Old Photo, Old Quote

"Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state.  Being in love shows a person who he should be." 

Anton Chekhov, Notebooks (S 17:14)

A Self Portrait, in a Landscape

Do the mountains and streams know
how they became a painting?
The rocks fall and the waters flow,

you can see autumn trees fainting,
under the sky's strokes of peaceful blue:
but how did it all become a painting?

If the vast sky and forest only knew
that they were held in brush and hand
before they found a way to break through

and on this welcome canvas stand.
Recreated and echoed in this art,
they arrived in a foreign land.

Held in the eye and then the heart,
they were lifted from their native Earth
to be spilt in paint, worlds apart,

as the artist to mountains gives birth.
And in the workshop rumors I hear
that the artist has brought to light their worth.

For in the painting he draws near
as beauty speaks his name
and the landscape becomes a mirror

until artist and artwork are the same.
For he has come to himself,
and cannot go back the way he came.

From Up Here

The Trail Surrounding the Boston Reservoir

Standing on this path that overlooks
the wind-rippled water's face
there's a ring slung round,
the pond's fringe where
people are running.

You want to console their sweaty brows
from up here where the branches
frame their exhausted faces
and you wonder.
What is it that they
are running from?
Frustrated relationships or finances?
What is it that they
are running to?
A body that won't fail them
this time?

Maybe they're not running
from or to anything
but maybe something
is running out
of them.

Maybe like a child learning to walk
they've decided to break their
small circled crawl from
a desk of messy papers
to a kitchen sink with dirty dishes.

Maybe they're getting up on those
two legs and walking out to
that which they don't know:
a street they haven't seen beyond,
the sun shining from a new angle,
the wind blowing in a new direction,
a direction they might follow.

Who knows but it is accepting the promise of more.
One more step, one more breath, one more ounce of sweat
than you are used to yielding.

All one knows is that no matter how difficult
the struggle in the stride,
the crunch and pinch of lungs locking,
or eyes wincing as sun and sweat pools in pupils

from up here,
you want to swoop down and like an angel
fly beside them and, with the wind, whisper
that all this pain is all so small.
Your problems are solved,
Your joys are simple.
You are a child learning to walk.

Voilà Viola

Life is like a violin.
There's a time to play and
a time to tune your strings.
What do you need to do now?

So a Muslim and Catholic walk down the street ...

Yusuf Mosque 186 Chestnut Hill Ave, Brighton, MA

So last night I was walking down my street and I passed the mosque in my backyard right as their evening prayer was letting out.  Considering it is in my backyard and I overhear the salat prayers several times a day through my kitchen window, I decided it was as good a time as any to greet the neighbors.  I said good evening to a truly sweet guy named Ra'ed whose chin beard and hat would definitely get a raised eyebrow in an airport these days.  We started having a very warm conversation in the cool evening on the sidewalk and then he took me inside the mosque and I was amazed by how normal it was.  In a mosque there is a seat in the easternmost corner used on Fridays, but really it is a big living room.

First Seven Verses of the Qur'an

The prayers the community do, can be done anywhere and that was something that impressed me about Islam.  They're kinda the Protestants of world religions.  They have a book, which is the most sacred thing to them.


There is no tabernacle, no holy of holies, nor altars in a mosque.  It's all about the word.  The absence of any sacramentality in Islam, brings perhaps an even greater emphasis on the word than Protestantism, which still has Baptism and some form of Communion.  The emphasis on the word and lack of any definitive school of interpretation (like the Magisterium in Catholicism) is unfortunately the source of many problems within Islamic communities, but despite the very real and debatable violent implementation of these texts, this is a conversation about the aesthetics and commonality that I found yesterday night with Islam.

The positive results of this emphasis on the word is a lot of beautiful writing (Arabic calligraphy is dizzingly beautiful) and because the word Qur'an means 'recitation,' also a lot of beautiful singing (which is also dizzingly beautiful).  Arabic culture generally has a rich tradition of poetry and storytelling due to its attention to the words people live by as one can see in  1,001 Arabian Nights, Khalil Gibran (The Prophet), the Sufis (especially Rumi) and even C. S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy.  I should say, the Qur'anic influence can sometimes get a bit repetitive to the point where it seem that every Middle Eastern story is about some guy showing up to bestow a lot of proverbs and wisdom, but whatever.

Umm, "non-representational" calligraphy?

It was a really refreshing conversation, where both Ra'ed and I had our working definitions of 'Muslim' and 'Christian' stretched.  We were talking and Ra'ed was speaking about the reverence paid to Jesus (Isa) and Mary (Mariam) in Islam.  He said that while Allah rebuked Mohammed for sinning, the Qur'an is very clear that Jesus did not sin and that Jesus was taken up into Heaven and will come at the end of time as Mess'ah (that'd be Messiah people) to enact Allah's judgment.  He also said that Mary is the True Lady (Sayyida) and that she must be highly respected by all Muslims.  He told me how they believe in what we Catholics call the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth.  While he was saying that Jesus is a very holy prophet and whenever his name is pronounced, Muslims follow it with an epithet such as Jesus, blessed be God, or Jesus, blessed be his name and right around here I stopped him and said, "Ra'ed, what you are saying about Jesus and Mary; it's hard to get some Christians to admit this stuff." And he replied, "Oh, well they'd make terrible Muslims then."

