Tag Archives: W. H. Auden

Being “Right” is a Pyrrhic Victory

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I’ve had a life-long battle with “being right.” It is certainly not unrelated to having been born and bred in “right-wing” social, political, and religious culture in the deep South of the United States where “rules” predominate. And it is always “rules” that makes one “right,” or allows him to think that he is. I think very early on I had a heart like most people but then I was offered a bargain, “Hey, you forgo that tumult in your heart where emotion and reason are doing battle, give in to reason and let it reign, and you will have the consolation of being ‘right.”’ So I spent the first two decades of my life assiduously striving to live according to the rules, failing to see just how closely this life-style approximated that of the Pharisees who Jesus upbraided so often. Since then, the “ruled” life has slowly given way to the burgeoning power of emotion, a process that received a boost in my mid-thirties when I discovered poetry. Now, nearly three decades later there is some indication that this warfare is getting closer to resolution as emotion and intellect are working much more in tandem than ever before. Now instead of using my intellect to rigidly carve up the world…and myself…I use this gift to seek common ground with others believing that there is a Unity that underlies this world of multiplicity.

And having those two dimensions of the heart working in tandem should be our goal. When “flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust” (Auden), we are witnessing something akin to the Spirit of God being present though the “Spirit of God” certainly needs more discussion than I choose to give it now. Reason, without the balance of emotion (or heart) is just an effort to stay in control, to tyrannize one’s own self and simultaneously try to tyrannize those around him. Therefore, Goethe was astute when he noted, “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Now occasionally the old demon of “being right” will surface again. Recently it teased me briefly and then I took the bait slipped into the “being right” mode. It was a veritable black hole for a while until I managed to right myself and escape its clutches. For, there is no end to “being right”. We have the Taliban as one example of this but we have similar expressions of the same dark force present in our own country. And, yes it got me recently. It will always be a temptation for it is so wonderful to “know” that you are right and to “set someone straight.”

I offered a snippet of Auden’s observation about this matter earlier. Now I will share the context:

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

 

Beauty Always Abounds!

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In the desert of my heart,
Let the healing fountain start.
In the prison of my days,
Teach this free man how to praise.

 

I love that poetry snippet by W. H. Auden and it is part of my daily devotional. But, I can occasionally look at it differently and be taken aback with the grim notion of a “prison of my days!” “Wow! Somebody needs to get a life,” someone might say. “Prison. Aw, come on…”

And he/she would have a point. A good poet is a pain mongerer on some level as, just as “mad Ireland…hurt” W. B. Yeats into poetry (per a W. H. Auden poem), a mad somewhere-or-another hurt most poets into their private, though beautiful, torment. And, yes, “mad Arkansas” hurt me into “other people’s poetry” as my wife once quipped!

But, anyone who sees only the pain probably needs to pause every now and then and see the beauty that abounds around him/her. Yes, I do see humankind confined to “the prison of his/her days” in that the time-space continuum does not provide us any exit. We are trapped! But, just when the prison seems most confining and unbearable, most of us can take that pause and see the luxurious beauty that surrounds us—the simple breath of life, the gift of children, the love of friends and family, the loveliness of plants and flowers, and the stunning beauty of the animal kingdom. This focus can help us escape ourselves for a moment and that is one of the basic tasks of life

 

Ignorance is Bliss

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The more I learn the more I know how little I know. (It makes me think of an old quip from a pastor of mine, “If ignorance was bliss, we’d be blistered.”)

William Butler Yeats put it this way, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun. Now may I wither into the truth.”

I once read a book entitled, “The Art of Unknowing” in which a psychiatrist explained how his clients were taught to un-learn many of the basic assumptions they had imbibed in their early life.

In the end, life comes down to mystery. We assume we know what is going on but from time to time Reality visits us and we are stunned, bewildered, and humbled. Most of the time we shut this experience out and try to arrange our lives to keep it from happening again. W. H. Auden wrote, “And Truth met him and held out her hand. But he clung in panic to his tall beliefs and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”

But we should welcome the occasion. Grace is trying to visit us. It could be amazing! And on that note, let me conclude with a thought from the poet Mary Oliver:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms

Viva la Difference!!!!

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I think most of the time we live our lives on automatic pilot, blithely be-bopping along listening to the tune of our prejudices and self-serving certainties. This is a problem individually and collectively. But occasionally, reality (or might I say “Reality”) intrudes and we are given pause. As W. H. Auden said, “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive.”

