Walkies

It must be spring. I broke out of my sedentary mold for a brief period and took a nice walk with my camera midday today. I headed about one mile north of here and back with some meanders. I doubt it quite reached the three miles doctors would like us to walk every day but it came close.

I am breaking the photos up into three posts. Here is the first.

Snow on sagebrush

Rudolfo Anaya Elementary School

Desert shrubbery that has not yet moved from winter to spring

Amid a section of rubble was this chunk with snow on it.
For some reason it just reminds me of a
cuneiform tablet.

Or the Rosetta Stone, perhaps?


--the BB

The first day of spring - updated 2x

9:37 AM

This is the view out of my bedroom window taken just a few minutes ago. The sky is getting lighter though flakes fall steadily. Based on word of sunshine just breaking now in Corrales, the snow should cease before long. Or not. But for now it is lovely.

If you click the detail photo below to enlarge you can see pink blossoms on the peach tree to the left, my two (so far) daffodils below it, and the tulip leaves sticking up in the far lower right.

The other two trees in this photo are also peaches. The rose bush against the back wall is a piñata rose, already putting out lots of lush new greenery. Its exuberant yellow, orange, and burgundy blossoms are always a joy.

UPDATE:
Sunshine!

10:09 AM

I'm fixin' to take a walk.


UPDATE :
Just before I headed out for my walk I took these shots.






--the BB

Heart thread - 03/19/2010 - updated

For Declan, a wee lad who has many health challenges. For the health professionals who minister to him and for his family. I know his grandmother through work. You may read about him here. Holy Declán of Ardmore, intercede for this little one to Christ our God.

For Sandra that she may continue to be treated at home. May her body, medications, and the Spirit work together for her complete healing.

For Mark in his ongoing work of grief and recovery. For Diane as her body continues to recover. For Kathy as she pursues physical therapy. For Jack as his mouth continues to heal from surgery. For Tad and his full recovery following knee surgery.

For those in danger of any kind this night. May the holy angels defend them.

For Matt, the Nephew, and his aunt and uncle and parents and brother, whom many have come to know at Daily Kos, that he and they may be sustained by mighty grace while he comes to terms with who he is as a young gay Christian man. May the peace that passes understanding hold his heart safely as he deals with overwhelming emotions and external pressures. (Today's update is here. The aunt's diaries are here. Matt's diaries are here.)

For Lois' brother, Steve. For Delsy and her family following her 16-year-old son's suicide and for Sister Ellie who ministers to them. May he be received with joy into the everlasting arms. For three-year-old Taylor and her family. (See comments to the Prayer List at OCICBW.)

For those endangered by the rise of the Red River.

On this feast of St Joseph, I give thanks for Paul Victor, the only father I knew, and for my birth father without whom I would not be here. May Christ crown them both.

From Kirkepiscatoid's comments on the feast:

But I am absolutely convinced that Jesus had a wonderful earthly father, because of the glowing tones he uses in describing God. He even calls him Abba, which more or less means "Daddy."

Psychological research also tells us that people who have had abusive fathers (particularly women who were abused by their fathers) have a really hard time in modern Christianity dealing with "God the Father." People who had abusive fathers, fathers who could not be trusted, or absent fathers, find it hard to latch onto the notion that we are children of a loving God. These people learned not to trust the male parental unit in a family. If St. Joseph had been that kind of a parent, I don't believe Jesus would have felt authentic describing God in the terms that he did, and if we know one thing about Jesus, he's all about authentic.

So in my mind, it tells me all that's good about "the love of a good dad"--whether it is one's biological father, one's stepfather, or anyone who plays a paternal role in the lives of young people. Thanks be to God that these men exist in our lives!

My father and his father before him were both, among many other things, skilled carpenters. My father never called me anything but "Joe."

Holy Joseph of Nazareth, I ask your prayers this day. Pray for all fathers, stepfathers, godfathers, fathers in Christ, and fatherly persons that they may find strength, wisdom, and grace to nurture and guide those entrusted to them with compassion, integrity, and joy. Pray for the Church Universal that it may be defended from its own stupidity, brutality, and patriarchal toxins, for you know that fatherhood is not about the domination structures of this world. Pray for all workers and craftspersons that they may understand their labors as part of the building and healing of the world, do their work well and in hope, and be fairly treated and rewarded for their efforts. Pray for us sinners in the daily round of our lives and in the hour of our death. Amen.

