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 The Lady is withdrawn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.

ASH WEDNESDAY

I posted this a few years ago, and came across it as I was hunting for the text of Eliot's "Ash Wednesday; it still seems appropriate, if uncomfortable, so I'll re-post it now.

In a longish lifetime I’ve found that I’m never original; so there must be others who have had a peculiar Lent with a shambolic ending. You know who you are. It’s mainly for you that I’m writing this, and of course for myself.

When one gets serious about one’s faith, or mainly so, one of the things one dreams about is a Good Lent. With a little real fasting, with lots of profound prayer, with charity and sharing: a shapely movement of the soul’s days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.  And then reality comes along.

Even when I was young and Lent was not much practiced – except for the St Matthew Passion on Good Friday, a Dutch tradition – I was always exercised about the fact that Christianity had chosen the most glorious time of year, full of bird-song, fields of flowers, trees in bloom, fresh green everywhere, the sap rising, for its gloomiest meditations. As a child and later a teenager I did not feel particularly sinful, so penitence was hardly a topical concept; I was sorry for what those people had done to Jesus, but when I was introduced to the great 17C Dutch poet Revius’s sonnet “’Twas not the Jews who crucified Thee, Jesu . . . ‘twas I, my Lord, ‘twas I did this to Thee”, my reaction was Well, no, it wasn’t.

When you get older you realise first that maybe it wasn’t but in the circumstances it might well have been: how do I know that had I been a believing Jew or a Routine-bound Roman corporal in Jerusalem on that day I would have had the intelligence and  the courage to stand up against the crowd?

That, however, is not the point of the poem or the meditation it reflects. And as you go deeper into the faith we inherit you come to a new awareness: doing it to anyone is doing it to Him. OK, you and I have not crucified anyone lately, we’re not into torture and murder; but there are many ways of doing the dirty on others, and every one of them comes out of a bag of nails. Giving comfort to a grieving stranger or relative is comforting Him; withholding love from anyone is withholding it from Him.

As you look at your ageing self in the mirror of hindsight, you see a far from beautiful Dorian Gray. So you acquire the dream of a Good Lent that will maybe, with some serious effort, make you ready for Easter. And then, as I said, reality sets in.

Reality provides us with all sorts of distractions, excuses, and daily messes that really muck up our Good Lent. And when Easter rolls around we know that we have not fasted enough, the theological or devotional texts we were going to read remained untouched beyond Chapter 3, our prayer has been subject to John Donne’s distractions even more than usual, we didn’t go and visit that old person in the next street or village we’d promised ourselves we’d see, we didn’t even go to church on Good Friday, our CD player was on the blink so the St Matthew Passion was out, we ended up feeding passing friends from far away, and here we are, supposedly meditating by the tomb in perfect silence like a Victorian painting of the mourning Marys, but in reality shopping for Easter food, hiding eggs, doing e-mail, and a hundred other unworthy things. What a mess.

And then there comes, at the moment when one does pray, a still small voice that says, “That Good Lent you so wanted to have, supposedly for Me – did it occur to you that that was entirely your idea, conceived by and for you? I do not necessarily want your Good Lent any more than I want smoking bulls’ meat on the altar: if you can look at your life and see the bits that really don’t go with my Father’s love, and if that view makes you miserable enough desperately to want Me, Us, to change it (because you now know that you can’t), then, little lad, you will have had a Lent that’s good enough for Me.” And you realise that you have been given a major lesson in humility. And you get ready for Easter’s celebration, with a rather tremulous joy in your heart. 

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή

 (The upward way and the downward way are one and the same)

GO ON, QUIVER: OR, IN SEARCH OF JOY

In my rural French parish, the Roman Catholic Church’s current trends have varied results. The priest, a charming if hyperactive little Algerian convert, has distinctly charismatic tendencies. These alienate a number of bourgeois parishioners, but to my amusement the elderly peasant folk seem quite to enjoy them. They like the interruption of the Mass at the Peace, and turn cheerfully to each other for a handshake or a kiss; and they sing the rather appalling mock-folk hymns without turning a hair.

Before the current Year of Mercy, the emphasis was on Joy. RCF, the French Christian (officially ecumenical) Radio, changed its signature phrase to “la joie se partage”: joy is (to be) shared. And a week or two ago, a hymn told us “Tressaillez de joie!” (quiver with joy!). It was sung dutifully, rather spiritlessly, by a large and dutiful congregation comprising all ages. And it’s been making me think about Joy ever since.

First of all, there are terms which don’t normally enter our active vocabulary, sometimes for historical reasons. When I taught university courses in literary history, we used to spend some time considering the word, and the concept, “honour”. Unless one comes from the Mediterranean and points East, this is not a word much used except in the odd stock phrase. My students, interestingly, found “dishonour” much easier to understand than its opposite.

Thinking about the quivers of joy, it occurred to me that Joy is perhaps such a word.  We know it mainly in expressions or titles – “the Joy of Cooking” – and C.S. Lewis had the good fortune to be able to play on his wife’s name in Surprised by Joy. But is it part of our active vocabulary? Pleasure, yes; happiness, yes; relief, yes; but joy? It’s a very strong word, a very deep word. Perhaps almost nothing that we feel is strong and grand enough to be called joy; or perhaps it is but we have become unused to employing that particular word for the feeling. Parents, when they first hold their new baby; a lover, when the beloved first returns the emotion; a father, when his drug-addict kid turns up clean for good; a convict, upon hearing that he has been amnestied; a tennis-player, upon quite unexpectedly winning an almost impossible tournament; is it joy?

