ULTIMATE CONCERN #5A: the Bible

Nota Bene: when Squarespace did a radical update for their app, I lost track of things, like the Comment possibility, and I acquired numerous other possibilities most of which I do not understand. In the past, if someone left a comment, my gmail also informed me. That does not seem to happen now, so, I have recently found that there may be comments that I have missed. If so, let me know by gmail and I shall return to the entry. Also, the last “old” comment I found, I tried to respond to it, though my response went somewhere else, I think. I seemed to end up in wine country, but it was 4 a.m., so who knows where my comment on the comment went. In any case off to the next segment in the unfolding salvation story. If anyone is still with me, thanks for your interest and patience. les 80

I have been thinking about the role of the Bible in my story for some time, and finally decided I should attempt to explain that role in a somewhat coherent and systematic way. I described what happened with the prayer at the kitchen table, and the way the prayer became the “way in,” so to speak. I should also explain that I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God; therefore, a source of divine and spiritual truth, a revelation from God through human agency. The Bible is also, I think, a library, containing various kinds of writings or genres: historical narratives, myths and legends, poetry (Psalms), prophetic writings, letters, gospels, etc. Understanding what a text means begins with understanding the kind of text it is. That having been said, what I intend to do here is identify certain passages that have become central in my own spiritual journey away from the kitchen table and into the heart of what my Christian experience means.

The first passage I discovered early on and it is a text I always return to when doubt seems to overwhelm me. You might say that the passage begins in the Gospel of Mark, right at the center or turning point of Mark’s narrative. Just before the central question, Jesus is confronted with a blind man, whom “some people” “begged” Jesus to touch. Jesus gives the touching a try, but the restoration doesn’t quite work the first time: The partially healed man says, “I see men but they look like trees walking.” Jesus then lays his hands on the man’s eyes; this time the man’s vision is restored.
Who is Jesus? Seeing who Jesus is is extremely difficult for the characters in Mark. Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” Jesus gets various answers, none of them correct. Even the disciples are somewhat befuddled, as usual in Mark, until Jesus asks them point blank: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter (immediately, one of Mark’s favorite modifiers) gives the right answer, the answer that has been before us the entire time in Mark, but that no one except the demons seem to get: “You are the Christ.” Jesus then (immediately) tells the disciples about the rejection and the suffering that is to come. Peter, of course, takes Jesus aside and starts to rebuke him, to which Jesus responds with the well-known: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Seeing and not seeing; God’s side and man’s side. Seeing with God’s eyes, or seeing as blind humanity sees? At this point in the narrative Jesus calls to him the multitude and the disciples and introduces the awful instrument of torture, the cross, into the narrative and explains precisely the cost of following him. Switch now to Matthew who recounts the same narrative, almost. What Matthew adds to the encounter is crucial, I think.

In Matthew 16: 13-20, the question is a little different: “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” The series of wrong answers is almost the same: “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah.” When he turns to the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus’ response is at the heart of the mystery: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Wow! There are two kinds of knowledge, things we can know on our own, “flesh and blood” knowledge, and knowledge that must be revealed to us from the Father who is in heaven, spiritual knowledge that Jesus is who he claims to be, the unique Son of God, the second person of the Trinity: “before Abraham was I Am” (John).

In the string of secondary causes in my life regarding my relationship with God, the most significant Biblical one is here, Matthew 16. As if to solidify the centrality of this passage, when I started teaching American lit 1 at Berea, my Norton Anthology contained two sermons by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” the English teacher’s favorite for its vivid, terrifying images of the sinner bound for Hell, [no need to take the substance seriously any more, obviously, they say], and Edwards’ “The Divine and Supernatural Light,” a sermon that essentially and systematically, based on the Matthew 16 text, describes and defines precisely the nature of the conversion experience. When I read his sermon the first time, it was as if he was describing my kitchen table revelation. And, before we get to Edwards, I would state that I simply could never deny the truth about Christ that I acquired at the kitchen table in 1964 or 5. Before that revelatory moment, I did not believe that Christ was the Son of God or that his resurrection was real; after that moment I could never deny that that’s who Christ is and that that’s what truly happened, the bodily resurrection from the dead, knowledge I affirm every time I recite the Nicene Creed during the Mass.

I looked for a copy of Edwards’ sermon in my reduced library, and I could not find one. Disappointing. At one time I read everything by or about Edwards that I could find. The “Sinners” sermon seems to be the exception; he was not a “Hell-fire and Damnation” preacher, really. He was a brilliant man and preacher who was genuinely concerned with understanding the meaning of conversion and of understanding the centrality of man’s relationship with Christ, thus the importance of the “Divine and Supernatural Light” as defining the role of the Holy Spirit in the conversion experience. For Edwards the key point in the Biblical text is that this saving affirmation, Jesus is Lord, is not knowledge that the human being could acquire on his or her own; it is knowledge that comes directly from God, without a secondary cause. You must have the Biblical account in your mind, but only God’s presence can cause you truly to know it, to affirm it.

Edwards first defines four experiences that are not the divine light: the light is not conscience; it is not imagination, as though you literally saw something with your eyes; it is not any new truth or proposition; and it is not simply an emotional response to the Jesus story, or to the sufferings that he underwent.
Edwards begins the second section with his positive definition of the Spiritual Light: “it may be thus described: a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the Word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them, thence arising.” For Edwards we might say that the heart comes first, experiencing the presence of God: “He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it, or has a sense of it.” The mind or reason comes second: “He don’t merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.” In order to clarify what he means by sense and reason in the experience, he further gives us a marvelous analogy: “There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter, unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind.” Edwards then gives us a second clarifying analogy that is also apt: “So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance.”

It is worth seeing how he further develops the distinction: “There is a wide difference between mere speculative, rational judging anything to be excellent, and having a sense of its sweetness, and beauty. The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but the heart is concerned in the latter.” For Edwards the experience of God comes first, the sense of God’s presence, the taste of honey, so to speak. What arises from that experience, according to Edwards, is “a conviction of the truth and reality” of that which is “contained in the Word of God.” The way Edwards continues to develop his description of what happens in this experience is well worth reading; however, early on in the sermon he says something which always stayed with me: “He may indeed act upon the mind of a natural man; but he acts in the mind of a saint as an indwelling vital principle….he unites himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for his temple, actuates and influences him as a new, supernatural principle of life and action.”
The text of Edwards’ sermon comes from The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, Edited by Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, & Douglas A. Sweeney. Yale University Press: New Haven & London, 1999.
Matthew 16

This image from EWTN somehow seemed apt since we are essentially dealing with the actions of the Holy Spirit.

THE HEAVENS: The planets & the Moon

I am working on a difficult entry for the Ultimate Concern series (#5), but I thought I would take a short break and point out another of my life-long delights: astronomy or star gazing. There are some very good apps available for pursuing this subject, but once you get oriented on what is happening up there, the various movements of the heavenly bodies are not difficult to follow. Two nights ago, for example, we had a clear sky with Jupiter, followed by Saturn, clearly visible in the south-south-west. I had gone out about 11 p.m. to watch the moon and Mars rise in the distant east. Jupiter and Saturn were still visible, but I had to take Fairway around the bend down toward the cul-de-sac since trees block my vision of the sky here, at #3. Once I turned the bend, so to speak, I could see the moon just coming up with Mars riding the moon’s left shoulder, so to speak. They were gorgeous. Mars is very bright now as it is coming closer to Earth in its orbit.

I went out the following night about the same time; the moon was now farther to the east behind Mars, and tonight, (my excuse was, “taking stuff down to the recycling container”) the moon was again smaller and more distant from Mars.

Knowledge of the heavenly activity is delightful. I used to know all the major constellations and the paths of the sun, moon, and planets through them every year. Of course I filled notebooks with my observations; I used my high-powered binoculars to observe the 4 moons of Jupiter and how they changed from night to night, just as Galileo did in the early 1600s. For him they were more evidence that there was only one realm instead of two, the sub-lunar and the trans-lunar. Through his telescope the moon looked as though it had an earth-like landscape; and if Jupiter can move with its 4 “planets,” it is like the Earth and the Moon moving around the sun. So Galileo thought and wrote.