--the BB

Chill fingers of yew

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Eliot has led us downward through the way of purgation, the way of loss and emptiness. First we are stripped of the senses ("Desiccation of the world of sense"), then of imagination and the mind ("Evacuation of the world of fancy"), and finally even of spirit ("Inoperancy of the world of spirit"). Every pretension must be relinquished. This is the way of humility, ever down and down, for only thus may we ascend to the heights.

It takes little imagination to realize that time and the bell have buried more than the day. We come to the ultimate humility, joined to the earthy soil (humus in Latin, the root of humble and human), dead to all things. The black cloud of death carries the sun away from us forever. Our companions are now the graveyard yews, the sunflower and the clematis vine. Will these take note? Turn to us? Cling to us? Curl down for us? A flash of light off a kingfisher's wing and then silence... stillness. The world turns around us but we lie motionless now.

And find ourselves at the still point of the turning world, the place where Light dwells in the darkness.

We are promised that if we lose our life for the sake of the Word, we shall gain our life. The call of the Crucified One is to come and die with him. Our typical reaction is to recoil in horror and fear. But when we see the look on his face we are reassured the we shall find Life.

--the BB

After work photos

Since I wrote about the garden yesterday, I thought I would take the camera into the back yard and let y'all see what's happening. An overall photo of the yard would look rather dreary, trust me. But there are all these little spots so full of life and promise. Those are peach blossoms getting ready to burst forth above. I use the word blossoms below but they are really all still buds. But soon.... Very soon....


A bed of tulips.


More peach blossoms.


Daffodil shoots.


Elberta peach blossoms. I so hope some fruit sets this year.


Methley plum blossoms.


Santa Rosa plum blossoms.


Bearded iris.


The volunteer daffodils from a year ago.

And that concludes our tour for tonight.

--the BB

1022

03/16/10 DoD:
Army Casualty Identified
Sgt. 1st Class Glen J. Whetten, 31, of Mesa, Ariz., died March 12 near Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

03/16/10 DoD:
Marine Casualty Identified
Cpl. Jonathan D. Porto, 26, of Largo, Fla., died March 14 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

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03/16/10 DoD:
Army Casualty Identified
Pfc. Erin L. McLyman, 26, of Federal Way, Wash., died March 13 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked her base with mortar fire. She was assigned to the 296th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Joint Base Lews-McChord, Wash.

Hints of spring

I have learned, over the years, not to give up too soon. This puts me in mind of the recent gospel lesson about giving the fig tree another year. Bare root roses have taught me to wait and wait and wait some more and lo! More often than not I will be rewarded with blooms.

By February each year I look out on a yard that is mostly bare vines, twigs with few leaves, and brown soil. Then buds swell, new leaves start to show on rose canes, and March offers promise.

This evening I took advantage of daylight saving time. I ran a couple of errands on the way home and still had time to water the yard. I had noticed flecks of green on the Santa Rosa plum on the weekend. Well, those green flecks enclose the white blossoms that are about to burst forth, not only on that tree but on the Methley plum as well. And pink blossoms are just about to explode on all three peach trees.

Two brave daffodils, volunteers from a prior year, have come up to cheer me and I have been watching three tulips, also from an earlier year. Tonight, however, I noticed, at last, that a bed of tulips and a bed of daffodils, from this season's planting, are sticking their noses up out of the soil also.

Yes, spring comes to my yard as the vernal equinox approaches in the heavens. Woohoo!

Of course, New Mexico weather being what it is, I now dread both the fierce spring winds and any freezes that are yet to come as that can keep fruit from setting. As was the case last year when I had no fruit whatsoever. Eh bien, on ne peut rien faire. Il faut cultiver nôtre jardin.

--the BB

While the world moves in appetancy

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Eliot takes us to the via purgativa, the purgative way, the way of loss, the way of nothingness. How shall we let go of that to which we cling, of that which keeps us distracted, of that which numbs us? Can we be still and experience any permanence that transcends the impermanence of all things? What, if anything abides? Can we be liberated from dukkha?

I love this section:

Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration

Does it not speak to much of our contemporary experience? Are our minds not filled with fancies empty of meaning? So many distractions that we need a distraction to distract us from them? Perhaps a divine intervention? A holy 2x4 upside the head?