This leads to a further question: if we are to quiver with joy, what do we quiver about? The answer, of course, is there, in the hymn; it’s there, in the Bible itself. The answer is Salvation. Our Salvation. But how many of us, outside the Evangelical or Charismatic world, really know what that means, and feel as well as know? And yet it is what Jesus talked about, all the time. It’s what He preached, on the lakeshore as in the synagogue. The Kingdom of God – the reign of God – is here and now. The Messiah whom you’ve been waiting for all these centuries, he’s right here. The Chosen People’s relation to their God has been restored.

Yes, well. But we are not Israel; we are the Gentiles, the goyim, the Nations to whom St Paul was sent to preach – what? That they are the new Israel, and that the God who was previously Israel’s alone is now theirs also. And that because of that, Israel’s salvation too is now theirs also. What does that mean, though? Jesus is the Kingdom of God, in-carnate, made flesh and blood, given to us, rejected by us, killed by us, and resurrected to put an end to the definitive reign of Death. That faith in Him is the new Law. The Ark was empty: as a French commentator put it, you cannot put God under house arrest. What was concrete and present was the Law. And in the new dispensation the Law, too, is found to be a hollow container; Jesus is the new Law. He doesn’t give laws; he is the Law. And he has destroyed Death.

Fine; but we die anyway, right? Yes; but not definitively. He went through death – and what a death. We can only follow him there. But he rose again, as the Creed says; and our faith is that we too shall rise again, recognizable but transformed.

Is not this reason enough for a swooping and embracing joy? Well, it would be, if we could believe it from day to day. But in real life, we think about re-ligio, about the binding-together-again between us and God, mainly as a set of moral duties in which we are never up to scratch. Not a new Law; rather an endless catalogue of good deeds we ought to be doing as gratitude for salvation. But it comes to the same thing. And the Church, let us face it, does little to help. Even the remarkable current Pope, in spite of his text’s title Gaudium et Spes (joy and hope), spends much of his time fustigating  not only the world but the faithful for sins of omission and commission, for lack of care, of love, of mercy. In other words, the Church tends to be more John the Baptist than Jesus; yet at the same time the faithful are told that their behaviour must be exemplary and that they must convert the world by the beauty of their lives.   

Parents know that children change their ways for the better more easily when encouraged and praised than when growled at and  punished. The mainstream Churches need, I think, to learn from the evangelicals to concentrate more on both the need for, and the joy of, salvation. Call it Rescue, if you will: we were all drowning on a leaky life-raft in the ocean, until we were plucked out and take to a safe place. As a civilization, we were starting to think that there was Nothing: Life’s a bitch, then you die. (How people can think that and feel cheerful is beyond me.) And then this luminous man turns up to rescue us, and we kill him; and then he turns up again, on a beach, frying fish and smiling. Now do we feel joy?

Tomorrow is not just Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, before the carne, vale, the farewell to meat for forty days; in England it is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent when we are shriven – we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, so that we can start the exercise of Lent with a clean slate and a joyous heart. Whether we confess privately to a priest, publicly in the General Confession during a service, in our own closet or in our own heart, an intelligent confession will leave us both begging for and receiving forgiveness, ab-solutio, the washing away of all that clogging dirt. So we can begin Ash Wednesday shriven, forgiven. And for forty days we can study to be quiet, we can fast a little or even a lot, we can pray and occupy ourselves intensely with the love – received and given, given and received -- that is Joy. 

"Heaviness may endure for a night; but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30)

. . . WENT HIS WAY

Nazareth Village: the synagogue

Yesterday’s New Testament reading is one of the fascinating ones, especially if one has been to Nazareth, where the Nazareth Village project has reconstructed the synagogue of Jesus’ time, where you can sit on one of the tiered benches and imagine him standing at the front, reading from a scroll. He reads the passage from Isaiah; then, as the congregation waits for the commentary, he says, simply, “Today what’s written here is being accomplished” – in other words, it’s happening now.

The locals’ reaction is depressing but so understandable. This isn’t some exotic preacher come into town from Away: this is Eddie Josephson, the garage owner’s eldest! We’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper; who does he think he is? The Meshiach or something? If you’re so great, do some healing here, convince us!

He looks at them with a kind of infinite sadness. This is Jesus in his full humanity, completely disillusioned. If we needed proof that God doesn’t – can’t – use his omnipotence to convert everyone, here it is. Uh, huh. Prophets don’t cut it back home. Happened to Elijah; happened to Elisha. No better here, no better today. Sorry, guys.

So they get seriously mad. Go to hell, Eddie! He’s a charlatan; worse, he’s a blasphemer! (For us, it’s easier to imagine this happening in a strict Muslim environment, where blasphemy still merits the sword.) So they rush him, and haul him off to the local escarpment, a kind of provincial Tarpeian Rock that’s useful for executions.

All the commentaries I’ve seen in the last few days more or less stop here, and explain the locals’ reaction. How odd. Is nobody astonished by the story’s ending? Here is a wild crowd, in the grip of mob reaction, enraged, clutching the bad guy and about to throw him off a cliff. And what happens? “But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke 4:30)

This leaves me speechless, and breathless. It’s at least as astonishing as his walking on the water of Tiberias.  How to envisage it? The clutching hands drop; in the heart of the roaring mob there is a sudden focus of intense silence; and suddenly, there on the cliff-edge, they have nobody, and in the distance there is the man himself, striding for the horizon.

It is precisely what the disciples hoped he would do on Good Friday, but then he did not. The contrast should give us furiously to think. But meanwhile, let us at least marvel at this hometown miracle. He, passing through the midst of them, went his way. Just like that.