The three apps that I have are Star Walk 2, Night Sky, and Sky View. I forget which one I enjoy the most.

NASA has an internet program wherein you get notices throughout the year concerning the passing overhead of the ISS. Seeing the international space station moving swiftly and silently overhead is still thrilling. It’s actually incredible.

The Michigan State University’s Abrams Planetarium has a monthly Sky Calendar available for 12 dollars a year. You can punch holes in the margin and put them in a notebook! There’s one sheet per month with a calendar on the front side describing each day’s heavenly events, and on the back is a kind of beginner’s map of the heavens. I consult it regularly, of course, since the notebook lies open close to my desk. Whatever you do, look up and find the planets once in a while, at least, if you don’t already. They are a truly beautiful sight, and knowing their names is very satisfying.

We have left our footprints there, but its beauty is undiminished.

MISCELLANEOUS AFTERMATH

I let the iPad pick the title; aftermath seemed appropriate. I feel really bad tonight, or rather this morning now since it’s exactly 2:48 a.m. Sunday. We even attended Mass in Mt. Vernon last evening; at the end of the service, as I stood before the priest to receive the Eucharist, he had to remind me to pull down my mask. Mass confusion? I forgot I was wearing it. That’s the first time we have been to church in 5 months.

Covid-19

Masked and dangerous are we all;

Bearers of an antique fall:

Adam, Eve, Abel, Cain,

Their legacy, a vast domain

Of suffering, and acid rain.

And just for fun, I started rewatching the second and third episodes of Good Omens, with the angel Aziraphel (Michael Sheen), the demon Crowley (David Tennant), and the good witch Anathema Device (Adria Arjona). Tonight I watched Episode 1, then 4, 5, and 6, though I may have fallen asleep during 4 — 5. Well, I had spent most of the afternoon vacuuming the house.

Hail Caesar

Caesar rules our secular land

With a tiny evil hand;

He thinks no one will hear the cries

Of all those harmed by stupid lies.

He wears a mask of just concern,

While urging all the land to burn.

Conflagration is his goal;

For endless reign he’s sold his soul.

I thought I would polish these verses and publish them before I came down with the virus and lost the battle. I really like “Covid-19,” the first verse; ha! “and acid rain”! Delightful. Actually, I like the second one too, “Hail Caesar.”

Michael Sheen and David Tennant from “Good Omens.”

Adria Arjona from “Good Omens”; she’s Anathema!

FAIRWAY DRIVE

Two days ago, as I was walking to the mailbox, coming back from a short walk toward Forest Street, I saw a small glass shard sparkling in the sunlight. It really did look like a gem. That’s the trouble with what follows. There’s the cliche which is also true; there are awkward lines, rhythms and rhymes; and yet what follows more or less captures the idea I was trying to embody in the verse. In any case, this introduction is by way of an apology. The verse is my little thing and I like it as far as it goes, not good though it be. Sigh!

On the Road

A piece of glass sparkles,

Like a diamond in the sun;

Yards of Black-eyed Susans nod

To every passing one.

Luscious crepe myrtle,

Tossing blossoms every day;

Red and rose and lavender,

Hold forth in fine array.

Wholly holy ground I walk,

A half mile down and back,

Reciting Chaplet prayers each way,

My Fitbit keeping track.

New day (Thursday the 27th of August): I reread the verse. It still does what I wanted it to do; in fact, all twelve lines exist to establish the central idea in line 9. “Phone poem” verse exists primarily for the 6 syllable to 8 syllable line. “On the Road” contains 3 stanzas: syllable count in #1 is 6/7/7/6; #2 is 5/7/7/6; #3 is 7/6/8/6. It’s not difficult to see what the 6 syllable line does in each stanza, since each stanza ends with a line of rhyming 6: sun/one; day/array; back/track. The rhymes, to use a current TV game show phrase, “lock in” and provide closure for the idea in the stanza. The grammatical structure in each stanza also varies nicely again to contribute to the meaning (I think). For example, the first stanza contains two independent clauses. The first clause establishes the precious nature of the experience on the street in the simile (note the proper use of “like”!); the second clause uses personification to humanize the behavior of the flowers. Flowers exist wholly in nature; humans are both in nature and out of nature, for we are rational creatures; Fairway Drive is a neighborhood, where people greet one another regularly.

In the second stanza, there is only one independent clause with the first line establishing the subject; 2 and 3 add modifiers; 4 contains the predicate, the (rather weak) assertion about the subject. I hate to say it, but the structure is more interesting than the assertion. On the street, three of the four crepe myrtles are suffering, with dead wood and ragged blossoms; the red crepe myrtle is currently the loveliest.

Ah, now we are down to the third stanza which is where the walker wanted to be all along. The stanza begins with a loose clause (as opposed to a periodic structure, as in #2), establishing the main idea with a liturgical allusion (“holy holy holy”), and the assertion, “I walk.” The loose structure allows the writer to add modifiers in the next 3 lines, ending with the Fitbit doing the liturgical counting. The Chaplet is The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, in which, like the Rosary, there are 5 decades of recitation: “Eternal Father [sings the leader], I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, [R/] in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world”; then she or he sings, “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, [R/] have mercy on us and on the whole world” [10 repetitions]. In a sense, the Chaplet is hidden in what the Fitbit is doing, just as God is primarily hidden in our lives, and the holiness of the street is hidden in the blacktop. Sadly, I suspect that the explanation is more interesting than the verse; however, you might notice that I had given the verse a great deal of thought too, for about 3 days, off and on.

Two final thoughts on this verse: first, I am the author of the verse, but not the narrator, anymore. When I am dead and gone, the verse will still exist, for a while anyway. Identifying the author with the narrator can be very misleading, especially when the narrator is untrustworthy. T. S. Eliot is dead; Prufrock may or may not be dead, depending on how one reads the ending of the poem. Second, good reading is primarily a matter of seeing what is actually there and how it means, getting inside the work to see with the narrator’s eyes, as in the Frost poem, or even this verse. If you would like to test yourself, read Henry James’ “The Figure in the Carpet,” where the narrator is a blind (metaphor) literary critic who never learns to see the humanity of his task or profession in the story. Or, “The Real Thing,” where the artist narrator does overcome his blindness (metaphor) really to see what or who is in front of him.

Back on Friday, the 28th, fiddling with words and thoughts. In the second stanza I had in the second line, “Popping blossoms,” which I never quite liked; second, I wrote, “Bringing blossoms,” as in bringing new blossoms; then a bit ago, “Springing blossoms” for about two minutes [I still like that]; now it’s “Tossing blossoms every day.” I have stared at the actual blossoms until I have almost gone pop-eyed. “Opening”? That’s what is going on, I think. Each cluster is filled with what look like small berries that then blossom, or so it seems to me.

I am tempted to meddle with the second clause in the first stanza, but its ambiguity and goofiness rather delight me. Enough for the moment. It’s our 54th wedding anniversary today. Now that calls for a goofy verse of some sort.

“Rocky,” the Guardian of the Way: a little farther on…down to the street

From the TV, 1049, EWTN

BITS AND PIECES; THIS AND THAT:

Yesterday’s Psalm was #69: I didn’t discover the relevance until after I had closed the iPad and read the Psalm.

“Save me from the waters of the deep,

lest the waves overwhelm me.

Let not the deep engulf me,

nor the pit close its mouth on me.” (15-16)

That might have been Peter crying out to Jesus as he started to sink; or any of us whose faith was too weak to sustain us for another step on the way.

Upon looking out the dining room window, I saw a black-capped chickadee flitting around the feeder, trying to avoid the much larger turtle doves and blue jays, in order to grab a seed and fly off. So,

What is a black-capped chickadee?

A short little bird with a very long “e”,

Who flits about from feeder to tree,

And steals a seed that’s his for free.

That’s a black-capped chickadee!

