ASH WEDNESDAY

It is that time again. And Ash Wednesday without Eliot would be poor in all the wrong ways.

I

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is

  nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessèd face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care 

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree

In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety

On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

In the hollow round of my skull. And God said

Shall these bones live? shall these

Bones live? And that which had been contained

In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

Because of the goodness of this Lady

And because of her loveliness, and because

She honours the Virgin in meditation,

We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

It is this which recovers

My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn

In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten

And would be forgotten, so I would forget

Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only

The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping

With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulness

Exhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied

End of the endless

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,

Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye

Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair

I turned and saw below

The same shape twisted on the banister

Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair

I left them twisting, turning below;

There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,

Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair

Was a slotted window bellied like the fig’s fruit

And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green

Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,

Lilac and brown hair;

Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind

over the third stair,

Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair

Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy

Lord, I am not worthy

                              but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet

Who walked between

The various ranks of varied green

Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,

Talking of trivial things

In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour

Who moved among the others as they walked,

Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand

In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,

Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing

Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring

One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathed about her, folded.

The new years walk, restoring

Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring

With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem

The time. Redeem

The unread vision in the higher dream

While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue

Between the yews, behind the garden god,

Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke

  no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

Redeem the time, redeem the dream

The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent

If the unheard, unspoken

Word is unspoken, unheard;

Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,

The Word without a word, the Word within

The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

About the centre of the silent Word.

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Not on the sea or on the islands, not

On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,

For those who walk in darkness

Both in the day time and in the night time

The right time and the right place are not here

No place of grace for those who avoid the face

No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and

  deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for

Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,

Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,

  time and time, between

Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray

For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot pray:

Pray for those who chose and oppose

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender

Yew trees pray for those who offend her

And are terrified and cannot surrender

And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks

In the last desert before the last blue rocks

The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

    O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again

Although I do not hope

Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss

In this brief transit where the dreams cross

The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things

From the wide window towards the granite shore

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices

In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices

And the weak spirit quickens to rebel

For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell

Quickens to recover

The cry of quail and the whirling plover

And the blind eye creates

The empty forms between the ivory gates

And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

Between blue rocks

But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away

Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit

  of the garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

IN THE CARMEL OF BANGUI, A NURSERY OF 4,000 REFUGEES

                                                           

This is a translation of a letter of 18 January 2015 that appeared in the French daily La Croix, from Fr Federico, a Discalced Carmelite whose monastery in the Central African Republic is hosting thousands of people fleeing from the civil war. I found it moving and inspiring enough to publish it here – in part as an antidote to the horrors we are daily fed from around the world.

Very dear friends,

     It’s a little late to give you a Christmas story, but here in the Carmel of Bangui, for more than a year now it’s as if it was Christmas all the time.

     In the morning of December 5, 2013, towards the end of the Mass, the sound of artillery mixed itself with the chant of our prayers. That day, apart from the looting and the houses burnt down, 500 people were killed in various parts of the city. Soon afterwards, thousands of people arrived in our monastery. Before we knew what was happening, it was transformed into a huge nursery.

     That nursery is still there. Although the number of little ones has diminished, there are still about 4,000 people, who remain very attached to us. From time to time we remember with some nostalgia those first months when the children slept in our church, the women gave birth in the refectory, and we ate rice and beans in the dormitory corridor.  John of the Cross, the first child born in the Carmel, now walks on his own two feet and is starting to speak a few words. How beautiful it will be, one day, to tell him his own story.

     We are still amazed that so far we have been able to reconcile the demands, more or less rigorous, of a Carmelite monastery with the equally legitimate needs of thousands of refugees.  Today we are so used to their presence that we wonder how we spent our days before they came, when we were a “normal monastery”. We would almost suggest that every monastery or convent host some refugees, if only for a few months, in order to experience the good that their presence does to the life of the community, to recover the enthusiasm and to start over with a fresh liveliness.

     The main change since then has been the new setup of many tents, no longer attached to the monastery but a little further away, about 100 feet. We regret a little not having them as close as before. The refugees have given their new tents grand names, like “Noah’s Ark”, “Solomon’s Temple”, “The White House” . . . The International Red Cross has done a careful census with high-tech methods. Each head of a family has received a card with photographs and a bar-code. According to the census, there are more than a thousand family groups in our camp.