Corruption and unwholesomeness, gloom in "this twittering world." (Heavens! Eliot is prescient, no?) But this gloom is not yet the true darkness, the darkness of utter deprivation, the shining darkness of mystic experience, the emptiness from which all things spring, the stillness at the heart of all movement.

Beyond, below, far above, deep within the motions of our desiring, the restlessness of our appetancy, there is a death in which the seed of life may be found.

Are we willing to face that death? Our death?

Georges de La Tour
The Repentant Magdalene

--the BB

1020

03/12/10 DoD:
Marine Casualty Identified
Lance Cpl. Garrett W. Gamble, 20, of Sugarland, Texas, died March 11 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

03/11/10 DoD:
Army Casualty Identified (2 of 2)
Pfc. Jason M. Kropat, 25, of White Lake, N.Y...died March 9 in Khowst province, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit using small-arms, indirect and rocket-propelled grenade fires. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Pfc. Kropat joined the Army in October 2008, and had already served a tour in Afghanistan. He deployed on his second tour to Afghanistan in early January. "He loved life," his mother said. "He loved his family. He loved his country." Jason had just visited his family and friends during the Christmas holidays. Kropat's long-time girlfriend described him as an "all-American Boy Scout," who loved the outdoors and was an avid fisherman. Kropat joined the Army to provide for a more stable life for the couple. And to prove to himself he could survive the deployment despite being terribly homesick. C Company's 1st Lt. John Limauro told the Leaf Chronicle that Pfc. Jason Kropat was "the battle buddy that everyone wanted" who was "quick with a joke when everyone was down."

03/11/10 DoD:
Army Casualty Identified (1 of 2)
Sgt. Jonathan J. Richardson, 24, of Bald Knob, Ark...died March 9 in Khowst province, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit using small-arms, indirect and rocket-propelled grenade fires. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Sgt. Jonathan J. Richardson was a 24 year old fire support specialist from Bald Knob, Arkansas. Richardson joined the Army in June 2006 after graduating from high school, and he arrived at Fort Campbell in January 2007. He spent a tour in Iraq before deploying to Afghanistan. Last year Sgt. Richardson and his wife bought their first home together, near his grandparents house. Richardson's grandfather remarked about the marriage, "They loved each other so much. It was no puppy love. They were deeply, genuinely in love."

The Department of Defense confirmed that Army Pvt. Nicholas "Nick" Cook, 19, died March 7 in Konar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents ambushed his unit using small arms fire. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Camp Ederle, Italy. Pvt Cook had been in Afghanistan for two months when he was killed in action. He was due to return home in two weeks to visit his family and go snowboarding for a few days in Alaska.

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Typography

Andee posted this on Facebook and I am pleased to share it here with you.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Heart thread - 03/13/2010

I ask your prayers for the repose of the soul of Fernando, my friend Jay's grandfather, who died a week ago.

Also for the repose of the soul of Theodore, Keith Olbermann's father.

We give thanks for God's gift of the Lovely Mona on this, her natal festivity.

We also give thanks to God for Margaret whose birthday is tomorrow.

We ask the prayers of the Righteous Neomartyr Eric Joseph Kokosinski Iliff (11 October 1981 - 13 March 2007). You may read about him here and here.

I give thanks for the Holy Prophet Desmond Tutu who reminds us all: "Hate has no place in the house of God."

I give thanks tonight for Fran. If you would ponder tomorrow's Gospel, here is a good place to do so. She writes an awesome reflection on "Planned Obsolescence and Radical Forgiveness: The Ethos of Repair and Replacement."

Have you seen Tobias' poem The Elder Son and the Father's Repentance?

Let us pray for Mark Richardson, appointed the new Dean and President of CDSP.

Let us continue in prayer and relief and rebuilding efforts for Haiti.

Hmmm, and because I felt a prompting that might have come from the Spirit, I shall conclude with this prayer tonight.

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

--the BB

Since y'all are enjoying acrostics....

The sun never says to the earth, you owe me. (Hafiz)

Moving toward a deeper love, a love affair with God, this poem reflects the advice of AlAnon to forgive ourselves for imperfection.

Lighting the Whole Sky

There is an absurd generosity in the Holy One that scatters
Haphazard all the energies and glories of creation, like star nations
Easily flung as diamonds across the velvet night sky.