Two days ago now, two lines in Psalm 71 struck me as immediately relevant, not that the entire Psalm wasn’t relevant, of course; but especially these:

”Do not reject me now that I am old;

when my strength fails do not forsake me.” (9)

Lately, the iPad has gotten a little too independent, and if I do not touch the screen for each word, the iPad often chooses for me, leading to sentences that do not say exactly what I intended them to say. I proofread the entries, several times before hitting “save and publish”, but sometimes errors slip past me, such as “relative” instead of “relevant” a moment ago. Sometimes, too, the cursor is in the wrong place and I wipe out a phrase that I would not have wanted to wipe out. Mostly though It and I work well together, unlike the cash register and Granville on “Still Open All Night,” a very funny BBC, KET half hour comedy. My favorite BBC, KET half hour ensemble comedy, however, is still “Last of the Summer Wine.” At this point, all the episodes are repeats though I may not have seen them on their first run. Most I just enjoy watching again; however, they are shown after 11pm, and I confess that I sometimes pass out—er—fall asleep. In any case, I love the old people: Truly, Billy (descended from Robin Hood, he says), Clegg, Alvin, Nora Batty; the two inept policemen who would rather rest than exert themselves; the oriental washing machine salesman, Entwistle, who always seems to show up in his red pickup truck at an opportune moment; then, of course, there is the philanderer, Howard, who is married to the termagant, Pearl, who tries to rule Howard’s life with a close eye, while he is always trying to find ways to outsmart her and sneak off on his bicycle to meet his girlfriend, Marina. Frequently, he enlists the help of his neighbor, Clegg, and their friends, Truly, Alvin, and Billy. The real problem is that the friends enjoy playing pranks on Howard, who never seems to learn anything, which is a staple of this kind of comedy, and which is one of the things that distinguishes a recurring comic character from a tragic hero. How many times must the coyote “tread” air at the top of the cliff, run into a wall-painted black like a tunnel entrance, or have the anvil dropped on his head? Always, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Howard, I should add, is very gullible, witness the episode of the haunted woods. And his wife Pearl is not stupid. Just as there is a central group of men who are primarily instigators of the plots, so there is a central group of women, of which Nora Batty is one. [I even enjoy writing her name. Nora Batty!]. According to the opening credits, the “creator” of both shows is Roy Clarke. He does very well and the shows have or have had a long run. Tonight’s episode, for example, “Will the Nearest Alien Please Come In,” is listed as S28/Ep5 (2007).

Red hibiscus with a setting sun behind it; note 12 and 2 o’clock petals.

Same flower 5 minutes later.

CREATURE FEATURES

More about turtles in the deep garden shallow pond:

Contradictions?

Reptilian turtles with small, hidden eyes,

Whose voices are silent—only God hears their cries.

Their shells are their armor, shields on their backs,

Plates on their stomachs prevent most attacks.

Dark living fortresses, watchmen divine,

Asleep on flat pond rocks, under tall pines.

Turtles. A tale.

If one doesn’t look too closely, the verse somewhat resembles the shape of a turtle—a happy accident, a heavenly plan? If I could just secure the structure! Actually, I guess I did. I even added feet. And, the small poem retains its shape when I close the essay.

Now, the battle for the mailbox. I pulled down the mailbox door last Sunday, just checking in case there happened to be an anomaly, something delivered out of the ordinary, the power of habit. I stuck my cane in just in case there was a note hidden in the dark. My cane found some obstruction on the floor of the mailbox. I tugged and a red paper wasp flew out past me. I hauled my cane out and slammed the door shut. Wasps in the mailbox? Not good.
I retreated to the house, grabbed a flashlight and a can of long-distance wasp and hornet spray. Back at the mailbox, I cautiously lowered the door and peered within. About half a foot from the door sat a red paper wasp staring at me; there was a second one a little farther back. Disconcerting as it was to have a wasp staring directly at me, I stepped back and shot them both in the head. I watch TV, I know how to act in tight situations. Shoot them in the head and run! I ran. Another red paper wasp flew out and at me, but I was wearing my LL Bean, “no fly-zone” shirt and the wasp backed off. A third wasp? That shouldn’t have been. I waited for a few minutes, walked cautiously back to the mailbox and used the flashlight to peer into the darkness. Nothing, but I bent down, easier said than done lately, and saw a wasp nest about the size of my fist, hanging from the top of the mailbox, with wasps milling about on it. Good grief! I brought up the can and fired again, hitting the nest. I backed away again, for wasps were falling everywhere.

It turns out the wasps were getting in to the mailbox through four drainage holes, I guess, in the floor. I thought I had taken care of the problem, but the next day, when I looked into the white newspaper box next to the mailbox, there was a red paper wasp sitting about six inches from the front, watching me, just like the first one. I shot this one in the head too and the one standing behind him. Well, I am pleased to say that I managed to eradicate the wasps without getting stung, even though I had attacked in the daylight hours. The only problem is that now I feel guilty. The wasps weren’t especially aggressive, they were just going about their waspish business; I wiped them out. Co-existence would have been good, but sooner or later either I or the mailman would have disturbed them to the point of getting stung. Wasp stings are painful, extremely painful. That particular danger is gone, but I continue to check just in case they try again, and I continue to feel guilty, which I take to be a healthy response.

Finally, the bird feeders at night. We have raccoons attending to the feeders after hours; we have possums coming there; now we have two skunks. Oh my God! Two skunks in the backyard; two dogs in the house, wanting out. The skunks are rather lovely as we watch them from the window. One has a white head with a beautiful white “v” spreading out from its head down its back; the second one has a white tail. They haven’t been there together, but the one with the white tail was there last night. What happens next, only God knows.

The red paper wasp, poised like an F-18 Super Hornet (somewhat apt), armed for war. (Not my photo)

Mary says it’s name is Petunia; I think it should be Stinker!

ULTIMATE CONCERN (#4): Choice Continued

Choice was not only existentially at the heart of what I chose to be the center of my life, that is, Jesus; choice was also what I now understand as making up the substance of my entire life. Choice is involved in how we treat others virtually every moment of our lives. For example, my wife was just presented with a small choice, one hardly worth thinking about. She was standing in front of the microwave preparing some lunch, slicing an onion for spaghetti sauce. I was preparing my second cup of coffee: cold coffee, tablespoon of sugar, large portion of 2% milk. I asked her if I could, excuse me, get to the microwave to heat the cold coffee. She said, impatiently, “You always wait till I am doing something in the kitchen to come in and make me interrupt what I am doing!” Having been thus scolded yet again for what seems a minor infraction, I took the cold coffee into the front room, sulked a bit, and drank it cold. My thought was, surely it would not have taken much effort on her part to move aside so that I could briefly use the machine and thus enjoy my coffee. She had a choice; actually, we both had choices. In her case, rather than help me, by stepping aside for a moment, she chose to scold, claim, essentially, that I always made her life more difficult by behaving in such a manner. What? My choice, of course, was either to deny the accusation at the top of my voice and claim that I did no such thing. I could indulge in anger that I should be so unjustly accused, and then I could hold on to that anger for an hour or two, making both our lives more miserable than they sometimes really are. I chose to sulk and grumble for a bit. Choices! Seemingly small, but I see now that they are really what define us. When I continue to look back at the life path I have swiftly stumbled along in my 80 years , I realize that my life is filled with such moments, regarding persons close to me and regarding those persons I hardly knew. In fact, the story of my life involves all those situations where I chose to behave badly to another, in essence to make the wrong choice and to hurt another by my selfish choice, though not always. The majority of those choices, I realize, involved people close to me, people whom I loved deeply, whom I had every reason to respect, and people whose burdens I should eagerly have been happy to shoulder. Alas, too often that was not the case, and I made the small, bad choice, fully aware that I had chosen badly.

While mulling these ideas over for the last few days, it finally occurred to me that what Jesus said about turning the other cheek did not just apply to the enemy that attacked. It applied in all situations all the time and can be seen as a metaphor for how to respond in any situation. Stop striking back with the tongue, so to speak. That can hurt more than an actual slap with the hand, I have discovered! Finally, I seemed to have a real insight into my own behavior; I seem to have learned something important and valuable.

It also occurred to me that there was another issue that ought to have been dealt with, regarding the conversion experience. How do I know that my transforming experience meant what I thought it meant. I remember reflecting on that very thought about three weeks after the kitchen table moment. The resolution then was that I knew the experience and my transformation were real at the time, and while I might doubt it later, nevertheless, the memory of the quality of the moment testified to its truth. I met God at my kitchen table, a meeting more intense and real than any meeting I have had since. Therefore, some 55 to 60 years later, I am still a Christian, though what I have mostly experienced in those long years is the absence of God. Becoming Catholic in the 1980’s, I think, helped with that, for the Mass with the Eucharist at its center and the understanding of “real presence” provide a real focus, though I can manage to experience absence there as well as presence.