My dear friend, soul-mate, and sweet heart Emily Dickinson knew something about this exposure. In the following poem she poignantly and vividly describes a visitation of this always present Presence:

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the heft (or weight)
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

Difference is scary. In literature and philosophy there is a lot of discussion of “difference” and its meaning in our world culture. But difference is scary as hell as we naturally prefer to live in our comfortable, smug little world of certainty. I love the way Emily set this poem up with “There’s a certain slant of light…that oppresses, like the heft of cathedral tunes.” She then addresses the “heavenly hurt” that has been sent and though it leaves no “scars” it does leave the gut-wrenching phenomena of “difference” in our heart.

But who would ever opt for “hurt” of any kind, even “heavenly” hurt?!!!! To mature spiritually, however, we have to find the temerity…and Grace…to fore-go our own interests and need for comfort and allow “difference” to visit us. This visitation makes us acutely aware of our own mortality, of the ephemeral nature of the world we live in, and the connection we have with everyone else…and even with this lovely world itself.

 

Jeremiah 17:9 and Self-deception

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Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.” I used to read this verse and cringe…and often in my youth  preached “hell fire and damnation” from it…but now I have the temerity to interpret it myself. I no longer think it means that we are scum buckets but it does mean that the “heart” is problematic and the reason is that it believes, by nature, only what it wants to believe. This verse is telling us that our heart can lead us but we must remember that, without a discerning spirit about us, it will usually mislead us as we are intrinsically wont to interpret things in a self-serving manner. Therefore, we can go ahead and “interpret” and make other judgments, but we just can’t be too smug and even arrogant about wielding our “truth” like a hammer. There is always more to the picture. And that is why we need others, and a spiritual context, to give us feedback about our interpretations.

And we must try to make sure they are not just like ourselves as that is not really feedback. We must think, and live, outside the bubble! Yes, history confirms there have been “desperately wicked” people and suggests there will continue to be from time to time. I suggest they they are those who are most enclosed in some “comfy” bubble, those that W. H. Auden had in mind when he noted, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

Case in point—the Taliban in Afghanistan. How isolated and insular can you be? But, are we not guilty of the same, to some degree? Is that not the predicament of our two political parties, each dug in at the heels and unwilling to compromise, irresolutely sure of themselves? How insular and self-serving can you be when you make political decisions based primarily, if not wholly, on “Will this help me get re-elected?” There is reality outside of re-electability. There are things more important, such as the welfare of this country. And, the core issue is, “Do I believe in a reality (Reality) outside of myself?” Our culture often does not appear to and our politicians reflect our values.
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The Meaning of the Cross

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New Testament imagery is rich, particularly if one is willing to explore the imagery and interpret them in personal rather than doctrinaire terms. Let’s look briefly at the image of the Cross and its evocative power.

The Cross means different things to different people. For some it is merely an historical event which they interpret in terms of time and space; and that is fine for them. I prefer to take that dimension of the image and broaden it to include various layers of meaning, layers which are actually infinite as is the case with any meaningful symbol or myth.

For example, this morning over coffee my wife was perusing my blog and came across a recent reference to the Cross. She noted that in art it represents two divergent lines intersecting. This brought to my mind a line from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets where he presented the Christian image of the Cross as a “union of opposite spheres of existence.”

Here is the context of Eliot’s observation which I think reveals a profound grasp of the meaning of the Cross:

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint –
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement –
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;

The Crucifixion, including not merely this cross but Jesus upon it, is a powerful metaphor of transformation, of death, burial, and resurrection. It is an image of a psychic transformation in which we are integrated on a new level, where (to borrow from my beloved W. H. Auden) “where flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust.” When this happens, the incarnation has occurred. But, as Eliot noted, for most of us we don’t fully get it and are reduced to the effort, to “prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.” But that is the miracle of Grace—it comes to us when we give up the struggle and find that is is present even in our feeble, immature, ego-ridden spiritual fumblings.  It comes to us, often piece-meal, only when we cease to struggle and start to relax, not just in the “arms of Jesus” but at the same time in our own body.  (I’ll let you know when I’ve worked that out! wink, wink)

To use a different, though relevant image, from Auden, “The Center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. There is no need to despair for I am already there.”

Now at one time in my life, just the juxtaposition of “symbol and myth” and the New Testament was anathema. There was no room allowed for interpretation, for hermeneutics. The consequence of this rigidity is slavish devotion to the letter of the law and we all know what Paul said “the letter of the law” does.