As we kept chatting, we both realized that we are two guys trying to be men of prayer.  Do I see a lot of problems with Islamic interpretations of Jesus that echo seemingly all the christological heresies of the Early Church?  Yes.  Is that the most important thing? No.  Today we're very focused on results and details and many of us may think we'd feel more comfortable with a bunch of secular humanists than with a house full of Muslims who are trying to pray to the same God as us.  Sincerely sharing our faith and supporting each other in the struggles to pray, is of first importance.  If we really cultivate a community of prayer and support, having a proper christology and theology will follows, but until then our working definitions of 'Christian' and 'Muslim' will be too small.

Ra'ed gave me a translation of the Qur'an and said that they pray the first seven verses several times a day.  I looked them over and so far, no heresy, and so I would gladly pray them with Ra'ed and thought I'd share them with you.  Open a Qur'an or looking at Muslim prayers as a Catholic can be a bit odd, but I think we don't trust ourselves, nor the Holy Spirit.  We think if we start reading we'll have the wool pulled over our eyes and in a state of hypnosis, we'll convert.  This fear keeps people like Ra'ed and I from ever talking, much less talking about prayer, which is so important today.  If I would just translate the Seven Verses with something like Thy Grace or the Lord, Christians would have no inkling that this is prayed every day by Muslims.

In addition, here's a Mass of Mozarabic chant.  The Mozararbic Rite is a part of the Catholic Church that comes from Spain and Portugal and carried the aesthetic sense of Arabic chant into its liturgy and gives you a sense of Arabic/Muslim/Moorish culture even though it's Christian and in Latin.  Even though the words are Latin, the quivering and lilting in the chant and reminds me of the shape of the cursive script of Arabic.  Mozarabic chant, which I discovered first via the Antiochian Orthodox Church, is maybe my favorite form of vocal music.  There is a paradoxical sense of ominous atmosphere and salvific joy in the words that moves me when ever I hear it.  Enjoy.


In the name of God,
   Most Gracious,
   Most Merciful.
Praise be to God,
   the Cherisher
   and Sustainer
   of all the world.
Most Gracious,
   Most Merciful;
Master of the
   Day of Judgment.
You do we worship
and your aid we seek.
Show us the straight way.
   The way of those
   on whom You
   have bestowed Your Grace,
those whose portion is not wrath
and who do not go astray.

Amen.

For some interesting scattered info on the relationship between Islam and Christianity, check out Gabriel Said Reynold's article, Reading the Quran Through the Bible , from First Things.  Also Peter Kreeft's book Between Allah and Jesus: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims is a great conversation between several Christians and a very astute Muslim set at Boston College.  And if you have a free evening you're looking to fill, there is a debate/conversation between Robert Spencer and Peter Kreeft entitled Good Muslim/Bad Muslim that is a lively and fruitful introduction to the problems in contemporary culture between Secular people, Christians and Muslims.

Pascal's Memorial

"The heart has reasons of its own, of which reason knows nothing."

Kreeft's amazing Companion to the Pensées

Blaise Pascal is one of my favorite philosophers.  His Pensées or Thoughts are beautiful pearls of wisdom that he never was able to string into a book.  Yet after his death the thoughts were combined in a fashion echoing Wisdom literature (especially Proverbs and Sirach).  I love the aphorisms, the little meditations, the thoughts we all let slip by day by day.  These are seminal thoughts are small splatterings of ink that give away to oceans of insight or, if you will, ponds of ponderings.  These are also great, because people don't remember treatises or essays, but they do remember proverbs, poems, aphorisms, etc.  and because we think aphoristically (small insights > laid-out treatments) the Pensées hit humans how we naturally think.

Pascal's Pensées and the Book of Ecclesiastes are great reading partners and its incredible how much wisdom comes out of the thought that "all of life is vanities and chasing after wind" (Ecc 1:14).  There is a definite poetic quality of Pascal's Pensées in their depth, brevity and construction, which is especially clear in his Memorial.  Pascal was a deeply religious man and this obscure and intriguing fragment was found sewn in his jacket after his death.  So enjoy and then go read Ecclesiastes and the Pensées . . .

                                                            +

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

Art Begotten, Not Made

     Peter J. Schlumbohm was a German chemist who invented the Chemex brewglass, which in addition to brewing a deliciously aromatic cup of coffee, is also in the Museum of Modern Art by virtue of its captivating and yet simple aesthetic.  This picture of Schlumbohm contemplating his creation captures the most beautiful moment in the creative life and it invites us to ask how other artists reflect on the birth of their artwork.