Recently, I read an excellent book, (another secondary cause from the center, so to speak, since the book was a birthday gift), that described the consequence for another person of his conversion, sparked by a symphony by Mahler. The book is The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance by Eric Varden; the account is in his Introduction: “The repeated insistence, ‘not in vain, not in vain’, was irresistible. It was not just that I wanted to believe it. I knew it was true. It sounds trite, but at that moment, my consciousness changed….I was aware of not being alone. There was no special warmth, no ecstatic inner movement. There were no tears. But I could no more doubt the truth of what I had found than I could doubt that I existed. The sense of it has never left me. That this should be so amazes me still” (6, italics mine). I share his amazement at my own situation, that the sense of my own experience and the truth of that moment have never left me, and the memory is as real as if it had happened yesterday.

Jesus the Lord: walking on water and saving Peter whose faith failed.

MOONLIGHT SONATA?

Moonshine Rising

Half hiding behind a long smear of cloud,

It was, when first I saw it,

Like a slice of round carrot

Climbing out of a pot,

Or, rather, a worn silver coin in a slot,

(Was it not?)

The moon slowly slid up the night sky,

Silently shouting, quietly announcing,

“Majesty arises, presence confirmed,”

Lighting up cloudscape, landscape

And mind, with veritable glory,

Creating a moment of heavenly story:

Praise moon and cloud, stars and light,

Eyes to see with,

and

Night in which to be,

For darkness is not dark to Thee!

Amen

An animal is a different kind of creature from man; and the difference is not just a matter of degree.

Little dogs, for example, do not write little verses to people they love, as this little verse my wife wrote for Schuster:

Here’s my little fellow,

Who’s cute as he can be;

He barks at other people,

But, he doesn’t bark at me.

(slight editorial changes were made, mostly to do with punctuation, as well as the removal of one unnecessary “as.”)

Schuster: animals have no thoughts for moonlight, or clouds, or stars, or reasons why.

INTERLUDEN: Faux German

Well, I studied German once, for a summer. The PhD program at OU required that we pass the course to proceed with our degree. My friend, John, was fluent in German, and I was remembering him again this morning, which, I realize, is no excuse for inflicting a phony word on this entry; however, I passed the course, love and miss John, and just felt like being silly for a bit. Besides,

Simon is awake and my transport problem with him was also a bit goofy already. First, I made ready our chair in the living room, changed his old wrap on the bed before picking him up, scratched his lower back enough, I thought, to help him move the “poop,” if there was any close at hand, so to speak, out into the open air and on to the pad on the bed. He wagged his tail vigorously, I scratched some more; nothing but tail wag. “We’ll go for it,” I thought. I put my hand on his tail, folded his tail over his butt, got him airborne, and noticed the tail quivering under my hand and getting stiff at an upward angle, as it does before he poops. Oh dear! Only halfway there. I stepped over Schuster, hurried, got Simon to the chair just as he began, pooping, that is. I barely caught the offending matter in one of his old wipes that I keep handy, thus saving the clean chair pad for the moment. Who pooped? Simon pooped. The day thus begins. High noon.

So. As people on TV say as they are about to answer the news journalist’s last question, so, I am about to present, in squalid verse, my latest phone poem effort. This verse [that reminds me, I misquoted Eliot’s Hollow Men ending, in an earlier entry. I wrote “that” when I should have written, “This is the way the world ends…”] has been a work in progress for several days now, and is based on a true thing, a screaming piece of furniture that scares the crap (there’s the theme) out of me every time I hear it! I always think it’s Schuster being harmed.

The Metaphorical Nightmare

We have a bathroom cabinet drawer

That screams whenever disturbed;

It sounds just like a wounded moose,

Or, worse yet, a high-dying goose,

Shot by a hunter in season.

No one’s discovered the reason,

Why this drawer is so loudly perturbed.

The screaming bathroom drawer! Don’t lock the door behind you! (I suppose it could be the frog, but doubt it.)

DEATH TOLL: FLORA AND FAUNA

Dante, looking out over Hell after newly arriving, said that he did not think death had “undone” so many. He was, of course, referring to people, but we know that everything dies eventually, too soon or too late, flora, fauna, persons, ourselves. And our (Mary and my) death toll is rising. First, recently, we lost our black cat Pinkie, due to some kind of destructive stomach growth; she was old, but since she arrived here long ago from only God knows where, we don’t know how old. Next, there was our beagle, Dexter, also very old, in the teens certainly, again a victim to old age and sickness. Now, our Jack Russell terrier has a tumor on her liver and is being treated with chemo; our old and grey dachshund, Simon, can’t use his hind legs or control his bladder; I estimate that in human years he is about three years younger than I am (80 and thus 77). At the moment, he is as usual sitting beside me and barking incessantly because he can smell food being prepared in the kitchen, and he can’t get there to see and taste. If he doesn’t shut up soon he may not make it through the day, poor little guy. The problem with all the dogs, well 3 out of 4, is that they are all as old as we are. That leaves Schuster who is 7, but has his own problems, and Dusty, the new, more or less, outdoor and sunroom cat, who, like Pinkie, also just arrived one day.

Everything dies, the turtles, the fish, the possums, the raccoons, the cats, the dogs, the people who care for them, especially the people who care for them, the people we love. Beauty disappears, skin wrinkles, joints crack and shoot pains up and down; backs, ah, backs just get worse from day to day as gravity and age take their toll.

I was reminded, with the images of the azaleas and redbud (spring images) that one of the terrible and terrifying storms that blew through Berea in the early summer, brought down an enormous limb from one of our old pine trees and did some awful destruction on that redbud, on one half of the wonderful doors that opened into the garden (since rebuilt), as well as other smaller flora in that vicinity, a smaller, slow-growing Japanese maple, etc. Storm damage takes its toll too, though people, animals, and house escaped untouched.

All the day lilies are gone this summer too, already, so let some other images be a tribute to lost beauty (and delight), that reality that stands at the heart of creation, and human life, and frequently reminds me of the goodness inherent in and behind the universe, goodness from which we all fall short, and frequently miss in our brief lives. Goodness….a worthy goal to strive for in our very, very short lives, before they flicker and burn out like the flame from a long vanished candle. Visit the poets, like Shakespeare, for example, for the language that captures our predicament, like Hopkins, like Donne, like Dante (wonderful Dante), like Eliot, like the romantics, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, Byron, etc., etc., etc.

For a long time now, there has been a gravestone in the Berea cemetery with our name on it: “Startzman,” for our first grandchild, a lovely little girl, Isabelle Rebekah, who did not survive her first full year, and whose loss broke all our hearts:

From The Phone Poem Book: Simple Gifts:

Winter’s Child

22 January 1998—17 December 1998

In Memoriam: Isabelle Rebekah, granddaughter

Winter’s child is flesh and frail

Infant beauty soon to fail:

Seed to shoot to graceful flower,

Mysterious presence, awful power.

Winter’s child is for a time:

Breath of dawn, incarnate rime;

Delicate crystal waits the sun—

Who draws her forth, His littlest one.

Rose of Sharon.

The garden, flowers and leaves.

Hydrangea, “limelight,” and rose of Sharon in the upper right.

Azaleas and redbud; undamaged garden door.

DESIRE; SATISFACTION; FULFILLMENT

I’ve had the word “desire,” and nothing else in this entry since 7/26; today is 8/3. I keep thinking about the content, in terms of what to write, because desire has been a major aspect of my life for as far back as I can remember, as I suggested in one of the earlier essays. For example, an early defining moment occurred when I was in the fifth grade. That would have made me about eleven (1951). In fact, I used this incident in a lecture on Dante I gave, also long ago now, for one of our general studies courses, Religious and Historical Perspectives. The incident goes somewhat like this:

I had made an arrangement with another 5th grade young lady to meet her on Saturday afternoon at 4 at our grade school playground; the season, I think, was late summer. There should have been no problem keeping the appointment, except that my parents decided to go somewhere that Saturday afternoon as well. They assured me that we would be back well before 4. They drove; here and there; wherever parents drive; I watched the little clock in the car from the back seat, growing more and more anxious. We made it back home about 10 after 4, as I remember. I was angry with them, of course, and ran the two blocks to the school playground. It was Saturday afternoon; the playground was empty; absolutely no one there; I assumed she hadn’t waited. The lesson from the experience was, ha, that parents can’t be trusted! Actually, not true. What I really experienced was what I would understand later as a metaphysical emptiness. The girl, the object of my fairly innocent but intense, desire, was not there; the playground was empty, desolate. Even this many years later, I can still see the empty playground, and feel the desolation, the lack of fulfillment.