Surely, we feel, there must be some obligation, some burden, some debt
Under which we must struggle to prove ourselves worthy of such
Nonsensical goodness. The smile of Jesus tells me there is

No burden other than the one we make for ourselves, for God is
Eager to give, to love, to bless, to make fruitful, to set free.
Visions are given to the unworthy and food to the wicked, and
Every gift is only and always that—Gift, free of obligation, a total
Risk taken by the Almighty and Merciful One. We may

Sing the praises of the Giver and share the gifts, or mar
And misuse them with our ingratitude, our fear, our insecurity.
You and I have nothing to prove. Perfection is for God—for us the
Sharing, the striving, choosing, rejoicing in the school of love.

That, the opportunity to know the smallest particle
Or spark of the divine fire, to be kissed by Heaven,

To know the bliss of Eternity in this moment, to be loved
Here in this place by the Source and Goal of all things,
Eating at the abundant feast with all souls, all beings,

Entering into the bridal chamber of God’s love,
And shuddering at the tender caress of the Glorious One,
Reveling in delight, alive and overflowing with life—
That is as close as we can come to obligation. To
Hear the Voice of the Beloved, that itself suffices.

You see, once loved in that way we cannot then close
Ourselves from God or from others, nor from ourselves.
Useless to resist the Divine Lover, with whom is all our bliss.

Our lives, touched by that Fire, cannot then cease to burn.
We become sparks, lighting the universe along with all those
Ever-shining stars. It is not debt, it is desire and delight.

My little efforts, my many failures, seem to undo this mystery, yet
Even when clouds cover the earth, the sun shines and God loves still.

June 28, 2002

(c) 2002 by me

--the BB

Inspired by Eliot and other things

This poem emerged from a tumultuous period in my life, following the break-up of a 24-year relationship (yes, my BFF still, now over 32 years of friendship, so this is not a tragic story, though it was a painful period). Themes struggling within me included the following:

What new things come to birth following death or fallowness? How does one discern what they are?

There is, early on, the echo of a friend's description of a stunning reddish-purple clematis blossom as a "whore of a flower." So easy to behold the obvious. But what delight to see shoots just coming up from the earth and recognize which plants will spring from them! I love to be around growing things.

So, what lies ahead?

How can we possibly know?

I had a wild and short affair - the requisite madness after divorce, no? - by every common-sense standard it was ill-advised. Yet it helped me stay alive and, in some respects, come back to life.

My body and soul were trying to hang in there as anxiety and depression threatened to tear me apart. I hardly slept at all. I wrote tons of poetry to help process my emotions and my emotions were raw and out there for all to see.

By the grace of God, the love and prayers of friends, faith, and therapy (and some medication), I survived.

As I began this theme of trying to make out a pattern I had no idea where it would go. This, for me, is part of the fun of writing acrostics. There is the discipline of a set number of lines starting with precise initial letters and beyond that: who knows? What emerged was the image of me as an icon being written by Christ. The concrete task of having written an icon of the Baptism of Christ not too long before all this made the process quite vivid.

That icon, "He Fills All Things with Blessing," hangs in St Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, California. The wonderful batik with dancing and drumming now hangs in my bedroom. At that time it hung above the computer in the office at the church. It was a present of the aforementioned BFF and I framed it with complementary silk borders. Both are shown here in the body of the poem.

Dreams, visions, moments of agony and ecstasy, spiritual direction, and lots of anxiety all went into this.

As I reflect on Burnt Norton in this Lenten series, here is one earlier reflection, the most complex poem I have ever written.
--the BB

Dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

Emergent glories yet unrecognized, do they startle or confuse?
Xs formless at first, small seeds that blossom in elegant cross-stitch,
Cryptic till we see the hints of pattern—how to decipher or discern?
Eyes trained, dulled, by habit grasp the whorish flower, understand its gaudy
Pigments and display—that reveling in hue, curve, scent, allure—
Teasing, tantalizing, shameless in the cry: I am alive! Behold!

For children untrained, for weathered souls with wandering mind
Or the true gardener, wonder is allowed: to catch at first emergent greens, to
Rest and pay respect at breaking soil, at hints of configuration, before

The secret discloses itself, the plant is known. What clue lies in the
Heart’s unknowing, the futility of the mind’s appetite? Should
Each creature, moment, place explain itself? Would it matter?

Perceiving beyond knowledge—in the bone, the pulse, the breath—
Or simple ignorance: how do they differ? My sureties and
Insecurities both speak of what I wish I knew but don’t really.
Nothing, we acknowledge often, is so well known as the fact
That we know so little of this world, of ourselves, of God.