How did Eliot feel when the hands that wrote The Four Quartets felt them bound for the first time?
How did Mozart feel when Don Giovanni's notes rang not only in his mind but in the air?
How did van Gogh feel when his vivid sunflowers stared back at him from amidst their strokes?
How did the writers and printers of the King James Version of the Bible feel when every word was translated, every page was cut and every letter stamp was assembled and united in one leather bound song.

      I imagine that moment, when the art looks back at the artist, is a little like when "the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7).  It is an eerie moment when your art looks back at you; bearing something of your image and likeness (Gen 1:26-7).  It seems fitting that Alyosha, Ivan and Dmitri Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov bear the middle name "Fyodorovich," for the father in their narrative is Fyodor Karamazov but the father of their narrative is Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Imagine the massive genealogies Dostoevsky fathered through his novels.

      Art is not just creating but begetting and the pieces are children born of our experience and creativity. Just as the Schlumbohm remembers the thought and love he has poured into this coffee glass, I know that God looks upon us thoughtfully and lovingly pouring more of Himself into us, because like most perfectionists, he's not done with us.  The Divine Artist desires His image and likeness to be fully manifest in his children.  St. Paul tells us that we see in a "mirror" dimly: meaning that the artwork and the Artist are in the end meant to see themselves in each other, for as St. John writes:

"Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him: for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

Until then, you and I are a piece of work.

The Epistle to the Caffeinians

To My Brothers and Sisters in Grad School, 


Our struggle is not only against flesh and blood, but against professors, against papers, against deadlines, against the darkness of fatigue and yet, if Coffee is for us, who is against us?  


No margin width, nor page length, nor any word count shall be able to separate us from the Love of Coffee.  The lips of our mugs and mouths should greet each other with a holy kiss, for the Love of Coffee is in both of them.  


Remember brothers and sisters that this Hell Week is but a light affliction, all our rubbing, focusing and blinking of eyes are working towards our professors' ever-exceeding and eternal work of grading.  


Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all stay asleep, but we will all be changed: through the course of a mug our eyes will twinkle, as the beans are ground and the pot is brewed, the aromas will waft unbelievably, and we will be changed.


Truly brothers and sisters, 

    I can do all things through Coffee 
which strengthens me 
   and (at least this week) 
It is not I who live, 
    but Coffee, who lives in me.  


Amen

Aquinas' Prayer Before Study Is Always Good

Aquinas' Summa Theologica (Picture not mine, but similar style)

O INEFFABLE Creator, 

Who, from the treasures of Thy Wisdom,
didst establish three hierarchies of angels,
and didst array them in marvelous order
above the fiery heavens,
and marshalst the regions
of the universe with such artful skill,

Thou, Who art proclaimed
the True Font of Light and Wisdom,
and the Primal Origin
raised high beyond all things.

Pour forth a ray of Thy brightness
into the darkened places of my mind;
disperse from my soul
the twofold darkness
into which I was born:
sin and ignorance.

Thou givest speech
to the tongues of infants,
refine my speech
and pour forth upon my lips
the goodness of Thy blessing.

Grant to me
keenness of mind,
capacity to remember,
skill in learning,
subtlety to interpret,
and eloquence in speech.

Guide the beginning of my work,
direct its progress,
and bring it to completion.

Thou, Who art true God and true Man,
Who livest and reignest, world without end.

Amen

Sunday Afternoon

Leaves in simple winds.

A lovingly warm teapot.

We all hum along.

I Ran, so It Rained (Part II)

Waves rushed at me ominously as the 

gray sky was deepened in their darker depths.

Their advances were thwarted by the shore,

but their prophesy was clearly echoed in

the thick mist, who blurred the line between

my sweat's ending and the rain's beginning.

The drops dappled my eyes and between them

the last sight I saw was the Reservoir's trail 

turning from dust to mud and puddles as
the cares and ink of scribbled to-do notes
runs thoughtlessly off the back of my hand.

Sheets of rain and the haze hovering upon impact

were all a visual cacophony and so I turned within,

where all was simply running, and like my lungs,

my shirt, shorts and socks held me close

as they tried to cling to my inmost being.

Even my skin becomes wet drapery clinging

as my simple self gets a new garment in this baptism.

Now I see, all that was outside of this Image within, 

was dried out and brittle and with this wetness

the clay of my life becomes moldable again.

As my feet cast splashes in the streets,

I can stand at the edge of the sidewalk as cars pass

and welcome the wakes of their wheel wells

as my brothers and we can rush on,

all together in this one Flood.

It Rained, so I Wrote (Part I)

My bike leaned against the dripping trellis
and while I was gone, the concord vine grew
around my brakeline as though telling me
that maybe I should slow down . . .