     For December 5 of last year, we thought that the best way to celebrate the anniversary of the events would be to have a Mass for the dead: the victims of the war, those who died to make peace and those who died of sickness here among us, old people and some children. At the time of the offertory, our guests had prepared a beautiful surprise for us, as if they wanted to offer their contribution and to beg us to continue a little longer this miracle of the loaves. All the heads of the various zones of the camp organised a dance and brought gifts for the community: bread and wine, fish, eggs, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers and coloured fabrics (which would be transformed into twelve shirts – one for each brother) . . .  How this offering tasted of the Gospel!

     Giving a gift to a poor person is a beautiful thing, to which we are accustomed, which gives the feeling of helping to save humanity, and which inculcates peace of the soul; but receiving a gift from a poor person is quite a different thing, which happens when one least expects it and which gives you goosebumps and brings tears to your eyes.

When Christmas approached, the dream of giving a little present to each child almost gave us sleepless nights. Then came the miracle. In the afternoon of December 24, twenty serious well-dressed gentlemen arrived at the monastery. They were part of a Central African association unknown to us. They got out of their cars with five large crates and told us “We have brought you 1,600 toys for the children between 1 and 5 years old. Please distribute them as soon as you can.” Then those distinguished gentlemen, sent by Heaven knows whom, disappeared as they had come. It seemed surreal. In a little over an hour we distributed the presents and wished a Happy Christmas to all our refugees. I have to say that at that moment I would not have wished to be anywhere else in the world than here with my brothers and with these people.

     Afterwards, we celebrated Midnight Mass at 7 PM, which was already a sign of peace, for in 2013 we had had to move it up to 3 PM because of the war. On Christmas morning we celebrated a dozen baptisms. This is exceptional, for our church is not a parish. For me, a rather improvised and autodidact missionary, they were the first baptisms I administered in Africa. Among the baptised, there was a John of the Cross, a Theresa, an Edith, a Joseph . . . the Carmelite heaven can rejoice! Some Italian soldiers, led by Colonel Renna, were present also. After the celebration, they unloaded from their armoured cars balloons, felt-tips, colouring books and crayons, given by soldiers from Casale Monferrato, from Turin and from Como.

     In the night, there was another surprise. It was 1.30 AM and we were all asleep, when I was called to the door. A woman was about to give birth. I ran to wake Aristide, our novice and competent male nurse. After examining the woman, he told me that there isn’t time to get to hospital, as the birth was about to happen. So our roles were reversed: Aristide became the novice-master and I the novice (a little shaken, to be honest). In a few moments, the chapter-house was transformed into delivery room. We even had a wooden trumpet to listen to the baby’s heartbeat.

     An older woman, mother of eight children, sat down beside the woman in labour. While her rough hands told a worn rosary, she gave useful advice on how to push, how to breathe, and other matters I had not learnt during my theological studies. Her serenity was impressive, as if she knew the exact moment when the baby would be born. The mother gave no cry, she uttered only invocations and prayers, as if she did not want to trouble the silence of the monastery. Then a magnificent little girl came into the world. After the cutting of the umbilical cord, the newborn was given to the older woman who cleaned her, dressed her and received her, as if a chain of generations, of wisdom and womanhood needed to look each other in the eyes and hold each other, to continue the cycle of life. At that moment it was the father’s turn. He gather up the placenta and the umbilical cord to bury them: an ancestral rite to encourage fertility.

     It was nearly dawn. In a few moments the bell would call us to prayer. We went to the library where there is a weighing-scale. I put the little girl on the scales. How romantic our Bethlehem is! There are no angels, no shepherds, no Magi from the East; but there are books by Plato, the Treatises of St Augustine, and the Summa theologica of St Thomas Aquinas. Then I looked at the needle of the scales: 3,500 grams of life, of hope and of peace. 

ἀγάπη

In the Church of England as it was, today is Quinquagesima Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent, and the Epistle is one everyone knows: 1 Corinthians 13. Everyone knows it; but as I reread it, I was struck all over again by the sheer power of the Authorized Version. I checked my Jerusalem Bible, often the best of the modern translations, but found it flabby and vulgar. So I thought I would put up the 1611 version in all its glory, so that we can all learn from it, reading it aloud: here, for once, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty do not contradict one another.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; 

charity envieth not; 

charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,  doth not behave itself unseemly, 

seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;  

rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: 

now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Here is Cranmer's Collect that goes with it:

O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee; Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 

And just in case that word "charity" for agapè still bothers us, here is the finest exposition of it I know:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

                   Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

                   From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                   If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

                   Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkinde, ungratefull?  Ah my deare,

                   I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                   Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

                   Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

                   My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:

                   So I did sit and eat.* 

Whatever we each do about Lent and its usages, these three passages are as good a preparation for it as I can imagine.



*George Herbert, "Love (III)" from The Temple.