or when you find some bear scat on a trail by a river. Each of these things can be the prompting of a new thought, the spoor that shows you a new path.
The allegedly unnecessary things - like bear poop, and poetry - are often the things you most need to know.
I'm grateful to my friend Greg and his team for making this possible. I had no plans ever to do a TEDx talk until I met Greg through some mutual friends. We were having coffee here in Sioux Falls a few years ago, and I said something about the ecology of fish and forests. It must have resonated with Greg, because when I was done, he said "You should come to Fargo to give a TEDx talk!"
Some of the best things happen when you take time to have a cup of coffee or tea with friends, or when you meet new people, or when you find some bear scat on a trail by a river. Each of these things can be the prompting of a new thought, the spoor that shows you a new path.
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In terms of ethics and law: who has access to the information confessed, and what is the legal status of that confession? Is there anything like the privilege of confidentiality enjoyed by clergy who hear private confessions from their parishioners?
*****
Update, 22 May 2018: Irina Raicu just published a very thoughtful reply to this, entitled "Parenting, Politeness, Poets, and Priests" at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Her article is very much worth the time it will take you to read it. You may find it here.
The Ethics of Automation: Poetry and Robot Priests
Philosophy professor Evan Selinger posted a question on Twitter yesterday about whether there are jobs that it would be unethical to automate.
As I am a Christian, an ethicist, and a philosopher of religion, this is
something I’ve been pondering for a few years: is there a case to be
made for automating the work of clergy?
A
German company recently automated a confessional. On the one hand, this
might have great therapeutic effects. On the other hand, it raises a
number of ethical, legal, and theological questions.
In terms of ethics and law: who has access to the information confessed, and what is the legal status of that confession? Is there anything like the privilege of confidentiality enjoyed by clergy who hear private confessions from their parishioners?
On the theological and ecclesiastical side: can a
meaningful confession be heard by someone who cannot sin, or does
confession depend on making a confession to a member of one’s own
community and church? Can a machine be a member of a church, or does it
have something more like the status of a chalice or a chasuble –
something the community uses liturgically but that does not have
standing in the deliberations and practices of the community? Another
important question: can a machine act as a vicar? That is, can a machine
stand in as a representative of God and proclaim the forgiveness of God
as we believe those who have been ordained may do?
Despite
the many weaknesses of religion, one strength of religion is that it
moves slowly. Yes, this too is a weakness at many times, but it is good
to move slowly when declaring sainthood, for instance. That’s a
decision that we should make carefully. Think about it like this: if we
are saying that person X is an example of good conduct, shouldn’t we
consider that person very carefully, from as many points of view as
possible, and do so after that person’s life has ended and all testimony
has been heard? Similarly, most religious traditions take time to
consider carefully whether someone should be ordained as clergy. In my
tradition, we speak of this as the “process of discernment,” and it is a
process that can take years, and that involves the whole community.
The downside is that this process is slow. The upside is that it keeps
us from making rash decisions, or at least it helps us to make fewer
rash decisions. We aren’t perfect.
My
first, gut response to Selinger’s question was that we should not outsource the writing of poetry to machines. My concerns here are twofold: one has to
do with the danger of persuasion: not much moves us as powerfully as
poetry does. My second concern is about the importance of having out
arts be the expressions of the heart of our communities. But I could be
wrong: maybe robots should be writing poetry – their own poetry, from
one machine to another. I do not wish to deprive anyone of the right to
artistic expression, nor do I wish to deprive envy community of the
right to have its own forms of beauty. Still, I worry about the way a
machine could be used to produce arrangements of words, sounds, and
images that would persuade us to act as we should not.
My
second response to Selinger’s question is related to the first: poetry is
at the heart of most religions, and I find myself with a hesitant
uncertainty about whether we should allow robots to be priests.
It’s
not that I think we should be unwilling to automate the tedious parts
of clerical work. In fact, that might be a real boon to the community.
We have allowed automation in many areas that has benefited us: bank
tellers and airline pilots have given up portions of their work to
reliable machines, and the result has been convenience and increased
safety. Why could a robot not also tend the sick and the needy, read to
those in hospice, visit those in prison, and so on? As I've written before, my wife is an Episcopal priest, and her work can be very demanding. There might be some parts of it that could be automated, freeing her up for other work that only people can do.
My
concern is not about the feasibility of having machines do this work.
On the whole, I’m in favor of it. But I do worry that if we hand over
caring for others to our machines, we might do so to our own detriment.
We should use the technologies we have to serve those in need. Of this I
have no doubt. But we should not pretend that in so doing we have done
all that we must do. I agree with Dr. King and Gandhi on this: we
ourselves need to care for those in need. Caring for those in need is
not a one-way transaction that serves only the sick and the poor; it is
something that the powerful and hale need as well.