So I walked down the wet road
and the sky obscured the lofty
tops of apartments along my way.
The fog covers these façades
and the mist keeps them mysteries.

Looking up I saw the
trembling glass beads of melodies
strung across these bars of branches
and as I read the rain's notation,
on leaves, buds and twigs,
a bird alighted
and in an act of composition,
the notes fell,
and the scored called
for a few more measures of rest.

But the heavens are still heavy
and I feel drips dropping
staccato on my face as the
rain writes, once again.

Rilke Conference

The 35th Annual meeting of the International Rilke Society takes place in Boston this weekend.  I am beside myself, because in terms of poetry (and thus life) Rainer Maria Rilke has truly been a patron saint to me over the past several years.  Faced by the breadth of my gratitude and poverty of language, I guess it's best just share one of my favorite poems of Rilke's.  Enjoy.

                                          Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
                                          endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen,
                                          die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen.
                                          Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen,
                                          unsere fröhlichen kräfte—zeigen
                                          sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.

                                          Out of infinite longings rise
                                          finite deeds like weak fountains,
                                          falling back timely and trembling.
                                          And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
                                          our happy energies—show
                                          themselves in these dancing tears.

Hellenic Aspirations and Poetic Constrictions: A Sestina

How long can I sit with this drink
and roll the glass in my hand as smoke
floats around this study,
where the bookcases are dingy
and dusty as my notebook lies open
where crossed-out stanzas are wildly riddled?

Wondering what exactly to write has left me riddled.
Right now words and their ink are not my kind of drink
and I see my schedule has gone up in smoke
and I would love to drop it and go back to bookish study.
My pipe helps my imagination’s corners become less dingy
as I blow smoky frustrations out in the open.

A chill runs up my arm as I see I left the window open,
and shaking it off I see my shelves riddled
with books I’ve read and how I last shared a drink
with Nikos Kazantzakis and Alexi Zorba, who both smoke
every morning over coffee and tell me I can study
life best in tabernas and alleys which are thoroughly dingy.

To wipe the sweat of dancing off my forehead on a dingy
handkerchief and hold my arms wide open
as the evening wind billows in the folds of my sweat-riddled
shirt is a joy few people have the opportunity to drink
in.  There are few who know that the taste of salt and smoke
mingling in meat cooked on the beach is truly worth some study.

The wind blows across my roof and crashes in my study
like waves breaking and scattering the seashells of dingy
papers filled with poems which I ignorantly left out in the open.
Picking them up, I had no idea how my fingerprints had riddled
and blurred the pencil marks nor how my drink
left a ring on the edge of this faintly scribbled poem apparently written in smoke.

So at the end of the day all my study has yielded is this dingy
sestina wrestled from a mind riddled with thoughts telling me to open
the door, step out, and dance in with some poets who like to drink and smoke.

My Study: A Study

 

 

Two Burning Poets

I. Jeremiah 20: 8-9

For the word of the LORD
has become for me a reproach
and derision all day long.

If I say, ''I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,''
there is in my heart as it were
a burning fire shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.




II. In Silence
     by Thomas Merton

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

Allegan in Evening

The gentle blur of a sunset,
rests on Allegan's wooded horizon
and I sit with cool summer air,
trembling with the mingled tones
of dew coated frog throats trilling
and hidden insect wings flitting.

This is Nature's loving call across
this amphitheater of fields to me
and I offer a sip from my mug
as a response to her invitation.

As this coffee's strength and sweetness
adorn my mouth's with new decor
my eyes close in order to savor.
For the blaring cicada's siren
signals me that summer is
coming to a close,
so drink it in
deeply.

Taken by my old friend Matt Hallgren

Rilkekonferenz

So I after I decided not to take Dr. Resler's Goethe und Schiller course, I still asked him if he knew any Rilke scholars, who I should check out for my own research interests.  He specialized in older German Romantics and unfortunately Rilke was too modern to be in his field.  Then I got an email from him saying he had a poster for a Rilke conference and so there are a bunch of Rilke scholars on there.  I picked it up today and lo and behold, it's taking place in Boston at the end of the month; Gott sei Dank! 

The 35th Annual Conference of the International Rainer Maria Rilke Society is being hosted by Boston and Harvard Universities this Sept 22-25th and I will be Rilking my brains out.  The theme is "Rilke's Uncollected Poems 1906-1911" (Verstreute Gedichte), which are at the back of my Rilkean volumes and so I've never really gotten into them, though I've been interested in the changes he takes in form.  The conference covers topics specifically pertaining to Rilke's Uncollected Poems (Stimme und Stummheit in ,,Die Auslage des Fischhändlers", Das Ungebildete im Bild) and also metatopics concerning Rilke and the international community (Rilke in Amerika, Rilke in English, Rilke and Wallace Stevens).