This being the case, how have I come to think that I can turn
Hints of the moment into knowledge of what must pass,
Ever planning, predicting, adjusting, seeking readiness?

Surprise overtakes me always. There is no certain knowing
This side of the veils, my eye-binding grave clothes,
Illusions wrapping me Lazar-like against the day’s blinding
Light as I struggle free of the enclosing stone. Shall I trust this
Luminous brilliance woven in the fierce voice of my Friend?

Plunged deep in swirling I never set in motion and cannot still,
Overcome, not by saltwater sobs but the great ocean’s womb
In which our life is formed, tossed in cosmic contractions,
Not sensing above, below, behind, before, beside,
Turned constantly about by waters I cannot grasp,

Tasting the wet death of bloody birth, the tearing terror,
Have I the faintest inkling of the way? I am lost in joy.
Earth and Heaven bring me forth, costly delight! Deep
Rightness! The wheel turns as it should, again and again—
Everlasting newness in the repetitions, inexhaustible grace.


What of the searing death, the birth of fire? Swirling tongues
Of flame now leaping, soaring, rising in exultant roar,
Up, up, linking worlds, sucking the air into its consuming ecstasy!
Lungs released from the waters cry for this breath, craving
Draughts of life even as each residue is burnt away.

Bereft of direction, possession, place, and certainty, I strike my feet on
Earth in rhythms only partly mine and mostly not. The drum calls.

Now I look up at batik dancers, total motion and abandon. There is
Only pulse and movement, nothing solid: action not quite frozen in fabric.


Do I have the slightest hint of what emerges now, in this place
And moment, this specific intersection of roads within the sacred hoop?
No sure knowing of my own self (desperately deceitful heart), no
Certainty of what comes to birth in me. And yet I dare trust that
Each moment, action or inaction, is part of God’s pattern,

Ancient and novel realities surpassing terms of our defining,
Now colliding, colluding, combining, creating, expressing life,
Defeating death through its acceptance—cruciform marvel!

The vision, O Christ, you gave me of yourself a year ago—
Halo of red flame amid the waters of baptism—only began to
Emerge with the painting of the ikon. You continue to unfold
Riches of meaning to my too small heart, painting yourself with
Every pain I must endure, each joy, each stroke of faith and hope and love.

I am now the maple boards, hewn and milled and cut,
Sanded smooth and joined by Nazareth’s son, sized with hide

Of rabbit, wrapped in linen (your shroud, surely),
Next closed in seemingly endless layers of gesso, sanded smoother still,
Lined with graving steel, your message and image carved into me,
You having first engraved my name upon your palm.

Then there is the guilt when gilded over with gold, fearing my
Heart cannot deserve such adornment. You reassure, knowing better than I
Each fault and flaw in the material you made and chose.

Does it seem likely that all creation and the creator’s presence
And blessing can appear in me? Your Gospel tells me, Yes!
Not understanding is no barrier to my formation in your image, gracious
Christ, I need but trust you in and above all, yes, and within me.
Even the deaths of earth and water, fire and air, are but birth in you, your birth in me.

July 31, 2002

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

—From T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” stanza II, in Four Quartets

After work

I know, I keep telling you how much I love living here. Well, it's true.

--the BB

Before Eucharist Wednesday evening

These photos were taken Wednesday after work and before Mass, both from the parking lot of San Gabriel in Corrales.

There is only the dance.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

What is that point, that place, that moment, that Person where all things converge and all opposites are reconciled? As a Christian, I would call it Christ, but humanity uses many names for the same reality. All motion is contained in its stillness, all time in its timelessness. I love the phrase, so evocative of nirvana: "The release from action and suffering, release from the inner/ And the outer compulsion." Wowser.

How badly do we need to be released from compulsion, within and without? Once free from all external compulsion we are not quite free. We need liberation from our internal drivenness.

Note that flesh can no more endure heaven than it can damnation. We are so frail, so limited, so unaware.

Once we are aware, conscious, then we transcend time because we are aware that everything transcends time, yet as finite creatures we only experience this within time. "Only through time time is conquered."

I shall repost a poem I wrote, an acrostic based on Burnt Norton, that involves two images. I shall incorporate them.

Shabbat shalom, y'all.

--the BB

Stuff going on

My apologies for the dearth of posts. Last night was the monthly healing Eucharist at San Gabriel, which is always wonderful, and tonight I met with someone for dinner. When I got home I did not have much energy for blogging either night. All is well, and our exploration of T. S. Eliot will resume.

