Tag Archives: Gerard Manley Hopkins

e e cummings and misplaced concreteness

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything began
when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because.

I read this e e cummings poem 25 years ago and have had it in my memory ever since.  It is very complex and even beyond my comprehension on some level.  Yet, I love it and it sticks with me and this fact reveals that it has great truth for me. This poem speaks to me.
I will forego the first stanza as that is beyond me.  But the second stanza deals with mankind’s fallenness, his sinfulness, his bondage to the time-space continnum, and his inability/unwillingness to venture out of that domain into freedom.  The essence of this 2nd stanza is man’s inability/unwillingness to escape the cause-effect mind-set, very much related to the time-space continuum.  And cummings realized that as long as we live there, as long as we are rooted there, we ensconced in a world that will be destroyed as it is an ephemeral world.
I have read enough in quantum physics to understand that scientists see the cause-effect domain as something that is perceptual in nature.  In fact, they would say everything is perceptual.  Some loudly protest at this point, announcing with vehemence, “Oh no, they are nihilists, saying that nothing is real.!”  I don’t think that is necessarily the case and it is certainly not the case with me.  It is just that there is a Real beyond that which we take for “real” and that Real is known only by faith.  Those who mistake the common-place world, the everyday world, the physical world as “real’ are guilty of the sin of misplaced concreteness,“chasing the shade and letting the Real be.” (John Masefield)
I just can’t wrap my head around this, however.  I believe this, and know it intuitively, but cannot understand it completely.  But the very desire to “understand it completely” is the fallen mind at work, trying to grasp and own its own spiritual nature as if it is something we can objectively apprehend.  But our “spiritual nature” is something we are…one might say “Someone” we are…and not something that we can apprehend.
Now a caveat is very important.  I am not advocating rejection of the cause-effect world.  That would be lunacy and the attempt to do so would be even more lunatic.  I am suggesting that meaning and value is given this cause-effect world when we intuitive recognize and respect…and surrender to…the Real which lies beyond the grasp of our rational mind.  And, all we have to do is to learn our own ignorance and recognize the Intelligence that graces this void that we live in, an Intelligence that has visited us on occasion.
I close with an excerpt from “The Habit of Pefection” by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear. Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: 5 It is the shut, the curfew sent From there where all surrenders come Which only makes you eloquent. Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark And find the uncreated light: 10 This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Paean to Ignorance

I really believe in ignorance!  I guess I watched too much of Hogan’s Heroes and remember the wisdom of Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothing, nothing, nothing.”  I remember a wonderful pastor from my youth who would quip, “If ignorance was bliss, we would all be blistered.”

Yes, I’m intelligent, well educated, erudite as heck!  I can throw 35 cent words around for nickle ideas like anyone.  But, to quote the observation of Paul, the “wisdom of this world is come to nought.”  We don’t know jack!  For, words are but means to an end, they lead us to the truth, they lead us to the precipice of Truth,  but we can never cross over and apprehend the truth in a definitive fashion.  The Truth only glimmers our way and then only on occasion.  For example, one such “glimmering” was the life of Jesus.  And in the course of my life I have seen a “glimmer” or two but admittedly nothing that matches the Light that Jesus brought into the world.  And the “glimmerings” that I have been privy too have never been cognitive;  they have been the Light of Christ manifested in the life of other persons, some of them not card-carrying, born-again, USDA certified “Christians.”

So, let’s get ignorant today and hear a primordial word.

For example, Gerard Manley Hopkins noted in The Habit of Perfection:

Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe to me pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From where all surrenders come
Which alone makes you eloquent.

And then there is William Butler Yeats who wrote:

Throughout all the lying days of my youth
I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.
Now may I wither into the Truth.

prayer

I pray daily now.  One could even say that I follow the biblical admonishment and “Pray without ceasing.”  But this “praying without ceasing” is not what I used to think it was.  I do not go around compulsively praying.  My prayer is more of an attitude of prayer, of simple acknowledgement of God’s presence and an expression of gratitude for the blessings and beauty of life.  I like the Buddhist notion of “mindfulness” and this might describe what I mean by prayer.  “Mindfulness” is just paying attention from time to time at what is going on in one’s life, in one’s day to day experience.  For example, in recent weeks it has meant being “mindful” at the beauty of a yellow warbler cavorting in the underbrush on the shores of the lake, or a mockingbird sipping water from a birdbath, or a Great Blue Heron gently and elegantly patrolling his station on the lake.  It has meant being “mindful” of the first taste of coffee in the morning, or savoring a fine glass of wine, or spending time with friends—and certainly with my lovely wife.

 

Prayer has a meditative dimension.  It facilitates focus, the reining-in of a mind that is prone to wonder, of a mind that is often consumed with idle chatter.  The Bible admonishes, “Be still and know that I am God.”  The “being still” is often difficult but spiritual wisdom tells us that it is only in primordial stillness that we can acknowledge our Source.  Gerard Manley Hopkins noted:

 

ELECTED Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

 

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:       

 5 It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.