The conference is free for students ($120 for normal folks), so if you're in Boston at the end of September and have any interest in Rilke, German, poetry, philosophy, beauty, mystery, romance, love, breathing, or just plain life, you should probably come.

The Summa in My Pocket

Thank God for the printing press.

St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiæ is notorious in the theological world for being massive and complex.  Between today and the foundations of Western thought, Aquinas is the middle of the hourglass in that he synthesized ancient philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, Cicero), non-Christian philosophy (Ibn Sina, Ibn Roschd, Maimonades), Greek Fathers (Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene, Origen), Latin Fathers (Augustine, Ambrose, Boethius) within an astounding biblical background.  Besides being a 4-volume Mount Everest of theology, the Summa is also a challenge for some due to its dialectic form.  The quaestio form of the Summa is that each topic is approached with questions, which have arguments and conclusions posited and Aquinas replying to and correcting those positions. While the quaestio form underscores the profundity with which Aquinas considered the theological problems disputed within the Summa, it can also be as dizzying and exhausting as trying to decipher Aquinas' unintelligible handwriting.

My Way of Life was a book written by Frs. Walter Farrell and Martin J. Healy (1952) intended to be a pocket-sized version of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiæ.  My Way of Life helps translate the Summa into a linear form, while also offering allowing the reader to reflectively enter Aquinas' theological thought.  What emerges is not a laborious work of erudition, but rather an approachable, lively and organic work that carries Aquinas' breadth of spirit, being both mystical and poetic.  This little volume's beauty is not a merely pleasant sprinkling on the Summa's aridity, but rather gives the average reader some insight into the explosive spring of spiritual richness in Aquinas' thought, which has been refreshing theology ever since it was written. 

I've read modern Thomistic scholarship and have a sense of the renaissance in Thomistic theology and the recovery of Thomas' mysticism, sense of beauty and lively dynamism that is thankfully occuring.  But I have to say, these scholars would've gotten it sooner, had they read this little pocket book.  It's a powerhouse and should probably be on every budding theologian's shelf.  The best way to describe this book is a distillation of the Summa.  My Way of Life gets the spirit of the original and like most distilled spirits, what is condensed is potent as Hell (or Heaven in this case).  Don't believe me? Check out the first couple pages and tell me they don't knock you on your ass . . .

CHAPTER I

The One God

THE ROAD THAT STRETCHES before the feet of a man is a challenge to his heart long before it tests the strength of his legs.  Our destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond, off into the darkness: sure for all our blindness, secure for all our helplessness, strong for all our weakness, gaily in love for all the pressure on our hearts.


IN THAT DARKNESS beyond the world, we can begin to know the world and ourselves, though we see through the eyes of Another.  We begin to understand that a man was not made to pace out his life behind the prison walls of nature, but to walk into the arms of God on a road that nature could never build.


LIFE MUST BE LIVED, even by those who cannot find the courage to face it.  In the living of it, every mind must meet the rebuff of mystery.  To some men, this will be an exultant challenge: that so much can be known and truth not be exhausted, that so much is still to be sought, that truth is an ocean not to be contained in the pool of a human mind.  To others, this is a humiliation not to be borne; for it marks out sharply the limits of our proud minds.  In the living of life, every mind must face the unyielding rock of reality, of a truth that does not bend to our whim or fantasy, of the rule that measures the life and mind of a man.

IN THE LIVING OF LIFE, every human heart must see problems awful with finality.  There are the obvious problems of death, marriage, the priesthood, religious vows; all unutterably final.  But there are, too, the day to day, or rather moment to moment choices of heaven or hell.  Before every human heart that has ever beat out its allotted measures, the dare of goals as high as God Himself was tossed down: to be accepted, or to be fled from in terror.


GOD HAS SAID SO LITTLE, that yet means so much for our living. To have said more would mean less of reverence by God for the splendor of His image in us.  Our knowing and loving, He insists, must be our own; the truth ours because we have accepted it; the love ours because we have given it.  We are made in His image.  Our Maker will be the last to smudge that image in the name of security, or by way of easing the hazards of the nobility of man.


THE GREAT TRUTHS that must flood the mind of man with light are the limitless perfection of God and the perfectibility of man.  The enticements that must captivate the heart of man are the divine goodness of God and man's gratuitously given capacity to share that divine life, to begin to possess that divine goodness even as he walks among the things of earth.  The truths are not less certain because they are too clear for our eyes.  The task before our heart is not to hold a fickle love but to spend itself.


WITHOUT THESE TRUTHS, and the others that fill out the pattern of a man's days, we are underfed weaklings, starving waifs, paralyzed in our living not only by lack of strength but even more by lack of light.  To live a man must move by the steps of his heart; and how can he move until he can see and be drawn by the beauty of Goodness and Truth?

So much glory, SPF 50 should be recommended.