I
have more to say about all of this, so this post is a too-hasty start,
but I want to risk continuing Evan Selinger’s conversation rather than risk
neglecting it. Evan has raised for us one of the more important
questions the current generation will face, I think.
For
right now, I will end this post by returning to poetry and mythology,
which is, as I said, a powerful resource for thinking about how we will
act. We need poetry, and we need to reflect on it together to sort out
the good poems from the bad. I’ll mention it here for your reflection:
J.R.R. Tolkien reflected on the poems of Genesis by creating his own
myth of creation in the Silmarillion. One element of that creation story
that my co-author Matthew Dickerson and I often return to is the story
in which one of God’s creations imitates God in making more sentient
beings, without God’s explicit permission. Here’s the passage I have in
mind:
“The making of things is in my heart from my own making by thee; and the child of little understanding that makes a play of the deeds of his father may do so without thought of mockery, but because he is the son of his father.”
Might it be possible for us also to make sentient life in imitation of God "without thought of mockery," and, if so, might it be that those lives we make could write poems and become priests? As anyone who has read Tolkien's myth knows, this raises a new set of ethical questions that now have to be resolved.--J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillion, p 43
*****
Update, 22 May 2018: Irina Raicu just published a very thoughtful reply to this, entitled "Parenting, Politeness, Poets, and Priests" at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Her article is very much worth the time it will take you to read it. You may find it here.
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Bluejay Linings
"Well, look at the silver lining!"
An accident two years ago left me with some injuries that occasionally keep me from doing what I would like to do. I shouldn't complain; my life's pretty good. But even little pains seem to draw all my attention. If my whole body is fine but I've got a blister on my small toe, I can forget the beautiful landscape I'm in and focus instead on the blister, or on the hiking boots that rubbed too much while I climbed a once-in-a-lifetime mountain. A splinter in my finger gets more of my attention than my wife's hand in mine does. Even small pain can keep my mind from noticing great loveliness.
Occasionally, my injuries keep me from being able to drive. When I cannot drive I rely on bicycling, and then I see much more clearly how much my city has been shaped by the automobile. We have very few taxis, and not much by way of public transit. Our city is in a place where land is cheap and abundant, and the sprawling grid of streets and of wide green lawns is a response to the availability of land: it's not a walking city, it's a city for driving. There are some nice bike trails, but they're mostly an afterthought that are designed for recreation and not for transportation. Here in Sioux Falls, the private car rules the road.
I own several cars, and my cars are also a response to the land here, and to its weather. The open prairie can get very cold in winter, and very hot in the summer. In my lifetime, automobiles have become better and better at insulating me from the extremes of weather. I can drive a thousand miles without feeling the air other than when I stop for rest or fuel. This usually seems like an advantage. Sometimes I wish I could talk with other drivers, but we are insulated from one another, too.
A few days ago someone told me that having to rely on my bicycle is a gift, an advantage. "Look at the silver linings," they said. When you bike, you get exercise! I think they meant to console me, and I'm sure I've said the same kind of thing to others, hoping to boost their spirits by pointing out that things could be worse. And I'll probably wind up doing it again in my lifetime. It's so easy to feel insulated from others' pain, and so hard to know the effects of our words on others. Argh. If I've done that to you, I'm sorry.
*****
Last January, as I walked through the forest of Petén, Guatemala with my students, I kept saying to them the last three lines from Gary Snyder's poem, "For the Children." Those lines form a sort of haiku at the end of a longer poem:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
I keep returning to that poem. Some of the hills are hard to climb, and I know that some of them will give me blisters. Others...well, someday those once-in-a-lifetime mountains will be climbable only in my memory.
For now, I'm trying not to let the well-intended words about "silver linings" rub me the wrong way, and to take them in the spirit they're offered in. They may be awkward, but they're meant to help.
From my three-wheeled vélo, uninsulated from the weather, I find I am also exposed to the sound of the birds. I haven't learned all the flowers yet, and I'm still working on the birdsongs, but I know many of their voices. In the last month I've learned where the bluejays live in my neighborhood. I didn't know we had bluejays near my house. I've seen them in our city, but only rarely. Now I've found two pair, and I'm starting to figure out which are their favorite trees. As I roll along quietly on my recumbent trike, the birds let me coast past them, eyeing me perhaps, as I listen for them high in the treetops of this prairie town.
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Poem - "Sage Creek"
One of my poems was published in the latest issue of Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics. It's a beautiful journal. I hope you'll consider buying a copy, or better still, subscribing.
Here are the first few lines:
Here are the first few lines:
Halfway through the fall we drive west, far from urban glow,You can read it all here.
To see the stars that we have never seen at home.
We go to the Badlands, at night, to the primitive campground
And listen to the coyotes singing from rim to rim
Of the valley where we are trying to sleep.
The voices of three packs rise like questions:
Who are you? What are you doing here?
