John Donne's Holy Sonnet V

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt; alas! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

A recent article by Mark Shea at InsideCatholic.com got me to look up Rudyard Kipling's "The Gods of the Copybook Headings." The poem refers to the blank notebooks used by schoolboys of Kipling's day, each page of which had a pre-printed proverb on the head of each page, for the boy's edification. Here is the poem:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The presupposition of the poem is that there are principles built into the nature of the universe. They are summarized by the what Aldous Huxley, among others, has called the Perennial Philosophy, and what Peter Kreeft writes are loosely summarized by the teachings of Taoism, Confucianism, Stoicism, Platonic philosophy, and monotheistic religion. This description doesn't imply moral relativism; rather it shows that something of morality really is innate.  (Christianity, coincidentally, isn't about this or any other morality, not really; but it does take good, solid morality for granted.)  These principles are what we would call moral common sense. The poem makes the point that we ignore these principles, capitulated tidily by the Proverbs of the Bible and on the upper margins of old fashioned stationary for boys, at our own risk.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

Another beautiful piece of postmodern poetry by the late e. e. cummings.

no time ago

If anyone doubts that e. e. cummings' poetry often has religious themes, let this poem serve as a gentle and partial rebuff:

no time ago
or else a life
walking in the dark
i met christ

jesus)my heart
flopped over
and lay still
while he passed(as
close as i'm to you
yes closer
made of nothing
except loneliness

This poem is brief and the grammar is relatively straightforward.  There are parts that are hard to figure, exactly.  The encounter with Christ - either a moment ago or a lifetime ago - was not exactly a moment of conversion, although there was something of a change ("flopped over") of heart involved.  Is the poet's heart playing dead?  Christ came very close to him, but what - was it Jesus? - was made of "nothing except loneliness"?  And what does that mean, exactly.  The poem is desolate or forlorn... is it desperate?

An encounter with Christ, outside of the happy-clappy conversion ("I've been saved, Hallelujah!") moments, can be hard to categorize.

Your thoughts, dear reader?

except in your

Here's another poem by e. e. cummings.

except in your

honour,

my loveliest,

nothing

may move may rest

-you bring

(out of dark the
earth)a

procession of

wonders

huger than prove

our fears

were hopes:the moon

open

for you and close

will shy

wings of because;

each why

of star(afloat

on not

quite less than all

of time)

gives you skilful

his flame

so is your heart

alert,
of languages
there's none
but well she knows;
and can

perfectly speak
(snowflake
and rainbow mind
and soul
november and
april)

who younger than

begin

are,the worlds move
in your
(and rest, my love)
honour

The poem, intensely pure by Christian standards, is a love poem to woman.  I've color-coded it to help with parsing.  I will not stand by the color-coding; they are just my first glance effort and one who is more skillful than myself would probably do it differently, and better.

The poem starts and ends with a rough parallelism: "except in your honour, my loveliest, nothing may move may rest" and "the worlds move in your (and rest, my love) honour".  I do not know if, or what, significance is attached to the reworking the verses undergo from their place at the start to their place at the end.  But the parallelism binds the poem together and, I believe, sets the theme.  Everything revolves around the woman he loves, so much so, that in his heart, everything serves to honor her, regardless of what it does.  When the Pharisees chide Jesus for letting his disciples hail him as king upon his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus responds to them, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out," (Lk 19:40).  This thought, that all creation proclaims God's praise, is also found in the psalms: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork," (Ps 19:1; cf. Ps 97:6; Hab 3:3).

The woman whom the poet praises brings a "procession of wonders" abundantly sufficient ("huger than") to "prove our fears were hopes."  There is something about this woman and the things she evokes that inverts one's whole way of thinking.  She transforms the craven and base into one of the noblest of human intentions: aspiration, hope, confidence.  She draws these wonders out of "dark the earth," out of our darkened, human experience, bound and trapped otherwise by matter, and presumably time and space as a whole.

The "shy wings of because" close because explanations lose their power in her presence.  She transcends mere explanations, as the stars fly higher than any wings can.  The stars ask "why?" because they fill us with wonder and awe.  These why's are "afloat on not quite less than all of time."  The woman poses, or perhaps embodies, eternal questions, mysteries that beggar explanation.  The poet, thematically throughout his poetry, definitely prefers wonder and awe to mere knowledge and facts.  "Each why of star... gives you skilful his flame," fits a common e. e. cummings construction of inverting the order of the modifying adjective and modifying articles or pronouns.  In common English we would have "his skillful flame," but cummings loves to switch "his" and "skillful," or whatever words fill those spots in the construction (above, note "dark the earth").  The woman receives the skillful flames of the stars, as if they were gifts offered in homage to a queen.  This openness to mystery, and the deep wisdom received by the one open to mystery, enables the woman to speak every language.  ("there's none but well she knows") e. e. cummings lists some of the languages that she speaks: "snowflake and rainbow mind and soul november and april."  The rhythms and wonders of nature are the expressions of herself.