Buy My Way of Life

An Elegy for Max (+ Sept 2, 2011)

Breaths are like friends.
     They refresh us
           fill our chests
     give us life
and set our hearts aflame.
      Coming and going,
           rising and falling
      and we tend to most take notice
when they are taken away.

You listened, Max, with eager ears
     and while lost in a conversation
         your bright eyes gleamed surprise
     as you found yourself
and decided to breathe.

        Your subtle gasps were like your friends
    You took neither for granted.
Every friend, a breath of fresh air
     (I remember you told me once
         that you sincerely looked up to me).

    But what do we do now?

    There’s a window open.
    But no breeze is blowing.
    Our lungs empty and heavy.
    There are stones in our chests.

        Our breath

        Our friend

    has been taken away . . .

In this moment
     I can see you
         all eyes and smile
     teaching us to gasp
and let Hope in.

Today your chair is empty
     as God guides your feet Home
         and we are sitting here as you
     go on before us all.
God has given you
     The Breath of Life,
         and while in this chair below
             you spent a life looking up at us;

Now we can spend our lives
     all eyes and smiles
         looking up at you.

Need an Intro to Slam and Spoken Word Poetry?

Following Hopkins' lavish fascination with the musicality of language, I was disappointed because the majority of recordings of his poetry is by old English people, which ruins it.  I personally think Hopkins' would be better read by modern slam poets and rappers because of the avalanche of melody be packs into such close lines.  Often slam poets are known for their aggressive and even bellicose character, but this comes out of the emphatic in spoken word poetry.  These poets mean what they mean and what sometimes manifests itself as anger always stems from spoken word's essnece of sincerity.  To use Hopkinsian language the emphasis is to convey the instress and so that you might see the inscape.

From this check out some of my favorite spoken word poets who make their living in this emphasis.  This is Anis Mogjani doing "Shake the Dust" which was my first introduction to modern spoken word poetry.  His reverence, emphasis and playfulness are always compelling . . .

One of the most impressive parts of spoken word poetry is the momentum that is built in its performance.  The stanzas in a poem become movements in a symphony.  In this video, Anis pairs his poetry with the music of The Album Leaf's song "The Outer Banks" which brings the momentum and fervor of Anis and the atmosphere of The Album Leaf all to an HNL ('hole 'nutha level) . . .

I just got into the poetry of Sarah Kay last week and I am moved by the marriage of her poetry's sensuality and sincerity.  Her ability to make you feel the emptiness she describes comes in her word choice and her voice in a way that reminds me of the first time I read Rilke . . .

With spoken word poetry you might notice the blurring between poetry as a literary genre and rap as a musical genre.  What really is the difference between Hopkins strolling in the woods and writing in absolute alliterative delight the opening lines of "The Windhover," "I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-/ dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding"and any no-name guy freezing his fingers on a Detroit sidewalk as he spits rhymes and trips over his words with his friends?  Think about that while listening to Aesop Rock's attention to language's music in "None Shall Pass."

Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Priesthood of all Poets

 Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce wrote that a poet is "a priest of the imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life" (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).

I discovered this little gem in a footnote while reading Philip A. Ballinger's The Poem as Sacrament: The Theological Aesthetic of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which is fitting enough as Hopkins is perhaps the most notable example of someone being both a priest and a poet.  Ballinger's work is beautiful in the way that it focuses on Hopkins sacramental poetic vision which is that a poem stresses the 'instress' of a thing or that a poem 're-presents' the 'inscape' of a thing.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Both these definitions may be in Hopkins' particular idiom, but they represent an idea fundamental to both aesthetic and sacramental conversations.  If we begin from the foundations of sacramental theology, we begin with the understanding that a sacrament is an "external visible sign of an invisible grace," or (even better) an "efficacious sign."  To stick with Joyce's idiom, let us focus on the Eucharist as the sacrament at hand, as the Eucharist is the "efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life" (CCC §1325, italics mine).  The efficacious nature of sacraments are that they accomplish what they signify; the Eucharist is a symbol and sign of our communion and it brings about our communion.  Now the hinge in Catholic sacramental theology that allows this accomplishment and significance to co-exist is a handy Latin phrase:

sacramenta continent quae significant 
(sacraments contain what they signify)

The Eucharist brings us into communion with the Body of Christ because our communion and the Body of Christ are contained in the Sacrament: they are the sacrament.  The sign causes our unity to Christ, because he is there.  The intimacy between God and the signs he uses to express Himself are clearly identified from the beginning of John's Gospel where he states that "The Word was God" (1:1).  This  idea can allow Catholics to tip their hats to (the convert to Catholicism) Marshall McLuhan and agree that at least with God, "the medium is the message."