Sing sweetly, my naughty nightingales!

--the BB

Mouth repairs

I had the prep work for my new crown done yesterday. Not a bad experience but today my tooth feels the trauma and I really want to crawl back in bed. We are not talking much pain at all, maybe 1 on the scale, maybe, but you know how distracting tooth pain can be, even just a tiny bit.

Anyway, after the dentist I stopped at Trader Joe's, did some shopping, and had a lovely dinner last night to treat myself.

But I did not blog.

Healing Eucharist at San Gabriel's tonight, which should be lovely.

Have a great day, y'all.

--the BB

The boarhound and the boar

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

I daresay, "garlic and sapphires" is a phrase that catches one's attention. We are beginning to enter the planting season here in New Mexico (still too early for many things) and the thought of garlic or onion sets being put into the soil, or being found in the mud, is not striking. Sapphires, on the other hand, we do not expect and would be startled indeed to find them. In our back yard, that is.



Yet sapphire mining involves the gathering of gem-bearing earth and sifting it at the edge of a river, so sapphires are actually discovered in the mud, reminding us not to fit the world too quickly into our own preconceptions.

Not only do we encounter these disparate natural items in the mud but they "Clot the bedded axle-tree." So many images and suggestions are found here. The axle allows wheels to function as means of transport and here the axle-tree is stuck in the mud. The turning wheel is going nowhere. Motion and stillness come up against each other. "Clot" can also suggest blood and circulation of bodily fluid will become explicit a few lines later with "The dance along the artery/ The circulation of the lymph." The axle also suggests the axis mundi, the fixed line about which the earth rotates, as well as the mythic world tree.

Eliot is busy linking all this imagery, or suggesting it to our minds, as he spins a complex web of relationship. Like many conceptual systems in philosophy or mythology, the macrocosm and the microcosm are linked, even as time and eternity are linked in this poem.

Neural impulses (the "trilling wire"?) and the pulse of the blood provide rhythm here in our time-bound incorporate reality and these continue in spite of ancient wars, now forgotten. There, under our scars, we may still feel the relentless beat of life that corresponds to the drift of the stars above. We ascend the tree, not merely climbing a tree in our orchard in summer but also rising along the world tree, the axis of our world, moving above it in light, as though rising now on the sun's rays. As we rise to such great heights, where we might hear the music of the spheres, Eliot reconnects our imagination once more to the earth, to "the sodden floor below."

There we hear the sound of a struggle between life and death, "the boarhound and the boar." Hunter and hunted, opposites in dynamic relationship, forever pursuing and pursued, as though captured in a pattern - frozen on a vase or a frieze - yin and yang, complementing one another and "reconciled among the stars."

Calydonian Boar hunt. Corinthian black-figured aryballos, ca. 580 BC.
Musée du Louvre
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Eliot sees all existence in a pattern so vast we need to move to the scale of the stars to comprehend it, just as we need to allow our minds to enter eternity where we may see past, present, and future united.

Have I seen sapphires today, in all their beauty, but failed to notice the garlic that nourishes body and palate? Or have I been lost among the bulbs of garlic and ignored the flash of the sapphire's beauty? Have I felt the motion of the tides in my own blood or cut myself off from the mysteries and magic of creation all about me?

Do I remain below and never ascend the tree or do I rise without anchor to my roots?

Am I the hunter or the hunted, the boarhound or the boar? Can I allow the perception that I am both?

How may ways do I manage to fragment myself? My world? My relationships?

Can I pause, reconsider, and open myself to wholeness again?

Am I willing to transcend duality?

--the BB

Le Weekend

Today we had the Gospel of the gardener pleading on behalf of a non-bearing fig tree, beseeching the master for one more year to dig a well around it, shovel on the shit, and see if it can't produce.

And this weekend I was working on enlarging my wells some more (with rain and wind they are always needing to be reestablished) and adding compost around my fruit trees, roses, and vines. I have a lot more to do, but I got some done while the weather was beautiful. The buds are swelling on all the fruit trees and I can even see hints of new growth on the grapevines. I believe I have seen all of three tulips sticking up their noses through the mulch.

I watered everything thoroughly either yesterday or today. And tonight it is raining (and, if I did not mistake the sound, there was hail for a while during the Oscars).