Of course, the irony of the experience was that she had forgotten, or hadn’t remembered our “date,” and had never been there at all that day. I don’t think I discovered that until several days later, however; in any case it didn’t change the nature of my experience that Saturday afternoon; she was, Mary, the prettiest girl in our school; I looked forward to meeting her there. What I experienced was desolation, what felt like absolute emptiness. That young boy that I was had just had a taste of the meaning of Hell. All I had to do was hold on to the anger against my parents, hold on to my emptiness, my disappointment.

Beauty was always at the heart of my desire, and I saw beauty everywhere. From early days I became a collector: I found beauty in match books; I saw beauty in beer cans; in hot wheels models, in coins, in rocks, in comic books, in book collections, in slick advertisements, especially in women’s magazines; however, the highest form of beauty was in the feminine form, whose meaning I began to understand fully only after I had found Dante's La Vita Nuova, his Divine Comedy, as well as St Augustine’s Confessions and the work of Charles Williams, especially his The Figure of Beatrice and his seven “supernatural thrillers,” such as All Hallow’s Eve.

Desire, as I understood it for a long while, was the intense longing for something tangible, primarily the woman whose love would be the epitome of fulfillment. I was a romantic at heart and very very ignorant, as anyone with any sense might see. Obviously, it took me a long while to figure out that what Augustine wrote in the Confessions was true: “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” In a sense I knew it but also didn’t know it. To make my ignorance and behavior clear, I offer one incident.

We ate at a Lexington Green restaurant a very long time ago. On the way out to the parking lot, my wife and I found this quaint shop of beautiful and expensive items run by, as I remember, a fairly young oriental gentleman. I was not usually interested in such places, but we entered, and shopped. It wasn’t a large store and it disappeared long ago. What I found there, however, I still have. It was a sculpture of sorts, not a reproduction, as far as I could tell, but it was marvelous. Talk about desire and longing: at the heart of the sculpture was an image of feminine beauty, but it cost 150 dollars. We went home without it; I spent a week longing for it, even though I couldn’t really afford it. I had to have it. We went back the next weekend, and of course I bought it. The woman at the heart of the sculpture is a faun or nymph, and the sculpture thus images the three essential aspects of our nature: the animal, the lower aspect (her legs and feet); the human, a very human woman; and our longing for the divine, as she is looking up. There is also an image of a mirror in front of her suggesting self-knowledge, both looking into and reflection.

Most important for me is the notion of reflection. To simplify, for the man (myself especially), the woman, especially in her otherness, her femininity, her beauty and her goodness, reflects the divine source of her being (Milton put this insight throughout Paradise Lost, majestically, epically even); for the woman, I think, the man in his otherness, his masculinity, should reflect the beauty, goodness, and wisdom of the divine as well (also in PL, though his idea of the hierarchical meaning of the gender differences between male and female is essentially, er, mistaken).

Put another way, the man and woman are, or can be, images of the divine, and an image is that which, first, has substance in some tangible form (complicated to define here more precisely perhaps); the image exists in reality (my very feminine “creature” in the sculpture, for example); second, the image points to a reality beyond itself; third, and most important perhaps, the image participates in the reality to which it points. To see these three aspects in a text, read the first chapter of Charles Williams’ The Figure of Beatrice; read Paul Tillich’s discussion of image or symbol in The Dynamics of Faith; and Mary McDermott Shideler (spelling) also has a discussion regarding this subject, though I have forgotten where.

One final element that for me makes the meaning complete, for it focuses precisely what desire is truly all about. Desire always seeks satisfaction or fulfillment, one more thing to make the collection complete, as if I could take it into death with me; foolishness no matter how we look at it. Clearly there is only one reality that can satisfy our desire and longing completely, as the Psalmist discovered long long ago:

Psalm 63, the revised Grail edition: “O God, you are my God; at dawn I seek you;/for you my soul is thirsting./For you my flesh is pining,/like a dry, weary land without water./I have come before you in the sanctuary,/to behold your strength and your glory./Your loving mercy is better than life;/my lips will speak your praise./I will bless you all my life;/in your name I will lift up my hands./My soul shall be filled as/with a banquet;/with joyful lips, my mouth shall praise you.” (2-6). Or,

Psalm 42, the revised Grail edition: “Like the deer that yearns/for running streams,/so my soul is yearning/for you, my God./My soul is thirsting for God,/the living God;/when can I enter and appear/before the face of God.” (2-3).

As very wise thinkers have pointed out in times past, all our physical desires have means for satisfaction; hunger, thirst, sexual gratification, etc. Why would this desire for God be any different?

HERE A TURTLE, THERE A TURTLE, EVERYWHERE A TURTLE….

Obviously, we have two turtles in the back pond, who sometimes act like good acquaintances, other times, not so much. Today seemed like a good day, a peaceable kingdom back there in the water, on the 80 dollar turtle dock. I enjoy watching them, and the dancing, zigzagging blue dragon flies. Last week I even saw a pair of dragonflies mating. Intense. I have decided that the smaller turtle is a male, in spite of what the pet store owner said. Thus, if he isn’t Belladonna, to go with Esmerelda, he must be Quasimodo. Esme and Quasi.

Later in the morning, Mary heard Schuster barking at a little fence inside the south side of the garden. Schuster had discovered a Box Turtle next to the little fence and he was trying to get at it. In the somewhat distant past, if we saw a turtle trying to cross a country road, we would stop on the side of the road, pick up the turtle and put him or her in the backyard where they would promptly vanish. Put it down, go in the house, come back and the turtle is gone. Then a year later, you see it walking casually across the front of the deck, only to have it disappear again. Mary said she encountered the box turtle three different times last year and in three different places in the garden.

Now it is August 4. This morning I went out to the pond to check on the turtles. Esme and Quasi were just hanging out in the water. When they saw me standing by the pond both came over and looked up at me, as if to say, “Where is the food?” Having two turtles looking up at me is somewhat disconcerting. I watched them for a bit, then the bigger one, Esme, went after the smaller, swam up on his back and snapped at him once. He smacked her with a hind leg; at which point he took off across the pond, she literally on his tail. I decided I had better get them some food, since they were probably feeling peckish, and thus the scrapping.

When I returned, both came back to the feeding place, and ate everything I threw to them, which was plenty, mealworms and pellets. I was pleased to see that they were eating side by side without any problem. In fact Quasi snatched two pellets from in front of Esmerelda without incident.

Yesterday, there was one more turtle incident. Late afternoon, I think, our next door neighbor, Dana, called to say she had found a baby turtle in her backyard, and she wondered if Mary and I would come and take it to our yard. We would and we did. The baby was about two inches long; the three of us had trouble deciding what species it was. We looked up baby turtles on the internet, but it didn’t quite look like any of the numerous images there. I thought it resembled a baby snapping turtle, but the ladies weren’t buying it. Dana put it in a murky bird bath where it immediately swam to the center. Finally, Mary rescued it from the bird bath and carried it to our yard, took it back to the pond where she found a very large (all snakes are large to my wife) rat snake curled on the rocks there. She decided to take the wee creature to the other side of the garden where we saw the box turtle, and there she released it. We didn’t think to offer it mealworms until too late, and thus the current turtle saga comes to a close. Here a turtle, there a turtle, everywhere a turtle turtle yesterday. Would a rat snake eat a baby turtle? I hope not.

Turtles Stew?

What it is two turtles do,

When each is feeling reckless;

What it is two turtles don’t,

When both are feeling feckless.