 

Casting an “affirming flame” on election day!

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A Mennonite pastor has organized a nation-wide communion service on election day. I enclose the CNN on-line link to the article about this effort and its rationale: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/03/my-take-on-election-day-proclaiming-my-loyalty-to-jesus/?hpt=hp_c1

I’m very impressed. An event like this helps us to remember that “this is not about us”, at least not in an exclusive sense. There is an “otherness” present in the world that we often forget about in our day to day life and certainly in the intensity of political debate. The event is a simple, brief bowing of our heads (literally or figuratively) and recognizing this “otherness” (Otherness). It is a simple shift of focus for a moment and recognition that we are finite creatures in a complex world and that a Mystery that is beyond our comprehension is present in our life, individually and collectively. A refrain of mine is, “Mental illness is a reference problem.” In ceremonies such as this we offer a momentary deference to an external reference point that is sorely lacking in our world consciousness.

I want to share a poem by W. H. Auden that is relevant to gestures like this:

Defenseless under the night,
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
ironic points of light
Flash out whever the Just
Exchange their messages.
May I,composed like them
of Eros and Dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

May we each day, in word and deed, show an affirming flame.  It is so easy to do otherwise.

W. H. Auden “Sept 1, 1939”

Heavy Hearts Need Loose Lips

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The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

These words from King Lear are very important to me, taking significance in my life at a very critical juncture decades ago when I was just learning about feelings. Shakespeare here taught me that it was important to just “let go” and value what I was feeling and deign to verbalize re these feelings.. This was critical as I had spent the first half of my life carefully monitoring myself and “thinking” and “saying” only what I “ought to say.” Yes, there were times when, like a kid with a new toy, I over did it and expressed some feelings at times when I should not have. But not often; and when I did, I usually did so with friends who were understanding.

And then for a few years I had the opportunity to facilitate this skill when I worked as a counselor, teaching young teen-agers the importance of their feelings and the value of expressing them, not only with words, but with art, music, and dance. It was very powerful to witness a young person make this discovery and watch many of them flourish. And I’ve seen the same phenomena with friends and acquaintances over the decades as the course of one’s life can grant maturity and with it the temerity to value one’s own subjective experience.

But I often overlook the first phrase of this Shakespearean observation—the weight of this sad time we must obey. Our culture’s disdain for feelings accumulates over the eons and becomes very “heavy.” And with this “heaviness” comes a profound sadness. And this sadness will be alleviated only when we “unpack our heart with words” (Shakespeare, “Hamlet”) and entertain the realm of “feeling which loosens rather than ties the tongue. (W. H. Auden.)

 

W. H. Auden on Love, Marriage, and Conflict

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W. H. Auden really had an unusual approach to life which is one of the reasons he was such a great poet. He felt that male and female were poles apart in their essence and that their union produces great passion, great intensity, and that at the root of it all lies violence. “Outside the civil garden of everyday love lurks the passion to destroy and be destroyed,” he noted in one poem. Of course, he was addressing the deep dimensions of the unconscious which most of us avoid with some version of an “Ozzie and Harriet” relationship. In the following poem he likens marriage to “particles pelting” each other in some inter-galactic conflagration:

If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and sos,
Futility, and grime
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do
Or the atoms in our brain.

Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely, it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
Around a universe
In which a lover’s kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one’s neck.

Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel,
Since year after year it repels
An aging suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet, Euclidean space—
Exploded myths, but who
Would feel at home a-straddle
An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for—
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude’s extremes
Really becomes a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.
(“After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics”)

Quelling our “howling appetites”

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Our life task is calming the savage beast that lives within, that dimension of life which W. H. Auden described as, “our howling appetites.” This is a battle that we fight individually and collectively. As a nation, for example, we should ask, “How can we satisfy our hunger without becoming rapacious?” And with our colonial past, we definitely have a history of rapacity as does most of the rest of the “developed” world.

The 8th century Indian poet Shantideva put it this way:

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But (just) leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it

Likewise it is not possible for me
To restrain the external course of things
But should I restrain this mind of mine
What would be the need to restrain all else?
(Shantideva)

The writer of Proverbs captured the truth in these two verses, “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls” (25:28); and, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city” (25:28)  Or, as someone else has said, “We can’t change the world, but we can change the eyes through which we view the world.”   And I conclude with my oft-quoted word from Auden, “We wage the war we are.”