McLuhan (1911-1980)

In Hopkins, we can see a radical appropriation of these ideas to his Logo-centric understanding of language.  Hopkins' understanding of poetic language resonates with a sentiment one often hears in conversations of Catholic apologetics concerning the Eucharist as the Passion of Christ not 'represented,' but 're-presented.'  In this sense the Eucharist is not a play echoing the life of Jesus, but it is the life of Jesus, accessible to us now.  Hopkins' understanding of language follows his metaphysical perspective, which was heavily influenced by John Duns Scotus.  Within Hopkins' Scotian mind there are two dizzying conceptual poles between which the poet is ever-reeling: the univocity of being and haecceity of beings.

John Duns Scotus (1265-1308)

These two poles of all beings' essential unity with Being and their also essential uniquity or particularity ('thisness') are the paradox of metaphysics.  Aquinas resolved this problem with distinctions between being and essence (De ente et essentia) and the analogy of being.  Scotus subsumes this tension into his theology with the distinctions of being per se and being per participationem, where Creation participates in God's being perhaps as Eastern theology distinguishes between God's essence and energies or in theosis how we become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).  The dynamic practical character of Eastern divinization is perhaps more closely fitting to Hopkins' conception of language, due to the spiritual life that creation represents in his poetry.  Hopkins' poetry is best metaphysically understood if one grasps that he writes with the theological tension (or communication) between this being and Being.

Hesse savoring the inscape of a landscape.

From this metaphysical foundation we move on to Hopkins' two primary conceptual innovations.  Hopkins constantly mentions in his journals, letters and essays that he senses the instress and sees the inscape of everything.  These Hopkinsian neologisms Hans Urs von Balthasar defines "power of a thing" and "form of a thing" respectively (GL III, 366).  By way of analogy, one could say Hopkins walking in the woods and stumbling upon a magnificent flower lavishly blooming is like Herman Hesse coming out of a mountain trail which opens up on a stunning view of the surrounding landscape.  In Hopkinsian idiom the 'inscape' is the landscape Hesse contemplates and the 'instress' is that which stuns him into contemplation.

The relation between the instress and inscape is riddled throughout Hopkins' thought and while it can be perplexing (How can the inscape qua form of the landscape, be more than the hills, trees, rocks, etc. and yet also absolutely in each detail of the hill, tree, rock, etc.), but comprehending the inscape is not the matter of this essay, and actually any attempt to do so may actually comprise the integrity of the mystery. 

The point of this present reflection is that the poet is the priest, who tries to convey this instress and inscape to his audience.  The poem stresses, signifies and accomplishes the original instress and inscape, so that the reader might stand with the poet in contemplation of the same thing as the priest and laity commune with one another.  It is this common sentiment, which underscores the Eucharist's ability to bring us back to the Last Supper, Calvary, the Manger, the Heavenly Liturgy, and wherever the Mass was, is, or will be celebrated.

The sacerdotal role of the poet is so prevelant in Hopkins, because Christ is behind everything in Hopkins' poetry, because he is behind every thing—as he wrote: "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Hopkins has such percipience into the unfathomably unique minutia of the natural world, because in it he sees the Christ in whom "all things hold together" (Col 1:17).  Because Christ is the Word which orders everything that is, Ballinger artfully writes that for Hopkins "all things 'rhyme' because they are patterned by the Word" (145).  Hopkins' is able to see a world "charged with the grandeur of God" and can see Christ truly play "in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his."

Balthasar (1905-1988)

From the superfluity of this revelation rushes the unrivaled musicality of Hopkins' language, which Balthasar writes "sweeps the whole cultivated world of beauty of the Victorian age into the dustbin" (GL III, 362).  Hopkins' stress on his language's rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and musicality in general is absolutely unparalleled.  While the Victorian aestheticism of Dandyism and "art for art's sake" rendered art absurd, decorative or superficial, Hopkins' poems were sacraments and incarnations.  The music of his language and how it challenges the tongue and delights the ear could not be swept away like the others, because Hopkins' words signified and manifested the Word himself, who is the Rock of Ages which was not cut by human hands (Dan 2: 34, 45), the Rock upon whom poets and priests build their houses (Matt 7:24).

But just as the Eucharist is not mere bread but a sacrifice of love, so too the foundation of these houses is the sacrifical "lamb slain from the foundations of the world" (Rev 13:8).  Balthasar writes, in his treatment of Hopkins, that coupled with this Eucharistic image, Christ's Cross "is the fundamental, ontological presupposition of all natural processes that all, knowingly or not, intrinsically signify or intend by pointing beyond themselves" (GL III, 394).  As a priest, it is Christ's sacrifice that imbues Hopkins' vision of the world and Christ's sacrifice of love is the heart of the world.  Hopkins' sensitivity to the most minute beauties of nature, which rendered him odd to his fellow Jesuits (who did not know about his secret and personal poetic life), was because he intuited that all the beauty in existence derived from the Lamb, whose sacrifice is gratuitously offered as a supper: "How soldiers platting thorns around CHRIST’S Head/ Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed."