UPDATE, 2024:
Sadly, Written River is now out of print, and their website is gone. Here, then, is the whole poem:
*****
Sage Creek
Halfway through the fall we drive west, far from urban glow,
To see the stars that we have never seen at home.
We go to the Badlands, at night, to the primitive campground
And listen to the coyotes singing from rim to rim
Of the valley where we are trying to sleep.
The voices of three packs rise like questions:
Who are you? What are you doing here?
Weary from driving, observe how much you want to stay awake
Now that you are here. Explain
And give examples
From all your senses.
If the wind blows across sage, then what follows,
and how do you first know it?
What is the feeling of the prairie wind at night,
And why is it now new to you?
Dry weeds crunch under sleeping bags stretched out under the cold, living sky.
Our arms swing to point at Orionid flares.
We speak in the whispers of worshipers entering a cathedral for the first time.
How long have we lived here,
On the prairie, and never felt it on our skin, all night long?
Compare and contrast
The Milky Way.
Before tonight, you have never seen it turn.
Consider all the stars,
And the difference between reading about them and watching them slowly slip across the sky.
Wake to the feeling that it is not yet dawn, but no longer night.
With your eyes still closed, ask yourself how you saw it,
How this dry land exposes you to yourself.
For a little while, you hold your eyes closed,
And remember the bright green lines of shooting stars.
Holding still, you listen:
This is the sound of bison, breathing. Nearby
The staccato chickadee and the whirling meadowlark
Greet the new day
In this place we have so long avoided.
The prairie dogs at the edge of the campground eye us warily, and bark a warning
As we load the car for the drive home.
*****
David L. O’Hara
(2015)
Printed in Written
River, Issue 10, 2016, Hiraeth Press.
The whole issue might be available on Kindle, here.
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The Slow, Important Work Of Poetry
At the time it seemed like chance that brought me to minor in comparative poetry in college.
Without having a master plan, over four years I wound up taking a number of poetry classes in four languages. Eventually I asked my college to consider them a new minor area of study. They agreed, and I graduated.
And then, slowly, over a quarter century, I began reading more poetry in more languages. It's always slow; I can't pick up a book of poems and read it like a novel. If the poetry is any good at all, I can read one or two poems, and then I've got to put the book down and let the words sit with me.
Often, I go back and read the same poem again, and again.
The very best poems I try to memorize, even though my memory for verse has never been good. I imagine most people would consider that a useless exercise, a waste of storage space in an already cluttered brain.
But in each season of my life I've found that it is some form of poetry that acts as salve to my soul's wounds or food that sustains its long journey forward. Homer's long story-poems; old epics and sagas from Ireland and Wales and Iceland; Vedic verses and Greek scriptures; Gregorian chants that have echoed in stone chambers for centuries; Shakespeare's or Petrarch's sonnets; the Psalms and proverbs of Hebrew priests and kings; a few words put together well by Dylan Thomas, Gary Snyder, Tomas Tranströmer, or C.S. Lewis; or the timely phrases of some of my favorite contemporaries like Patrick Hicks, Abigail Carroll, Mary Karr, Wendell Berry, Melissa Kwasny, John Lane, or Brian Turner. Each of them has, at some point, given me the daily bread I craved.
I can't seem to predict when the need will arise, but suddenly, there it is, and I find myself quoting Joachim du Bellay's sonnet about travel, and home:
That sonnet often reminds me, in turn, of verses about Abraham.
I am no good at praying, but I often wish I were. I think the fact that we make light of prayer - both by mocking those who pray and by being those who speak piously of prayer but who do not allow ourselves to confess the weakness prayer implies - says something of another shared longing, not unlike the longing for home. We long to comfort those far away when tragic events fall on them. They may be total strangers, but we know how horrible we would feel in their place, and we know that right now there is nothing we can do to staunch the flow of pain for them. But we can hold them in the center of our consciousness and, for a little while, not let any lesser thoughts crowd them out of our hearts and minds. We can, for a little while, consider our lives to be connected to theirs. We can, for a little while, ask ourselves what we might do to change the world so that this pain will not be inflicted on others.
Since I am not adept at praying, In those times I find the prayers of others buoy me up above the waves of emotional tempest. The prayer books of my tradition - the various versions of The Book of Common Prayer - often transform my anguish into something articulate. Of course, we turn to that same book when a baby is born, when a couple is wed, and when our beloved are interred. These events? We know they are coming, and yet it is not easy to prepare oneself, to be always ready for those days. I live in a tent; poetry often gives me a foundation to build on, and the better I've memorized it, the stronger that foundation becomes.
Those words, buried like seeds, slowly come to bear fruit in my life. Sometimes I wonder: was it really chance that brought me to the poems?
In the hardest of times, and also in the most joyful times, the words of poets are like a cup of water in a dry place. They refresh me, and they clear my throat so that I can take in that which sustains my own life, and speak other words, both old and new, that may sustain the lives of others.