The pond turtles: Esmerelda on the right; Quasimodo on the left. Both are red-eared sliders.

Up close and personal: Esme and Quasi

FLORA and FAUNA: BRIEF INTERLUDE

Fauna: in the past week we have had a doe in our back yard, a tiny mouse in our washing machine. My wife came upstairs and announced that something was wrong with our washing machine. “It isn’t working?” I asked. Technology! I hate it when machines quit working. “No,” she replied; “there’s a mouse in the washer.” I tried to move it into an empty Kraft Parmesan cheese container, but the mouse was too small to manipulate that way. Finally I just picked it up by its very long tail, and dropped it in. I took it into subdivision wilderness and freed him. That was a long tail, and a short.

We also have the second turtle back in the pond, Belladonna, though she spends most of her time out of the pond and immobile on a specific rock. Meanwhile, Esmerelda gobbles up all the pellets and mealworms. I have a picture of them together on the island in the middle of the pond. Who knows, who can say. It was probably Emerson who wrote that “All the thoughts of turtle are turtle.” In my judgement it was probably the truest thing he ever wrote, or said.

Esmerelda and Belladonna sunning themselves on the island, the two ladies. Bella’s rock is behind the plant in the center of the photo on the far shore.

Coleus, a marvelous color.

Sunlight caught In day lilies.

ULTIMATE CONCERN (#3): The Final Stage

I have been retired twelve years now; understanding how these years reveal the final stage of the pattern is crucial. My retirement idea was to walk with my little dog Simon, read and reread all those good texts I know, like Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Renaissance translation. Learn to be fluent in Spanish and Italian, and write. I have two Phone Poem books; I wanted to make a third, subtitled A Joyful Noise. Sigh. Man proposes, God disposes. I acquired a severe peripheral neuropathy 30 some years ago; add a severe rheumatoid arthritis; a pace maker for the heart problem (three months left on its battery now), and numerous other ills, like Uveitis recently, all of which make life somewhat difficult. Truth be told, very difficult. Then Simon lost the use of his hind legs, the dachshund problem. Instead of walking him, I carry him from bedroom to chair and from chair to bed. The operation to fix the problem is rumored to cost 8,000 dollars, and can’t be done in Lexington, close to home. Sometimes I think of my life in terms of crucifixion; more often I understand it in terms of Purgatory, the pattern or revelation embedded in the second part of Dante’s wonderful Divine Comedy. My life, I have come to understand, is essentially purgatorial; I am being stripped of everything I have been acquiring and holding on to, in effect all the things I filled my life with instead of the God I truly believe in.

Of course the basic problem is that things are visible and lovely, even if others don’t see their beauty. Things are tangible; one can hold and admire them, and so on. As far back as I can remember I collected things. The first item that I remember was the Advertiser-Tribune comic strip, “Alley Oop.” I suspect that I had a thing back then for Oola, but I would have to wait patiently till my parents finished reading the paper before I was allowed to cut out the daily comic and attach it to my collection. I collected match books at one time, and first day covers; I had a special album for the covers. I collected coins; I still get the walking liberty silver dollar once a year, though I intend to cancel that subscription now that I have the 2020 proof coin. They are 99% silver and stunning; but I still can’t take them with me, so at 80 years old, why bother. In fact I have realized that the only “things” I might be able to take with me are the things in my mind: poetry, stories, memories, friendships, loves.
Actually, while at Berea I made an extensive ad collection which I have no use for now, but still own. Ads are fascinating, especially those making use of beautiful women. My favorite in that area was the Virginia Slims cigarette ads; I have an enormous notebook full of those ads going back a number of years, as well as supplements I was sent because I joined their ad offers, and may have let them think I was a woman. I also have two metal VS signs that I found at a roadside secondhand store. 10 bucks each, maybe.
My ad collections were/are extensive. I would be willing to sell them all if anyone were willing.

I also collected comic books when I was a kid; gave them up for a long time until we acquired an English teacher at Berea who collected The Avengers. He got me interested, too interested; he and I went to conventions; unlike him, I could not buy just one, of course. I had to have many. Many were interesting. The first “expensive” comic I bought was a Conan #23 for six dollars at a comic convention. That was the issue that introduced Red Sonja. Six dollars was a lot way back when the boys were very young, in the eighties, probably. Much later I spent fifty dollars for a marvelous Vampirella cover and comic. Desire that stands behind these acquisitions is extremely difficult to resist; I found it almost impossible most of the time. Adding items to a collection was always more satisfying then simply having them.

Then there was the rock collection, which I dearly loved, but finally gave to my oldest grand son. I had a raw piece of tiger’s eye which I bought in Mexico; crystals are exquisite, still, but I managed to let go. And then there were the Hot-wheels. Perfection in a little metal model. My office was soon overrun with stuff; I eventually gave most of the little cars to charity. The problem in my case was that there was this need to acquire these things continually, as if each new acquisition would satisfy for a moment; but then I needed to find another—at Walmart, at the Rock Shop, at the Comic Shops (2 in Lexington), etc.

Illnesses are not fun, witness the current pandemic, but they can form a pattern in a life, my life for example. In my case, all the physical health problems have taken away the ability and desires for collecting things. The more I hurt the less I care about stuff to the point where it appears that the illnesses are Heaven sent. Illness means vulnerability and vulnerability means death. None of the illnesses is terminal, except perhaps the heart problem which is controlled by the pacemaker and pills. Besides my own health issues, I spend much of the day taking care of my little dog Simon. Gradually the health issues get worse: I can’t drive because I can’t feel the gas and brake pedals. Fine, I can walk several miles without much trouble. Well, I could, except that my legs have gotten worse and I am not certain that I can still walk a mile. So, once again it seems that there is something working in my life to make me better, to focus my attention on what ought to be at my center, rather than stuff. In Dante’s Purgatory the purpose of suffering is for each soul to get rid of the habit of sin, the ruts that the continual giving in to desire makes in one’s soul. I know about ruts. I am glad to see something working on them in my case, even if my right hand is crippled, hurts most of the time, and is almost useless.

One final thought: I have no idea what illness and pain mean in any life but my own. In my life I see God’s presence in the pains. I’d be grateful if they stopped, but I have come to understand that in my life, all is gift, even the things, perhaps especially the things, that appear bad.

Pattern or coincidence? My friend Fred and I read a Psalm a day, over and over. Yesterday’s Psalm was especially appropriate:

”Then I said, ‘Lo, I come;/ in the roll of the book it is written of me;/I delight to do thy will, O my God;/thy law is within my heart.’/

I have told the glad news of deliverance/in the great congregation;/lo, I have not restrained my lips,/as thou knowest, O Lord./I have not hid thy saving help within my heart,/I have spoken of thy faithfulness and thy salvation;/I have not concealed thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness/from the great congregation./

Do not thou, O Lord, withhold/thy mercy from me,/let thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness/ever preserve me!”

Psalm 40: 7-11

“I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation.” (Ps. 40:9). [Bonus: beauty and the bug!]. Amen!

Simon, my almost constant companion, in the great chair. [My iPad wanted to write “congregation” for companion.]

PATTERNS CONTINUED: Ultimate Concern (#2)

Ending with Psalm 139, on the July 12 entry, establishes my fundamental perspective that I believe God was and is present in my life all along. Like the Psalmist, like everyone, I had no choice about when I was born, whom I was born to, where I was born, or my genetic makeup. Being is gift; being is thus nothing to be proud about, for I had nothing to do with choosing it. All of us come into this world with numerous givens; that knowledge and understanding should be humbling, instead of a cause for pride and division.

Since I have been thinking about the underlying pattern of divine presence, I have recognized certain secondary causes that led to the kitchen table conversion experience. Beyond that, however, is my continuing sense of presence—that I was sent, for instance, from Ohio University to Berea College to teach courses in English and General Studies, which I did. My evidence at this juncture is that in 1966 I applied to teach at 4 colleges, none of them Berea. Two students from Berea, however, came to grad school at OU, the year I was required to move on. They said that Berea needed two teachers in English. Two of us applied, we were accepted, and I have been here ever since. Thus, as with OU, my choices of schools were severely limited (one of the 4 I applied to offered me an awful job; 3 freshman writing courses); Berea stood out as the best, the most exciting, and the most reasonable choice: a good teaching position and a good school that I came to love dearly. I taught at Berea from 1967 to 2008, at which time it seemed right to retire.