"For what has to be interpreted is not concepts (of 'universal', abstract truths), but images (of the unique, personal, divine-human truth), and here poetry is the absolutely appropriate theological language, and Hopkins brings the great English tradition back into the Church by his own creative achievement" (Balthasar, GL III, p. 391, emphasis mine)

Perhaps Balthasar's understanding of poetry as the absolutely appropriate theological language, stems from the essentially sacramental character of Catholic theology.  The centrality of the Eucharist in Catholic theology is unquestionable; it is "the source and summit of the Christian life" (CCC §1324).  Thus the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is perhaps concentrically of the next importance, and Hopkins' sacramental poetics have a lot of potential insight.  Though Hopkins' poetry might not meet all people where they are at, anyone can see that the creative use of language is captivating whether it be in music, poetry or even advertising, and obviously the language of prayer (whose form echoes stanzas of poems already) needs to be in dialogue with poetry.

But the relationship between liturgy and poetry is deeper than mere wording.  Liturgy's etymology means the "work of the people" (λειτουργία) and the poetry's etymology comes from the verb "to do" or more specifically "to make" or "create" (ποιηω).  Careful reflection and participation in the poetic life as we have seen exemplified in Hopkins (attentiveness to "instresses" and "inscapes," contemplation of beauty, openness to creatively and spontaneously responding to God) is absolutely what has the potential to rejuvenate the liturgical life of the Church, which is to say the life of the Church itself.

The lesson to be learned in this reflection of Hopkins, is that it is imperative that we move from praxis to poiesis, from mere or habitual 'doing' to creative collaboration with God in His own creative life.  Realizing our "priesthood of all believers" may need to begin with recovering the poetry of believing.  For if we neglect our poetic stewardship, we stop being co-workers or pro-creators with God and how is any species to survive without procreation?  Hopkins' theo-poetic vision invites us to be struck by the instress of God that we might contemplate His inscape and offer our own pens, paper, voices, minds, hearts and ultimately lives to stressing and representing them with our our poems, our lives and our selves sacramentally. 


References
Video Biography of Hopkins Part I
Biography of Hopkins
The Poetry Foundation's Podcast: Close reading of "The Windhover"

Introductory Poems
God's Grandeur
"As kingfishers catch fire"
Pied Beauty
The Windhover
Binsey Poplars (Watch his attention to nature's unified and individual beauty)
The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe (Mariology in Hopkins' sacramentality is another expansive issue)
May Magnificat
Wreck of the Deutschland (A Longer Poem)

It seems all of his English Poems and Fragments (No Latin, Greek or Welsh)

Lines Drawn with Love

In the simplest
glance or a word
people stop being
two dots floating
on a blank page.

Out of their black depths,
they suddenly spill
themselves across
this white abyss
of mundane days
and lonely lives.

Some relationships are
simply strung between
the dots and hang like
the thin string strung
between two rusty cans.

Some rush like rivers, racing,
running their course as they
spill themselves
and render exchanges of wonder,
curving, crooked, long, short,
where the points are gone
and only their Line remains.

Loving lines lie scattered
crossing this canvas
and in the depths and
shades of their meeting
a greater dialogue emerges.

If only we lonely points knew
in all our out pouring
in all our self-spilling
we were painting a Portrait.

My First Poem

The first poem I ever wrote was in German.  It snuck up on me while I was trying to take a nap in March 2010, just a few weeks before I went to study for a summer in Tübingen. If I've ever had a clearly defined pivotal moment in my life that continues to resonate with who I am today, I think it's here. 

Ich bin nicht Dichter,                                  I'm no poet
bin ich nur Theologe                                   I'm only a theologian
mit einem Herz                                           with a heart
so steinig und klein,                                    so small and stony,
aber vielleicht sollen Theologen,                but maybe we theologians
diese Steine werfen                                     should throw these stones
und immer Dichter sein.                              and always poets be.

Adagio for Acorns

Angels composing symphonies

eternally scribbling melodies

     on wings feathered yet unfettered.

Transposing music of celestial spheres

For our lowly earthen ears

     sullied, muddied and weathered.

Our dirty toes will never run so deep

where warm tree roots gently sleep

     undisturbed and growing more numb.

For man is a mix of blood and soil,

who dances through his terrestrial toil

     So long as there’s a song to hum.

I set out at the thaw of Dawn

when I heard the Angel Song.

     The grass still graced with morning dew.

Strolling through trails from which we spring

I can hear an entire forest sing.

     Every day it plays the song anew.

The woods & winds commune

As twigs, trees & berries tune

     and I sit on a trail seldom trodden.

The tones of cones & stones pound,

arboreal acoustics resound

     harmonies we have long forgotten.

Wood & wind celebrate

as trembling needles resonate.

     This angelic symphony tosses and turns.

Wander and ponder eating berries

That you might hear these melodies

     Finely filtered through the ferns.