Without having a master plan, over four years I wound up taking a number of poetry classes in four languages. Eventually I asked my college to consider them a new minor area of study. They agreed, and I graduated.
And then, slowly, over a quarter century, I began reading more poetry in more languages. It's always slow; I can't pick up a book of poems and read it like a novel. If the poetry is any good at all, I can read one or two poems, and then I've got to put the book down and let the words sit with me.
Often, I go back and read the same poem again, and again.
The very best poems I try to memorize, even though my memory for verse has never been good. I imagine most people would consider that a useless exercise, a waste of storage space in an already cluttered brain.
But in each season of my life I've found that it is some form of poetry that acts as salve to my soul's wounds or food that sustains its long journey forward. Homer's long story-poems; old epics and sagas from Ireland and Wales and Iceland; Vedic verses and Greek scriptures; Gregorian chants that have echoed in stone chambers for centuries; Shakespeare's or Petrarch's sonnets; the Psalms and proverbs of Hebrew priests and kings; a few words put together well by Dylan Thomas, Gary Snyder, Tomas Tranströmer, or C.S. Lewis; or the timely phrases of some of my favorite contemporaries like Patrick Hicks, Abigail Carroll, Mary Karr, Wendell Berry, Melissa Kwasny, John Lane, or Brian Turner. Each of them has, at some point, given me the daily bread I craved.
I can't seem to predict when the need will arise, but suddenly, there it is, and I find myself quoting Joachim du Bellay's sonnet about travel, and home:
Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison
Et puis est retourné, plein d'usage et raison
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âgeHis simple words save me from forming new ones and free me to think and feel as the occasion demands; his words give utterance to what I find welling up inside me. His words change my homesickness into a stage in a worthwhile journey. Here is a very loose translation of those lines: "Happy is he who, like Ulysses, made a beautiful journey, or like that man who seized the Golden Fleece, and then traveled home again, full of wisdom, to live the rest of his life with his family." We are pulled in both directions at once: towards the Golden Fleece and adventures in Troy, and towards the home we left behind when we departed on our quest.
That sonnet often reminds me, in turn, of verses about Abraham.
Consider Abraham, who dwelled in tents,
because he was looking forward to a city with foundations.This longing for home that I sometimes have when I travel is itself no alien in any land. We all may feel it in any place. Everyone feels lost sometimes. Knowing that others have found words to express their feeling of being lost is itself a reminder that we are not alone. Hölderlin's opening words in his poem about St. John's exile on Patmos say this well:
Nah ist, und schwer zu fassen, der GottIt does seem that God - like home and family and love and neighbors - is close enough to grasp, so close that we could meaningfully touch them all right now. And yet so far that nothing but our words can draw near.
I am no good at praying, but I often wish I were. I think the fact that we make light of prayer - both by mocking those who pray and by being those who speak piously of prayer but who do not allow ourselves to confess the weakness prayer implies - says something of another shared longing, not unlike the longing for home. We long to comfort those far away when tragic events fall on them. They may be total strangers, but we know how horrible we would feel in their place, and we know that right now there is nothing we can do to staunch the flow of pain for them. But we can hold them in the center of our consciousness and, for a little while, not let any lesser thoughts crowd them out of our hearts and minds. We can, for a little while, consider our lives to be connected to theirs. We can, for a little while, ask ourselves what we might do to change the world so that this pain will not be inflicted on others.
Since I am not adept at praying, In those times I find the prayers of others buoy me up above the waves of emotional tempest. The prayer books of my tradition - the various versions of The Book of Common Prayer - often transform my anguish into something articulate. Of course, we turn to that same book when a baby is born, when a couple is wed, and when our beloved are interred. These events? We know they are coming, and yet it is not easy to prepare oneself, to be always ready for those days. I live in a tent; poetry often gives me a foundation to build on, and the better I've memorized it, the stronger that foundation becomes.
Those words, buried like seeds, slowly come to bear fruit in my life. Sometimes I wonder: was it really chance that brought me to the poems?
In the hardest of times, and also in the most joyful times, the words of poets are like a cup of water in a dry place. They refresh me, and they clear my throat so that I can take in that which sustains my own life, and speak other words, both old and new, that may sustain the lives of others.
∞
The Importance of Struggling to Understand
In his speech when he was awarded the Emerson-Thoreau Medal, Robert Frost made this poignant aside about his years of struggling with one of Emerson's poems:
"I don't like obscurity and obfuscation, but I do like dark sayings I must leave the clearing of to time. And I don't want to be robbed of the pleasure of fathoming depths for myself."
"I don't like obscurity and obfuscation, but I do like dark sayings I must leave the clearing of to time. And I don't want to be robbed of the pleasure of fathoming depths for myself."