The lady is "younger than begin," a phrase I find a bit hard to read.  Is it a way of expressing her eternity, or near eternity?  Is it expressing her non-eternity, since she presumably was not present at the beginning?  Or, is this the wrong track of thinking entirely, I wonder.  Perhaps "begin" is the youngest thing since it is the place where things start off, and so younger than begin is some sort of eternal youthfulness or very youthfulness.  I am not sure.

e. e. cummings was a Catholic.  I do not know about whom he was singing, but the nearly idolatrous song is one that Catholics could almost sing in Church.  Is anyone else thinking of Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Mother of All Nations, whom the scriptures describe as crowned with the stars, clad with the sun, and standing aloft upon the moon (Rev 12:1), and whom all the souls of the just will praise (Lk 1:48), alongside her Son, for all eternity?

The Hound of Heaven

Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven" came to my mind and got me thinking.

Last night at my prayer group, a thought came back to me. It had first come to me while I was on retreat at the end of July. I think I need to focus less on doing stuff for God (as if He needed me!) and more on letting Him do stuff for me. That sounds heretical, even blasphemous to our Pelagian, go-getter culture, I am sure. I sounds vaguely backwards to me, too, I must admit. But I think I am good footing here. Jesus said of Himself, "For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many," (Mk 10:45; Mt 20:28). I cannot light a single star in the sky for God, but He can give me divine life, self-control, peace of mind, gentleness toward others, love of virtue, strength of conviction and character, and all the other things that I lack, or that are at best fleeting for me.

That I go to Mass, for instance, is not pleasing to God in the sense of making Him happy. He's in heaven. Maybe He IS heaven, if Heaven is union with Him. If He's not happy (and the Catechism teaches us that He is perfectly so) then what can someone as little as I do to make someone as BIG as Him any happier? Rather, I go to Mass because is it good for me. I do not mean it in a relativist way, as if Mass were good for me, but not for someone else. I do not mean this in a self-centered way. The point of Mass is not to make me happy (although it sometimes does), and I shouldn't stop going if it fails to do so. The point of Mass is to worship God. But I am the sort of creature designed by the Creator to worship Him in a particular way, and will never be fully satisfied with a life oriented in any other direction. So I go to Mass because He commands it, because He made me for it, because He made it for me, and because I need it.

I guess what I am getting at in my own rambling way is that I cannot spend my life trying to please others; doing good to/for others is a very different thing than merely pleasing them. With God, this distinction is even more important. To be perfectly pleasing to God, I'd have to be perfect. Happily, He knows better, even if I do not. It's hard enough to really mean, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," let alone to do it myself. While I am still a sinner on this earth, it is probably much better to let Him do it in me, rather than try to do it for Him. I have stopped trying to pile Holy Hour upon Holy Hour and rosary upon rosary. Now, it is time to start asking Him to lead me deeper into prayer, in His own way, and in His own time. "Give us this day our daily bread," (Mt 6:11) and "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Mt 6:26). It is telling that the response of Mary to the angel was not, "I will do everything that God says," but rather, "Let it be to me according to your word," (Lk 1:38).

The Modern World

e.e. cummings is an amazingly sharp critic. A weird grammarian that makes Emily Dickinson look normal, and himself no saint, still he has a depth of perception that is badly needed in the Postmodern World in which we live. Following one publisher, I have coded a bad word as Greek characters. If you can't make it out, don't worry about it. If you can, don't be offended. Enjoy.

Jehovah buried, Satan dead,
do fearers worship Much and Quick;
badness not being felt as bad,
itself thinks goodness what is meek;
obey says toc,submit says tic,
Eternity's a Five Year Plan:
if Joy with Pain shall hang in hock
who dares to call himself a man?

go dreamless knaves on shadows fed,
your Harry's Tom,your Tom is Dick;
while gadgets murder squawk and add,
the cult of Same is all the chic,
by instruments,both span and spic,
are justly measured Spic and Span:
to kiss the mike if Jew turn kike
who dares to call himself a man?

loudly for Truth have liars pled,
their heels for Freedom slaves will click;
where Boobs are holy,poets mad,
illustrious punks of Progress shriek;
when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick,
Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can:
if Hate's a game and Love's a
who dares to call himself a man?

King Christ,this world is all aleak;
and lifepreservers there are none:
and waves which only He may walk
Who dares to call himself a man.

Batter My Heart

I thought I would share with you one of my favorite poems of all times. It is by John Donne (1572-1631), and is his Holy Sonnet #74:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- by e. e. cummings

Flowers in the Pavement

Ok, so you've read me whine and rant about how we always go around wrecking God's beautiful and good plan for us. I stand by that. Today God gave me an gentle reminder, though. As I stepped out of my office building to pray some midday prayers, I looked left and saw a "blue true dream of sky" (to use e. e. cummings' words) and a row of cherry blossom trees whose green leaves and bundles of bright pink flowers billowed and shook in the breeze. It took my breath away because I hadn't been looking for it. Despite all the concrete, something natural and beautiful, a gift of God planted by men, grew unhampered in the cracks.

Atheists say that we believe in a "God of the Gaps," who serves as a convenient explanation for what we don't yet understand. They are mistaken.

Despite all of the bad things in the world, there are signs of His love all around us - God pierces through like a flower growing in the cracks of a pavement. Amidst all the concrete, cherry blossoms bloom. Amidst all the darkness of night, little stars shine. Amidst all the turmoil in the world, monasteries offer peace. Amidst all the cowardice, greed, and malice there are brave, honest, and loving people. It isn't a "God of the Gaps" we put our trust in, but rather a God of the Cracks.