Category Archives: poetry and prose

Macbeth and the Unconscious

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Macbeth confessed, “My dull brain is wracked by things forgotten.” Thus, he admitted that he was haunted by things his brain had “forgotten” which is to say his “dull brain” had not really “forgotten” them. In other words, he was beset by his unconscious.

Such is the human lot. We cannot escape the haunt of our unconscious depths, those unseemly fears, anxieties, and beastly impulses which civilization does not permit. And they have this unearthly way of slipping out when we are least expecting it. For example, I can’t help but speculate what led Michelle Bachman to select the term “deep penetration” recently in reference to her perceived infiltration of our government by Muslim extremists. Or, perhaps I’m just a dirty old man!

And the unconscious has a collective as well as an individual dimension. For example, note the present conservative emphasis on drawing boundaries between “us and them”, most obviously in their emphasis of building a fence to keep the Mexicans out. Yes, I do think they over emphasize boundaries. But, I readily acknowledge that we liberals are too prone to not set boundaries readily enough, that we are too quick to trot out the Bill Clinton “I feel your pain” and attempt to do too much to assuage the public ills.

 

Desperate lovliness

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BRIGHT CONVERSATION WITH SAINT-EX
BY Carl Sandburg

There is a desperate lovliness to be seen
In certain flowers and bright weeds on certain planets.
With the weeds I have held long conversations
And I found them intelligent
Even though desperate and lovely.
The flowers however met me with shortspoken,
“Yes” and “No” and “Why”were their favorite words,
And they had other slow monosyllables.
They seemed to find it more difficult
Than the gaudy garrulous bright weeds
To be intelligent, desperate, and lovely.
Take a far journey now, my friend, to certain planets.
Meet then certain flowers and bright weeds and ask them
What are the dark winding roots of their desperate lovliness.
See whether you bring back the same report as mine.
See whether certain long conversations
And certain slow practices monosyllables
Haunt you and keep coming back to haunt you.
For myself, my friend, I have come to believe on certain planets anything can happen.

I think that “loveliness” always has desperate, winding roots. Most of my clinical practice was in an alternative school and this adolescents could best be described as the “weeds” that Sandburg described here. It was stunning to see how astute and intelligent so many of them were even though often they were such failures in mainstream classrooms.

 

Rumi’s Oyster Shell and Politics

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Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl. (Rumi)

Rumi’s concern is the distinction between what is real and what is unreal; or, as noted yesterday, between the ephemeral and the essential. The inability…or unwillingness…to recognize this distinction permeates our culture and is apparent where ever we choose to focus. For example, let’s take our current political morass. The prevailing focus of our politicians appears to be one thing—electability and then getting re-elected. To accomplish these purposes, they are willing to prostitute themselves to their base, to focus groups, and ultimately to the electorate. It is as if nothing else matters. Our country suffers. Our world suffers. And yet these politicians continue to focus on one thing—How do I get elected or re-elected and how does my political party get in power or maintain power?

Of course, these politicians merely reflect the values of our culture. Our culture produced them. If someone happened along who actually believed in something, someone who represented value, he/she would not be “electable” in our current environment.

So, what is the answer? Hmmm. Well, the answer lies in the realm of the Spirit but I hesitate to tender that notion as it opens a can of worms. I could discourse at length on the subject…and have…but let me cut to the chase and say this involves looking beneath the surface of things. But we don’t believe there is anything underneath the surface. We believe only in the oyster shell.

No less a luminary than Einstein deigned to look beneath the surface and he found there what he called a “mystery” and said that this evoked a “religious sentiment” in his heart. But we are so afraid of the “mystery” as it would threaten our illusion of being in control.

 

Wisdom from Rumi

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I have discoursed before about the sin of “misplaced concreteness.” I think it was C.S. Lewis who offered the term to me. This sin is the error of taking to be real that which is only ephemeral; and, it is a sin which is intrinsic to human nature. It seems to be so pronounced in our modern world with its insane consumerism but it has always been around in some shape, form, or fashion.

Shakespeare often harped on this issue. I strongly recommend you check out his sonnet 146, one of my favorite. And just recently I came across a quote from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who noted, “Everyone is afraid of death, but the real sufi’s just laugh; nothing tyrannizes their heart. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.”

Our task is to always be aware of the “oyster shell” and its tyranny, realizing that inside there is a “pearl of great price” which cries out for attention and respect. I think this is what Jesus had in mind when he posed the question, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”

 

Trashing Richard Rohr!