Robert Frost, "On Emerson." In Selected Prose of Robert Frost. Hyde Cox and Edward Connery Lathem, eds.(New York: Collier, 1968) p.114. (Originally delivered as an address to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on the occasion of Frost's being awarded the Emerson-Thoreau Medal. Later published in Daedalus, Fall 1959.)I like Frost's use of "clearing" which still echoes the older meaning of "clear," that is "brighten." Frost's point is also excellent: simply explaining poetry, or great texts, to students is not enough. It is often helpful to guide them and to show them hermeneutical tools, or to speak with them about how we ourselves have grappled with texts, but we should be careful about the temptation to explain, since explanations can rob students of the pleasure of discovery. Poetry has immense value for us, and one -- just one -- of its benefits is the way that it can become the means by which we learn to solve problems that we have never encountered before.
∞
Don't Worship The Monsters
On the God's Politics Blog at Sojourners, my latest attempt to answer the question of what to do when we are confronted with senseless violence. My answer: don't worship the monsters. An excerpt:
"Killing the bodies of our enemies does not make them disappear. We must also choose to forgive them, in a refusal to let their violence rule our hearts. The alternative is to cherish their violence, silently fondling it in our minds and enshrining it in policies founded on fear."Last Advent I tried to say something similar, in a poem.
∞
Hid In My Heart
Before my friend's father died, he had a stroke that left him mostly without words for a few weeks. His near-total aphasia left little intact, but there were some words that came out readily. My friend's dad had been a pastor, and when his faculty of speech left him, the words of his prayers, of the scriptures, and of the hymns and psalms were all that remained. Daily habit of repetition had ingrained them in his heart, too deep to be erased by the stroke.
On his blog, Kelly Dean Jolley has an icon of St Mark the Ascetic, or St Mark the Wrestler, that Jolley has kindly allowed me to include here. In his hands St Mark holds a scroll that reads "Thy word have I hid within my heart." Those words are from the 119th Psalm, a long poem about scripture.
When I was in college, my French professor Charles Nunley required me to memorize a new poem every week. Every week or two I'd go to his office and he would name one of the poems I'd learned and expect me to recite it, and then to discuss it. I'm not a great memorizer, so it was painful work, but I've been grateful for the discipline every year since then. It is a gift to have verses hidden in my heart.
I am reminded of Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she heard what the shepherds were saying. Luke tells us that she "treasured these things in her heart," which I take to mean that she heard them, and then put them in that front room of her memory, the palm and fingertips of the mind where we touch and explore and consider ideas, turning them over and over again.
Well, this is what I do with treasured verses, anyway. Like I said, I'm a poor memorizer. But when I work at it, I hold the verses at mind's-eye level and gaze at them, running my inner eye down the length of them repeatedly, considering the way the grain moves and feeling the heft of the words until the grooves of my mind fit the notches of the words like a key. Because I hope that what I have hid in my heart will be like the Brothers Grimm's "Golden Key," which opens...well, I had better not tell you. Read it for yourself.
I wonder - when the great grinding erasure of time scrubs away at my memories, what will be left? What grooves in my grain will be too deep to scrape away? What treasures, what verses, what songs of my species will be buried too deep in my heart for the thief of time to steal?
On his blog, Kelly Dean Jolley has an icon of St Mark the Ascetic, or St Mark the Wrestler, that Jolley has kindly allowed me to include here. In his hands St Mark holds a scroll that reads "Thy word have I hid within my heart." Those words are from the 119th Psalm, a long poem about scripture.
When I was in college, my French professor Charles Nunley required me to memorize a new poem every week. Every week or two I'd go to his office and he would name one of the poems I'd learned and expect me to recite it, and then to discuss it. I'm not a great memorizer, so it was painful work, but I've been grateful for the discipline every year since then. It is a gift to have verses hidden in my heart.I am reminded of Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she heard what the shepherds were saying. Luke tells us that she "treasured these things in her heart," which I take to mean that she heard them, and then put them in that front room of her memory, the palm and fingertips of the mind where we touch and explore and consider ideas, turning them over and over again.
Well, this is what I do with treasured verses, anyway. Like I said, I'm a poor memorizer. But when I work at it, I hold the verses at mind's-eye level and gaze at them, running my inner eye down the length of them repeatedly, considering the way the grain moves and feeling the heft of the words until the grooves of my mind fit the notches of the words like a key. Because I hope that what I have hid in my heart will be like the Brothers Grimm's "Golden Key," which opens...well, I had better not tell you. Read it for yourself.
I wonder - when the great grinding erasure of time scrubs away at my memories, what will be left? What grooves in my grain will be too deep to scrape away? What treasures, what verses, what songs of my species will be buried too deep in my heart for the thief of time to steal?
∞
Have We Met?