What stood behind my presence in the classroom at Berea was primarily my concern for truth, as well as my pursuit of beauty and goodness. Those three themes, principles, or ideas—truth, beauty, goodness—stood behind all my academic endeavors. How, for example, do you learn to understand a text? You learn to understand a text by seeing what it actually says, by looking at the language, paying attention to what the language and images reveal about meaning, whether it be a John Donne poem, like “Batter my heart, three-personed God,” Gulliver’s Travels, with Gulliver’s severe body problem, or Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Revelation,” and the presence of God in Mrs. Turpin’s life. What a marvelous story!

Or, Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Oh, I know that one, says the lazy teacher. The woods stand for Death; the narrator is tired of living and looking forward to the end of exhaustion. Not fair, I know, but sometimes a Hollow Man ends up before a class too. The point is that to understand the poem the reader must see where the narrator is and what he actually says about his experience. Why did he stop to look at the woods on a very dark and cold night? Why is he concerned with who owns them? What does he understand about the difference between himself and his horse? What needs does his horse have? What need does the narrator have? What really makes him stop to look at the woods in the first place? The answer, I think, is exactly in what he says about the woods, the line everyone knows: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”; what need might they satisfy if only I didn’t have to get going. “But I have miles to go before I sleep.” [italics added]. The poem is lovely, delightful, I memorized it years ago; but the experience of the poem is also in a sense oddly unsatisfactory, for the narrator appears frozen in his moment, paralyzed, so to speak, intellectually and spiritually. The owner of the woods is in the village behind him; the weary future lies ahead, and he has stopped “between the woods and frozen lake.” This narrator has a moment of real insight. But he doesn’t really get anywhere; he is simply “between”: past and future, woods and lake. “Real life is meeting,” says Martin Buber, but Frost’s narrator is not up to the risk this “darkest evening of the year.”

The image below is not of a dark woods, but of a moment in Mary’s garden, a place also lovely, dark (at times), and certainly deep. It is also possible to understand her garden as a place where real life is meeting.

ULTIMATE CONCERN (#1)

Starting with the proper title always seems like a good beginning. The phrase “ultimate concern” comes from Paul Tillich’s book, “The Dynamics of Faith,” an important text in my history toward becoming a Christian. (Simon is asleep in the chair behind me, so I get to set my iPad on the dining room table.). This is one of those thematic entries, all about one thing. Association will play a part too, I imagine, but the purpose of the entry is to define what I am centered on and how that came to be. My iPad is perceptive; it put up the word Christ after I wrote the preceding sentence. Yes, I am a Christ-centered Christian, and I thought I might do well to explain how that came about. (Simon is awake, and barking, so it is to the chair. Maybe.)

In 1962, I graduated from Heidelberg College in my hometown of Tiffin, Ohio. I had only six hours of education courses from a summer at Mexico City College (in Mexico City, of course). I thought about pursuing an education degree to teach in high school, but that idea was dismal. My Dean and head of the English Department at Heidelberg, Frederic Lempke, had other ideas too. He sent to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for an application for graduate school and “ordered” me to fill it out and apply for a scholarship. I did, was accepted, and given a tuition scholarship, and as they say, the rest is history. The thing is, down the line, I began to sense something behind me, working itself out in my life. I had the feeling later that I had been sent there. I was convinced to major in English at Heidelberg, and enjoyed the change away from math and science, in my sophomore year, for I loved to read. Graduate school in literature might be fun, I thought, and it was. The odd thing was that when I arrived at OU, I was an atheist/agnostic, and somewhat cocky. A year or two later I was an ardent Christian and have been ever since.

Even more oddly, my best friend in grad school, Bill Elkins, was a born-again Free Will Baptist from Jenkins in Letcher County, Kentucky. He was also a new grad student in 1962 who had played football for both UK and EKU. He and I used to play one on one with a small rubber football; he always won. Sometimes, we went down to one of the athletic fields and played two against two with whoever was there and willing. He died on an operating table at the age of 62. He visited me once in Berea, and much later when he became president of a small college in Tennessee, maybe, he invited me to apply for his deanship. I wasn’t tempted.

In grad school we were at first an odd couple. He was an earnest Baptist; I swore often, drank beer and smoked. I went to church with him once, after my conversion. In the lobby was a large sign that defined the rules about Jesus, the 10 commandments, along with a list of evils like smoking and drinking to be avoided. He and I acquired a second friend, also not a Christian, a semester or so later. I had not thought much about this friendship with Bill being part of my journey toward Christ, but it was. We teased one another a bit, but there was no mocking. We took each other seriously, we had fun together, we were in the same classes together, we were in graduate school. The event that made the real difference though was a course In literary criticism, given by the best teacher we ever had, Professor Eric Thompson.

The thing about Professor Thompson was that he saw more depth in literature than I saw in life. He made me think, not just about literature, but about a number of things. He wasn’t a Christian, as far as I could see, but because of him I started reading things like Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith, a key text, for Tillich wrote that every one has an ultimate concern, whether they know it or not; therefore, one ought to make certain his or her ultimate concern really is ultimate. I haven’t read that small text in a while, but its effect was large. If Tillich was my first “book teacher,” C.S. Lewis became my second. Reading Lewis’s Mere Christianity made a tremendous difference. I was at the point in 1963 where I really wanted to know what was true, was God who “they” said he was or not(?), and while I think that reason was essential to my journey, it was not the final cause of my becoming a Christian. That was what I call my meeting with God at my kitchen table in Athens.

I had started reciting the prayer of the gospel character who said, “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.” Sitting at my kitchen table one evening, I repeated it various times. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with a silent presence that made me realize that I was really praying and that if I was really praying, God was present; one can pray, I think, only if God is truly present within. I was no longer outside the Kingdom of Heaven, but across the river, so to speak, and inside. I saw that God was present there and that Jesus was indeed Lord. My joy was intense. I sought out my other Christian friend, Richard (Bill was married by then, though I sought him out the next day; he was not surprised—ha! But pleased; turned out he had put my name in a prayer basket at his church) and Richard and I celebrated, though I remember no more of that night from that moment of change or conversion. Later, several of us found a Lutheran Church with an intelligent pastor whose sermons became our great delight. We asked him to print some, but he said no. He would lose the spontaneity. So we went to his church and listened instead, and Christian life was exciting and intellectually stimulating in graduate school.

That second year of grad school a group of us were in OU’s doctoral program, and curiously, we were all Christians. I have been ever since, ending up a Catholic. My mother was somewhat appalled at that, but after she died my dad would even go to Mass with us.
Now, regarding the nature of my conversion, read T.S. Eliot’s “Hollow Men”; the insight about prayer occurs at the end of his poem. If the HM could finish the Lord’s Prayer, “they” would be on the other side of the river and in the Kingdom of God. But in the poem they can’t finish the prayer, only see the consequences of finishing it. “That is the way the world ends…not with a bang, but a whimper.” Eliot himself a little later, after this poem, I think, also became a Christian. Read his Ash Wednesday or the 4 Quartets. I discovered Eliot in a Thompson class; Thompson has a book on one of the 4 Quartets, as a matter of fact.

Years later when I read St. Augustine’s conversion story, his Confessions, I saw my kitchen table experience like his “Take it and read” garden experience, and I saw the same pattern in C.S. Lewis’s conversion story, Surprised by Joy.

When I think about the bare bones pattern of secondary causes that led to my conversion moment, I realize that Shakespeare is there too: 9th grade: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I was Bottom; loved the play); 12th grade: discovered The Tempest. Ohio University: write a Master’s Thesis or take a two semester Pro-Seminar course in (guess what!) Shakespeare. I took the course route, read Shakespeare with an excellent scholar and teacher, and wrote my major second semester paper on The Tempest. Even better, I met Bill in that course! Then, Professor Thompson, Paul Tillich, C.S. Lewis, and the kitchen table moment.

To put that experience into a Biblical perspective, I will end with a quote from the Grail edition of Psalm 139:

“If I say, ‘Let the darkness hide me/and the light around me be night,’/even darkness is not dark to you,/

the night shall be as bright as day,/and darkness the same as the light.