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I can’t stand Richard Rohr. He is a thief! Yes, I have all of these wonderful, deeply-spiritual, sublime thoughts and he puts them into print (or blog) before I do! And there he is rich and famous and I’m a mere Southern ne’er-do-well mired in the bowels of the blog-o-sphere!

Seriously, I love that man. He says everything I could ever say and says it much more eloquently and humbly than I could ever manage. I should do as I have threatened and merely let me blog consist each day of a link to Richard Rohr’s blog. (And, btw, Franciscan monks do not get rich!)

On a related note, I feel validated when I run across someone like Rohr. Conrad Aiken once noted, “This is peace to know our thoughts known.” And that is very important if life has you on an “unbeaten path” trajectory which has always been my lot. I also find this validation often here on the blog-o-sphere, crossing the path of other kindred spirits, some of which I have already shared the following Archibald MacLeish quote: Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.

Here is Rohr’s blog posting of today:

HEALING OUR VIOLENCE

If the self doesn’t find some way to connect radically with Being, it will live in anxiety and insecurity. The false self is inherently insecure. It’s intrinsically fragile, grasping for significance. That’s precisely because it is insignificant! So it grabs atthings like badges and uniforms and titles and hats and flags to give itself importance and power. People talk about dying for the flag of their country. They don’t realize that the Bible would definitely call that idolatry. What were you before you were an American? Will you be an American in heaven? Most of us don’t know how to answer those questions without a spiritual journey and an inner prayer life.
In prayer you will discover who you were before you were male, before you were female, before you were black, before you were white, before you were straight, before you were gay, before you were Lutheran, Mormon, or Amish. Have you ever lived there? At that naked place, you will have very little to defend, fight about, compete with, overcome, hate, or fear. You are then living in the Reign of God, or what Buddha calls the Great Compassion. Violence is unneeded and undesired.
Adapted from Healing Our Violence
Through the Journey of Centering Prayer (CD)
Prayer:
We are love, and we are made for love,
and our natural abiding place is love.

 

Nuanced Prayer of St. Anselm

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I came across a beautiful prayer by St. Anselm that I wish to share. This prayer is so foreign to how I was taught to pray decades ago. It is so convoluted, complex, and paradoxical. I guess one could call it poetical. Prayer requires nuance and St. Anselm had a nuanced faith.

O Lord my God,
Teach my heart this day where and how to see you,
Where and how to find you.
You have made me and remade me,
And you have bestowed on me
All the good things I possess,
And still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that
For which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
For I cannot seek you
Unless you teach me,
Or find you
Unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire,
Let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you,
Let me love you when I find you.

 

Hope in the Darkness

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Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame. (from “September 1, 1939”)

This is one of my favorite snippets of W. H. Auden‘s poetry.  I interpret “the Just” to be those who feel just, one might even say “justified”, those who are at peace with themselves and their Source and can communicate openly with other likeminded souls.  The same “negation and despair” besets these people that besets the rest of the human race, but these persons have found the grace to communicate openly.  And when they do so, they “cast an affirming flame.”

Our Debt to the Poets

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The poet, to whose mighty heart Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,

Subdues that energy to scan Not his own course, but that of man.

Matthew Arnold here describes what I love about poets. They have such tremendous insight, not only about their own heart, but about the human condition. For if you understand one human heart, you pretty well have a grasp over the rest of them. Yes, a poet’s heart bears the burden of a “quicker pulse” and he/she uses words to subdue that energy and translate it into meaningful, verbal form. Most of us lost that “quicker pulse” early in our life as our heart became organized into the “right” way of perceiving and understanding the world. We must depend on the poets…and other artists…to teach us about other ways of looking at the world.

Prayer

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“My words fly up. My thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” King Claudius uttered this lament as he knelt in prayer with young Hamlet hovering nearby with murderous intent.

I think this is one of the pithiest notes about prayer that I’ve ever come across. Shakespeare was saying that for prayer to take place, words and thoughts must be conjoined and offered up wholeheartedly. In other words, there must be a singleness of purpose, a sublime focus. There must be meditation.

Emptiness is All

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Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

Thus did Lao Tzu encourage us to look to what is not to find meaning for that which is. Now I’m aware of how crazy that sounds. I think it is highly relevant to our current flirtation with the Hoggs Boson particle, that particle which might explain why there is something and not nothing. Ok, ok. I’m aware that that sounds crazy.

But let me put it into plain English. Lao Tzu, Jesus, et al were merely saying, “Hey guys (and gals), things are not as they seem. Look beneath the surface. There lies Reality. Just deign to look at things differently.”   This is relevant to what the philosopher Ricoeur said, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.”