This weekend I found myself standing next to an older woman I've met a number of times before. For a moment, I struggled to remember where we'd met, then it hit me: she has taken a few of the classes I've offered for senior citizens from time to time. As I recall, she's always been a great student, though I confess I'm having trouble remembering her name right now, and feeling a little sheepish about my memory.
As it turns out, she has it even worse. When I greeted her, she asked me with her usual winning smile, "Have we met?" I told her we had, and where we had met. She said she had no recollection, and I thought she must be joking. Then she added that she has recently suffered a head injury and has lost her memory. She remembers that she once had such a powerful memory she was reluctant to tell people how much she remembered, lest she appear to be boasting.
Now she has very little of that memory left. She was cheerful, as always, but I thought maybe a little sad at what she had lost.
A little earlier in the day I had been speaking about C.S. Lewis and ecology to a church group. There I spent some time reflecting on a passage in Lewis's novel Out Of The Silent Planet where Hyoi cannot understand Ransom's culture. What kind of people would insist on having a pleasant experience again and again, Hyoi asks. Isn't that like wanting to hear a single word from a beautiful poem over and over, but not the whole poem? Isn't memory a part of the pleasure?
I have often taken comfort from that passage, since Hyoi's position is that growing old is not a loss but a gain, just as it is a gain to listen to a full symphony and not just the overture. Perhaps this is why we fear losing our memories: as the symphony of life approaches the finale sometimes we forget the overture.
As my former student turned to go, I told her "It's nice to meet you - again." She smiled, and walked away.
As it turns out, she has it even worse. When I greeted her, she asked me with her usual winning smile, "Have we met?" I told her we had, and where we had met. She said she had no recollection, and I thought she must be joking. Then she added that she has recently suffered a head injury and has lost her memory. She remembers that she once had such a powerful memory she was reluctant to tell people how much she remembered, lest she appear to be boasting.
Now she has very little of that memory left. She was cheerful, as always, but I thought maybe a little sad at what she had lost.
A little earlier in the day I had been speaking about C.S. Lewis and ecology to a church group. There I spent some time reflecting on a passage in Lewis's novel Out Of The Silent Planet where Hyoi cannot understand Ransom's culture. What kind of people would insist on having a pleasant experience again and again, Hyoi asks. Isn't that like wanting to hear a single word from a beautiful poem over and over, but not the whole poem? Isn't memory a part of the pleasure?
I have often taken comfort from that passage, since Hyoi's position is that growing old is not a loss but a gain, just as it is a gain to listen to a full symphony and not just the overture. Perhaps this is why we fear losing our memories: as the symphony of life approaches the finale sometimes we forget the overture.
As my former student turned to go, I told her "It's nice to meet you - again." She smiled, and walked away.
∞
All Your Deeds
I just read the seventy-third psalm. I don't understand much of it, but it begins with a complaint about injustice, and I certainly feel like I get that part.
The last line caused me some trouble, though. In it Asaph, the psalmist, says "I will tell of all your [God's] deeds."
Okay, what exactly are those deeds? What can we ever reliably say about God's deeds? If God had done something in history that were not open to historical doubt, there would be no atheists.
The tradition gives us stories about God, and a century of biblical criticism calls those stories myths. Still, as I have argued elsewhere (here, and here, for example) myth is not - or should not be taken as - a synonym for falsehood. Stories may be myths and true, even if not historically true.
As Howard Wettstein argues in his Significance of Religious Experience,
Which makes me wonder: what roles does God play in my life? What "deeds" may I speak of?
Before I reply, let me hasten to say this: I am often reluctant to write too strongly about this sort of thing because I do not want to say that others must believe what I believe. If God has led me to belief, (grant me that for the sake of argument for a moment) God has not strong-armed me into belief but allowed me to arrive at my beliefs over time, letting them be shaped by experience. I do not see why I should allow you less liberty than God has allowed me.
So I write the following admitting that I do not know what I am writing about. As Augustine confessed, when I speak of my love for God, I do so simultaneously wondering what I mean by "God." What can I compare God to? What is God like? I do not know how to answer those questions, except by telling stories, expositing roles. So here goes:
When I was a child, belief in God motivated a family in my neighborhood to care about me and to welcome me into their home when my family was falling apart. Without that love...I shudder to think what I would be today.
God gives me a name for what I pray to. God gives me a focal point for my attention in the vast cosmos, and God gives me a sense that in such a cosmos persons matter. And because persons matter, justice matters. This is not to say one cannot be just without belief, or that belief makes one just - far from it! - only that I find for myself the two ideas closely bound together.
God gives me solace in my mourning and hope when I pray. My mother is dead, but when I speak to God about her, she is not lost.
God gives me a story about the centrality of nurturing love. A reason to think all things are related. Someone to thank. Someone to be angry with. Rest for my soul. Quietness, and in it, trust.
God gives me a story about giving, and why giving and receiving should matter so much.