Three cheers for a woman being chosen Best Director! I also loved Sandra Bullock's gracious and embracing acceptance speech.

Yep, I veged on the couch watching the Oscars tonight.

--the BB

Laughing in church

Fr. Tony preached on the serious topics of sin and repentance today, as befits Lent, but when we posed after the service so we could capture in photos something of our worship together there was altogether too much hilarity to sound very dour. Which is a good thing. We were all gesturing toward one another and I had a hard time getting a photo that actually looked as though Tony were preaching and we were dutifully listening. Here Anne Marie is mimicking the preacher's gestures. And after that we were all gloriously misbehaving.

If church is not a place of joy, even during Lent, then you really should not be going there.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

--the BB

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

Down the passage which we did not take

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
--T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

My apologies for the hiatus between Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets. Life has been a bit busy and I needed some time to regroup (not to mention buy a new copy of Four Quartets since mine was misplaced somewhere).

I fell in love with the language of Eliot in my freshman year of college. I recall walking to class the day we were to discuss The Waste Land and Miss Kaiser asking me what I thought of the poem. I opined that I loved it. She did not. She asked if I understood it, to which I replied: "Not at all but what glorious language."

Well, there you have it. My aesthetic judgments begin with a sensory, visceral response. The mind races behind trying to catch up, to explain why I like or dislike this or that. This is why my comments on culture or aesthetics here are likely to be non-systematic and idiosyncratic.

Through my freshman year and beyond I reveled in the luxuriant language of The Waste Land and it shaped my own writing, whether poetry or journaling. I believe it lingers in the background of my fiction. It certainly predisposed me to respond favorably to Four Quartets.

Once again the response is visceral. I like the word patterns, whether I have the faintest idea what they mean or not. Hence, I do not pretend to offer here a learned analysis or anything resembling an authoritative interpretation. These are merely some of my individual responses to Eliot's poetry.

Well, enough excursus.

If all time is eternally present

This gives us a starting point that is jarring to the predominant Western perspective. We conceptualize time as something that passes in a linear fashion, like water flowing by, always unidirectional (modern ability to play video in reverse notwithstanding). If contemporary physics offers concepts of space or time curving, we get a bit uneasy. This is because our sensory perceptions on the day-to-day level is of rectilinear three-dimensional space with events moving "forward." When the word "timeline" is used we immediately think of something in a straight line with dates marked in regular numerals along that line. Our conceptual timeline does not curve, deviate, reverse itself, or - gasp - squiggle.

Yet we will speak of all time being eternally present to God, whose being is outside time.

If we were more traditional (and I mean going back to ancient traditions) we might view time differently. As cyclic, for instance, a perspective common in many societies.

Then there are the times we ponder starlight. We see a star in the skies and our scientific thought processes remind us that the light we are perceiving now left that star many years ago. Arcturus, for example, is rather close yet what we see of it is light that left 36.7 years ago. What does this do to our idea of time? To behold this star is to see the past.

Eliot invites us to shift our perspective to the eternal, the timeless, though it is only in time that we can think of it.

Our imagination might be able to grasp the idea that all matter that exists right now, scattered through the vastness of space, once existed - at the Big Bang - as an infinitesimal point. Let your imagination point to that not-even-a-speck and say "everything is right HERE." Eliot asks us to consider that "everything is right NOW."

If that is the case, however, how does it unfold, as we perceive time in the ordinary sense? How can anything have beginning, middle, and end if everything is simultaneous? How could anything happen? Anything change? Movement exist? Can there be transformation or redemption if everything is here and now?

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

Eliot is certainly taking our imagination down a passage it would normally never have taken. He calls us into an unfamiliar place, "towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden."

Will we allow ourselves to step into eternity?

Is such an exercise pointless? Merely disturbing dust to no evident purpose?

What might happen if we go into this rose garden?

When Eliot visited Burnt Norton, a Gloucestershire manor, in 1934, he evidently had one of those moments when past, present, and future coalesced: a transcendent glimpse, if you will. In the course of this poem he teases out implications of this, inviting the reader to experience something far more vast than our usual awareness.

Perhaps this is why I unconsciously felt these poems would be good for Lent as Lent calls us to ponder on a deeper, vaster scale than we normally do.

[Should I include one of those ethical disclaimers, announcing that I used "Dust on a bowl of rose-leaves" as the title of a poem I wrote, a poem that is an acrostic of later lines in Burnt Norton?]

--the BB