VERY, VERY DIFFICULT

 

I have written before about intercessory prayer. I have also upon occasion mentioned that in no church have I ever heard prayers for acknowledged enemies. These two issues are now coming to a head with the CoViD-19 hospitalisation of U.S. president Donald Trump, and the reactions to it reported in the news media. 

 

            For most people in the U.S.A. and in the Western world, Trump is an acknowledged enemy: someone who lies, cheats, bullies, and has done more than any previous holder of the presidency to degrade that office and to undermine the institutions of American democracy. Moreover, the position of his country in the world increases exponentially the effects of the damage he has inflicted on it. 

 

            So now that he is in hospital with an as yet unknown degree of the virus, the understandable reactions vary from a sense of almost Biblical tragedy – condign punishment specific to one of his many sins – via outright Schadenfreude to heartfelt and furiously-expressed wishes that he may not recover. Any good wishes or even prayers for his recovery seem to be limited strictly to his thick-and-thin supporters.

 

            So what should the reaction be for those of us who hate what he has done to the country, to politics generally, and to the world, but who are also reasonably devout if uncertain Christians (or, indeed, Jews)? He is our acknowledged enemy: can we bring ourselves to pray for him? This is a considerable test of our faith.  

 

            Reading the book by his niece, the psychiatrist Mary Trump, may help us to a greater understanding. The father of Donald and his brother was, by all accounts, a monster who taught his sons that the world was divided into killers and losers. Donald has clearly tried to be a killer, but as he isn’t a real killer (such as, for example, Erdogan in Turkey) he does his damage by flailing. His brother became an alcoholic and died at 42; Donald obviously has compensated for weakness and lack of self-confidence with sociopathic narcissism. There is in this a profound sadness: it shows us a damaged child lashing out at the world. 

 

            Naturally, such a child should not be let near an important function. That he was, through the ill-will of many professional politicians, the violence of their voters, and a seriously dysfunctional electoral system, is a tragedy. But beneath all that, we can perhaps still hear the cries of the damaged child. And we can, and should, perhaps remember that nothing is impossible to God except to deny Love.

 

            We should, then, perhaps pray earnestly for the damaged child Donald Trump, and beg the Lord to use this illness to bring about a change in his way of seeing the world and of living in it. Roger Cohen, the journalist, wrote that his experience with fairly serious CoViD-19 had made a deep impression on him. A loving Father might possibly use the same means to transform a damaged and dysfunctional President. 

OF POETRY AND ROCK-CLIMBING

“To reach the Creator, I must make myself a creator – at least in so far as my dispositions are concerned. I must break all the moulds in which I constantly fashion myself, for they are invariably restrictive; I must reject all securities, all familiar words, all riches, so as to offer myself utterly poor and virginal to the breath of the Spirit. In this way is the only creativity that counts made possible: the creativity that forms Christ in us, that gives birth to the Son, the creativity which forms ourselves, not just some object, into a poem of love to God, a poem that is completely unique.

Sometimes the Spirit gives me my being through solemn words of love, sometimes through words of joy. There are very mundane words, like bread, or water; there are words of humiliation, of suffering, even of sin. It is necessary to let ourselves be formed, through these various words, so that the glory of God may be sung. 

If I am the poet of the poem which is my life, I am also the priest. The word which is given to me – as a Christian*  and, in a particular way, as a priest – has the power to transform all things into the body of Christ. This is my body, this is my blood, given for you. Just as  God creates, by his Word, at every moment, so he recreates us, takes us up again in all our humanity, with the whole of creation, into the eternal offering of the love of Christ to the Father, into the heart of which we are immersed by the sacrifice of the Mass.” (The Wound of Love, 162-3)

*The priesthood of the faithful is a genuine participation in the priesthood of Christ, and gives us from the start the power of offering ourselves and all things in Christ, with the ordained priest. This dignity conferred in baptism is all too often forgotten.

This is from a chapter on Conversion, called “To Create is to Forget”. At first glance, it seems as remote from our lives as the life of the Carthusian monk who spoke it and those who heard it. This is hardly the Christianity wich we learnt (if we learnt any at all) in a local parish church, in the odd Christmas sermon, or the Christianity we read about and decided was only for those who had the magical gift of faith which we, like most people, just didn’t happen to get. 

When I first read this and other texts in the volume, my reaction was, “Why didn’t anyone ever talk to me about the Christian religion like this?” I felt like the weekend rock climber I once was, coming face to face with El Capitan and those who made its first ascent (3,000 feet of smooth vertical or overhanging granite).

Now, having read it a number of times and thought about it, I realise that while it is the word of a contemplative monk and a priest – and thus of someone who can and must devote all his time and energy to this alone – we others are not necssarily excluded from it. If we absorb this, say, in our morning prayer at the beginning of the day, and keep its essence (as St Francis de Sales said) as a “posy” or buttonhole bouquet to sniff at periodically in the intervals of work or play –- when we are driving, or bicycling, or walking; while we are doing the dishes or cooking –, then the breaking of moulds, the emptying out, the opening of inner doors and shutters, followed by the delicate reshaping of our inwardness to become a line, or a stanza, of that poem becomes not only possible but an entirely natural step to take. 

(The third paragraph, of course, goes quite far, and is a challenge. Even for the Carthusian priest, saying that all things can become the body of Christ might be questioned by his superiors as being dangerously Teilhardian; but his insistence on the priesthood of all believers, conferred by baptism, is currently very much echoed even by our local parish priest. More about that in a future post.)

El Capitan, Yosemite, California

ELIOT ANYWAY

It is so great, and so moving, and so true, that one cannot NOT post it on this day.

Ash Wednesday

by T.S. Eliot

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 aged eagle stretch its wings?)


Why should I mourn


The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again


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 blessed 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 the 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 deceitul 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, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,


Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair


Was a slotted window bellied like the figs'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, sheathing 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.

Blessed 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.