A story about why, and how, to turn a guilty conscience into repentance. A reason to forgive, and, very often, the strength to forgive. And to hope that I too am forgivable.
A reason to hope that no one is beyond redemption, beyond all hope, completely unworthy of love.
Belief that every person matters. More than that, belief that a teenage girl could be a vessel of the divine; that a third-world martyred prophet could save the world; that an inarticulate foreigner could be a world-historical lawgiver; that a persecuting zealot could get hit so hard by grace that he lives the rest of his life to preach good news for all people everywhere.
Hope that prison doors could be opened, that tongues could be loosed, that great art and great music might be signs of the divine.
I could be wrong about all of this, I know. I know there are other explanations of what I have written above. I also know those explanations apply to music, too, and I'm not interested in hearing about them there either if the reason for offering them is to help disabuse me of my love for good music. I know that people use the same word I use here to justify violence, self-interest, and hatred. I cannot help but feel angry and disgusted when it is used for those ends, ends which seem so contrary to what the word means for me, ends that make me think someone has read the wrong script, mis-cast the character, not known what deeds God has done.
The last line caused me some trouble, though. In it Asaph, the psalmist, says "I will tell of all your [God's] deeds."
Okay, what exactly are those deeds? What can we ever reliably say about God's deeds? If God had done something in history that were not open to historical doubt, there would be no atheists.
The tradition gives us stories about God, and a century of biblical criticism calls those stories myths. Still, as I have argued elsewhere (here, and here, for example) myth is not - or should not be taken as - a synonym for falsehood. Stories may be myths and true, even if not historically true.
As Howard Wettstein argues in his Significance of Religious Experience,
The Bible’s characteristic mode of ‘theology’ is story telling, the stories overlaid with poetic language. Never does one find the sort of conceptually refined doctrinal propositions characteristic of a doctrinal approach. When the divine protagonist comes into view, we are not told much about his properties. Think about the divine perfections, the highly abstract omni-properties (omnipotence, omniscience, and the like), so dominant in medieval and post-medieval theology. One has to work very hard—too hard—to find even hints of these in the Biblical text. Instead of properties, perfection and the like the Bible speaks of God’s roles—father, king, friend, lover, judge, creator, and the like. Roles, as opposed to properties; this should give one pause. (108, emphasis added)The stories may not be about historical "deeds" but may be about the character, the roles of God.
Which makes me wonder: what roles does God play in my life? What "deeds" may I speak of?
 |
| The preface to the complaint in Psalm 73 |
Before I reply, let me hasten to say this: I am often reluctant to write too strongly about this sort of thing because I do not want to say that others must believe what I believe. If God has led me to belief, (grant me that for the sake of argument for a moment) God has not strong-armed me into belief but allowed me to arrive at my beliefs over time, letting them be shaped by experience. I do not see why I should allow you less liberty than God has allowed me.
So I write the following admitting that I do not know what I am writing about. As Augustine confessed, when I speak of my love for God, I do so simultaneously wondering what I mean by "God." What can I compare God to? What is God like? I do not know how to answer those questions, except by telling stories, expositing roles. So here goes:
When I was a child, belief in God motivated a family in my neighborhood to care about me and to welcome me into their home when my family was falling apart. Without that love...I shudder to think what I would be today.
God gives me a name for what I pray to. God gives me a focal point for my attention in the vast cosmos, and God gives me a sense that in such a cosmos persons matter. And because persons matter, justice matters. This is not to say one cannot be just without belief, or that belief makes one just - far from it! - only that I find for myself the two ideas closely bound together.
God gives me solace in my mourning and hope when I pray. My mother is dead, but when I speak to God about her, she is not lost.
God gives me a story about the centrality of nurturing love. A reason to think all things are related. Someone to thank. Someone to be angry with. Rest for my soul. Quietness, and in it, trust.
God gives me a story about giving, and why giving and receiving should matter so much.
A story about why, and how, to turn a guilty conscience into repentance. A reason to forgive, and, very often, the strength to forgive. And to hope that I too am forgivable.
A reason to hope that no one is beyond redemption, beyond all hope, completely unworthy of love.
Belief that every person matters. More than that, belief that a teenage girl could be a vessel of the divine; that a third-world martyred prophet could save the world; that an inarticulate foreigner could be a world-historical lawgiver; that a persecuting zealot could get hit so hard by grace that he lives the rest of his life to preach good news for all people everywhere.
Hope that prison doors could be opened, that tongues could be loosed, that great art and great music might be signs of the divine.
I could be wrong about all of this, I know. I know there are other explanations of what I have written above. I also know those explanations apply to music, too, and I'm not interested in hearing about them there either if the reason for offering them is to help disabuse me of my love for good music. I know that people use the same word I use here to justify violence, self-interest, and hatred. I cannot help but feel angry and disgusted when it is used for those ends, ends which seem so contrary to what the word means for me, ends that make me think someone has read the wrong script, mis-cast the character, not known what deeds God has done.