For it was you who formed my inmost being,/knit me together in my mother’s womb./

I thank you who wonderfully made me;/how wonderful are your works,/

which my soul knows well!

My frame was not hidden from you,/when I was being fashioned in secret/and molded in the depths of the earth./

Your eyes saw me yet unformed;/and all days are recorded in your book,/formed before one of them came into being.

To me how precious your thoughts, O God;/how great is the sum of them!/If I count them, they are more than the sand;/

at the end I am still at your side.”

(Ps. 139: 11-18)

From my best theological understanding, I have learned that God is not a being in the way that a person is, or a dog, or a flower; or a Greek or Roman “god” like Zeus or Apollo. Everything visible and invisible in that sense has being. Being is a gift bestowed upon all that is, from microscopic viruses to stellar galaxies. God, however, is being, as he tells Moses in Exodus, chapter 3. Inside this essay is my Confession, so to speak, my story, my journey to the feet of the Lord.

POND LIFE

That note was fun. I always enjoyed it as a teacher when students saw more and better than I did. After all the point of teaching is to present a way of seeing or thinking, not to tell anyone what to think, though I’m sure I did my share of that too. I just got a note from a former student, now 70, telling me I was still wrong about Prufrock. Ha!

TIME OUT: Simon just threw up some overdone sausage that our resident carnivore had given him. Nasty. Down the front of the chair, onto the floor. Made me forget what I was about here. Ah, pond life.

I thought I would go back to the small pond to see how the ladies were doing. When I got there, Bella, in the pond, slid into the water from the island in the middle of the pond; across from me, on top of the rocks lining the pond, lay Esmerelda. Impressive. She did not slide or dive into the distant (well, 2 feet down) water; she stayed there. I was silent and did not move, except my head, as she moved hers to check the surroundings. Standing there, I remembered another quote from a work on contemplation, either Thomas Merton or Charles Williams: Feels like Williams: contemplation requires “stillness, attention, discipline.” It may be from the mind of a central character in The Greater Trumps, but I am not certain, though I was practicing that at the pond this morning.

Stillness: Esmerelda didn’t move from her perch on the rocks, except at one point to turn toward me. Now it looked as though a good sized rock with two stout legs and a head was facing me. I stayed quiet, didn’t move. Stillness.

Attention: In the pond, Bella came up on my side of the island, glared at my unmoving self, ducked back under the island and stuck her head out on the south side, to my left. There was a piece of food there, an inch from her head; she ignored it. Three blue dragonflies flitted over the pond, left, came back, two, then one, then all three again. The dance of the dragonflies. One settled on a strand of the yellow iris growing out of the pond. I wanted to lie and say it sat on my shoulder for an instant, but it didn’t, though when it was still I could see that its head was green and not blue like its body. Attention is the first key to good reading too. Why does the smoke, the fog, in Prufrock behave like a cat? Are the “you and I” in Prufrock two people or two aspects of one person?
Next, the falling water hit by the sun. I love running water and the way it sparkles with sunlight, even the curb water after a rain as it runs down the slope on Fairway, past four houses, to disappear at the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the street. Like the merry stream in Hawthorne’s woods in The Scarlet Letter. What does water reveal, the thing as image? What does it point to?
Finally, I noticed a strand of silk spider thread running from a long leaf of the iris on my left to a rock on my right. Over the water. How does a spider build a bridge for itself like that, over water? The only way I could see the thread was when the sunlight hit sections. Two inch bars running here and there across the water. Lean from left to right a bit or right to left and the bars moved as the sunlight changed position. Attention.

Discipline: In a way, discipline is easy to understand, difficult to do. Discipline simply involves taking the time to go to the pond in the first place, or anywhere meaningful, to attend to what is really there, in silence. Thinking about discipline and contemplation reminded me of a book I received for my birthday: The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance by Erik Varden. A book well worth reading, which is a form of discipline too. Reading. Going to the pond. Taking the time to attend to what is there, in silence. Discipline.

Pond life. The place. “Stillness, attention, discipline.”

Esmerelda or Esme, facing south with strands of the yellow iris. The island on Esmerelda’s right.

BREAKING NEWS

Breaking news! That’s the way Lester (NBC) and Norah (CBS) start the 6:30 news each evening as they recount the atrocities of the current day. On the weekends on ABC, lately, a commentator named Wit has taken over. What delights me is that each in-the-field reporter signals the end of his or her report by saying “Wit” as the send it back to the studio. Of course, Lester and Norah get the same treatment, but they have two syllable names, and each can be said softly and pleasantly. On the other hand the reporter tends to snap out the one syllable “Wit!” and goodness knows the irony there is rather overwhelming: Wit?

But to the breaking news as promised. With little Simon still sound asleep and Mary in Richmond with the car at Toyota, I decided to venture out into the 90 degree heat to view the beautiful new day lily, a large greenish yellow, that I discovered yesterday. I had two plastic bags in case I discovered any Schuster treasures along the way. Straight out from the deck I went, and straight away discovered two fairly new ones. I picked them up but decided to take the path to the right toward the pond, rather than the one to the left which led to the flower. When I got close to the pond, I stopped, saw Esmerelda swimming lazily about. I watched from a distance, then turned right again to take a pathway back to the house. I took about five steps that way, then decided I really had better give the pond a closer look. I turned, went back, and lo and behold, there were two turtles, Esmerelda and Belladonna swimming lazily in the pond. Now that was exciting. We thought the reptile had disappeared for good, but there she was again. I watched them for some time, apparently turned myself into a statue standing still for so long that a squirrel ran across the rocks just in front of me to get to the water. If I had any real agility left, I could have reached down and grabbed his (or her, of course) tail, she or he was that close.

Eventually, though I hurried to the deck and got the gourmet turtle food, went back to the pond, we still had 2 turtles! And I fed them. And watched them. Esmerelda, it seems, may be a bit of a bully, as she kept pursuing Bella around the pond,and interfering with her eating. At one point though Bella came up behind the floating Esme and rested her head on Esme’s shell, and looked right at me, two feet away. They really are reptiles though. Esmerelda and Belladonna and a whole bunch of little fish swimming around and under them.

Well, it’s now 3 a.m. and I am off to bed to sleep next to my ailing little dog. See below.

Oops. Looks like another Bela; I thought I was tapping Simon.

“Hi little buddy!” Simon on the bed, awake and waiting.

FLORA AND FAUNA

Ah, life. Mary bought a second turtle, Belladonna or Bella Lou, 20 dollars. She, Bella (not Mary) and Esmerelda seemed to be getting along famously for the first and second day; on the third day Belladonna disappeared into the floral abundance of the backyard garden. We haven’t seen her since then. I trudged around the garden paths again today, but no Belladonna. Esmerelda disappeared for about two weeks once, and then, somewhat miraculously, I thought, returned and has been there ever since.

Yesterday, I saw Esmerelda basking turtle fashion on the little island in the middle of the pond; today she was just hanging in the water and floating. Not a turtle care in the world. In the meantime, no companion. The pet store owner, Michael, told Mary that the female red-eared sliders get along. Hmm! Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Who can say for sure regarding this pair at this point. I’ve put out an APB with the local blackbirds and jays, but no news yet.

In any case, I wanted to put on this note a photo or two of another interestingly named day lily, Bela Lugosi. Wish I had noticed the dead flower behind it, but then the dead one may be appropriate, given the name of the flower.

I was so taken with turtles and flowers that I forgot to mention the current sky phenomenon, or is it phenomena? In any case last night the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn were lined up beautifully in that order, from west to East. Tonight, should we have a clear sky, the Moon will continue to move East, closer to Jupiter, as in a cosmic dance movement, as the Moon and planets interact up there, or out there. The full Moon almost washes out Saturn, who still follows Jupiter, but they are delightful to watch.

Meet Bela Lugosi, just a little dark with a lovely center.

Another one in another area of the rose garden, I think.

THE DRAGON

From Flannery O’Connor

Pilgrim’s Progress

Sits by the side of the road, the Dragon,

Known in the world as Sin;

Preys on Pilgrims passing him by,

Who rely on God’s Grace therein.

Not quite the Dragon, and yet…