Into our first world.

Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

"Shall we follow?"

There is the element of the call, the invitation, the summons, or - as I like to think of it - the sweet seduction of the Spirit, luring us onward. We are always free to respond or not. To say no, of course, is to miss out on the delights of reciprocal love.

Here it is an echo, the call of a bird, a thrush. "Deception of the thrush"? What deception is this? Or is it that we think we are being called to one place, one time, on thing, only to discover that it is another? In crude mercantile manipulation this would be the "bait and switch" but in things divine it is usually that what we imagine is too inadequate for God's purposes, so we think we are pursuing A or B only to find we have entered the entire alphabet.

What is this first world Eliot mentions? He writes of pressure, heat, and vibrant air; of bird call and "unheard music hidden in the shrubbery;" roses that "had the look of flowers that are looked at." These are images of what can be felt, or almost felt, seen though invisible, and heard though the music is unheard. This is sensory language and the world of the senses is the first world we can easily conceptualize yet Eliot keeps invoking the unseen and unheard in the midst of this. Is the world beyond the senses, then, our first world, our primary world? Is it a dualistic trap to keep contrasting them or attempting to distinguish them? Are they coinherent realities?

Eliot had a transcendent experience in the garden at Burnt Norton, one in which time and eternity were one and unseen presences were, for a moment, sensible. His language here is rather incantatory, full or repetitions and juxtapositions that remind me somewhat of Orthodox worship that rings changes on certain imagery that is full of paradox. Such language leads us out of our normal thinking habits to expand consciousness, multiply possibility, and overcome opposition.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.

The unseen presence resembles our ancestral shades. We claim the presence and they are our guests now, yet we are their offspring and therefore we and our entire context depends on and flows from the past, which was their present. Perhaps we welcome them, yet they are welcoming us - accepted and accepting.

We move in accordance with the inexorable logic of garden architecture down the empty alley (or is it empty?), and into the box circle (the circle surrounded with boxwood shrub, as it is known in the U. S. and, perhaps at the same time, the squared the circle, another figure of overcoming opposites), to the central figure of the pool. Fountains and pools, with lifegiving water, make natural focal points in gardens, but this is a drained pool. And yet "the pool was filled with water out of sunlight" and the moment passes with a passing cloud "and the pool was empty." In the brief moment when the surface of the pool "glittered out of heart of light" the hitherto unseen guests were "behind us, reflected in the pool."

Past and present united, perhaps always but only glimpsed in moments like this. Oh yes, and future too. For if we are creatures that have come to being through the unfolding of the past which is therefore contained within us, then are we not contained in those yet to come?

The bird that called us to this mystical place now urges us to go. We can no more tarry here than Peter, James, and John could stay on the mount of transfiguration. Why? "[H]uman kind/ Cannot bear very much reality."

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Do we prefer our divided, analyzed, compartmentalized, sequential world to one that is organically and mystically in perpetual union?

Can we face coinherent realities?

Lent gives us space to think about it all. Perhaps even to experience it.

And the greatest coinherent reality in Christian tradition is the Holy and Lifegiving Trinity.

Dare we enter that Presence, experience that union, join that dance?

-the BB