∞
Shakespeare's Sonnets, And Rieden's "Sonnet Number Six"
Back in the late '90s my classmate Charles Rieden complained to our Dean at St John's College that he didn't want to have to read Shakespeare's sonnets. Charles explained to the Dean that sonnets were an outmoded and rather silly form of writing.
The Dean listened to all this patiently, and then made Charles an offer: write me one good sonnet and you don't have to read any of Shakespeare's sonnets. Charles immediately agreed. How hard could it be to write one decent sonnet?
Very hard, it turns out. And Charles, to his everlasting credit, came to see that pretty quickly. He produced some sonnets that week, but, by his own estimation, they were terrible. So he kept trying. Eventually, over the course of the next year, he had a thick stack of sonnets. I think in the end he wound up writing more sonnets than Shakespeare, and quite a few of them were really good.
Charles died, tragically, later that year. He was hit by a drunk driver as he walked along a highway in Santa Fe. The college framed one of his best sonnets, "Sonnet Number Six," and hung it in the graduate student common room.
As near as I know, it still hangs there, a memorial to Charles. I take it as a reminder not to dismiss too quickly what I do not understand, and not to imagine I understand what I have not really engaged with.
The Dean listened to all this patiently, and then made Charles an offer: write me one good sonnet and you don't have to read any of Shakespeare's sonnets. Charles immediately agreed. How hard could it be to write one decent sonnet?
Very hard, it turns out. And Charles, to his everlasting credit, came to see that pretty quickly. He produced some sonnets that week, but, by his own estimation, they were terrible. So he kept trying. Eventually, over the course of the next year, he had a thick stack of sonnets. I think in the end he wound up writing more sonnets than Shakespeare, and quite a few of them were really good.
Charles died, tragically, later that year. He was hit by a drunk driver as he walked along a highway in Santa Fe. The college framed one of his best sonnets, "Sonnet Number Six," and hung it in the graduate student common room.
As near as I know, it still hangs there, a memorial to Charles. I take it as a reminder not to dismiss too quickly what I do not understand, and not to imagine I understand what I have not really engaged with.
∞
The Last Time I Saw Mingus
The Last Time I Saw
Mingus
The last time I saw Mingus
He stood in his driveway, across from ours
Talking with my mother.
His dark dashiki
Made him look like a great bearded priest,
Heavy with years, and music.
They spoke quietly of the weather, and of maintaining their
homes,
But not of their children, though looking back
I can see that they were really speaking about us.
He laid a gentle hand on my nine-year-old shoulder,
In neighborly welcome.
And Mom saw it as a blessing.
Her eyes were still bright with hope in those days,
Even though dark times had come for them both.
David O’Hara
11/15/2012
*****
A friend asked me about this poem, one I dreamed entire and repeatedly throughout the night, and then scrawled onto paper as soon as I awoke. I posted it here for him. I'm never sure what to make of such things that come to us in the night.
∞
A Poem As I Approach Gaudete Sunday
Advent
Consider the angels.
Because maybe the broken men get too much attention.
Drunk with power and impotent with the kind of blind rage
That will carelessly hurl their countrymen down to the grave,
They try, in fiery futility, to salve some inner wound
By wasting the lives of others in blind fury and then,
(Perhaps in a final moment of penitent clarity,
or in obedience to the last demonic urge)
Waste themselves,
As mothers wail.
This monotone litany of nightmares,
It’s a constant, manicured, damnable drone. The same words
We have heard again and again. I am no wise man,
I can find no meaning in them.
Cameras frame parents hunched over, clutching each other
Like living icons of passion and grief, offered so that we
might worship.
And I’m ashamed at how hard it is not to continue to stare
At this flickering, televised altar of perfect priests and
the grief they sell.
What I need now doesn’t come from gazing at monsters.
But from giving thanks for the angels:
For brave souls in badges and brims,
Who run towards the fire, not away,
Who guide the children to safety,
Who help legs paralyzed with fear find their feet and find
their home again;
For dumbstruck neighbors who stop everything,
And cry together so no one has to cry alone;
For men and women and children on the other side of the
world,
Who do not know us but mourn with us anyway,
Knowing that we are family;
For people who see the darkness of despair descending,
And resolve to be light today, and keep that resolution
tomorrow.
And for the teachers.
The teachers
Who will somehow find a way to make their feet walk back
into their schools;
Who have seen the monsters, and know they are real, and yet,
Who refuse to worship their fear.
They know it is better
To kneel on the floor, and read, and play,
Remembering for all of us,
With good will and with daily acts of intercession,
That nothing must be allowed to stop
The sacred work
Of children.
***
David L. O’Hara
12/15/2012