No Escaping H2O

It was one of those literary works dubbed "classics" that high-school students in my day were required to read and study, even though we ourselves would never have chosen it for our reading entertainment.  It was the exotic, multi-page poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).  Even today, literary critics recognize Coleridge as having been one of the most insightful minds of his time.

The dead albatross hangs from the mariner's neck.

We high-schoolers, knowing we could not escape from the Ancient-Mariner poem, set our minds to finding some intriguing elements in that famous literary work.  We latched onto the bizarre plot development of the sailor in the poem having a dead albatross hung around his neck as a punishment.  We tried to enjoy Coleridge's rhythm and alliteration in some of the stanzas we memorized. For example, here is the description of the plight of the thirsty sailors when their sailing-ship becomes stranded on a windless ocean of undrinkable saltwater, the boards of the ship's deck even shrinking under the hot sun:

              "Water, water everywhere,
           And all the boards did shrink;
               Water, water everywhere
                 Nor any drop to drink."

Those lines popped into my head when I was reflecting upon some of the disturbing news events during the summer of 2022.  In Kentucky, freak floods occurred day after day, killing many.  At the same time, in the southwest of the U.S., the level of the Colorado River -- which several states depended upon for water -- had reached a record low.  Affected by climate change, the news about water was either "too much" or "too little."

There thus has been no escape from being concerned about water.  Even astronomers were searching for signs of it on far-off planets as evidence of the possibility of life elsewhere than on Earth.  Along with biologists, astronomers know that the common denominator of all forms of life we know about is water -- that remarkable liquid formed when atoms of the gas hydrogen and the gas oxygen bond together.

The common interest in water during the summer of 2022 (from the people of Kentucky to those living in the Southwest to even astronomers) was a contrast to most of the sentiments expressed publicly during that year.  More common had been polarized views that suggested that half of the population of people in the U.S. had nothing at all in common with the other half.  But water -- in some way -- became a common concern

Mariner shoots
the  albatross
with his crossbow

Why had the mariner's ship become stymied on a windless ocean?  The answer goes back to why that albatross had been hung around the mariner's neck as a punishment.  He had, for no reason, recklessly shot that great white bird that had been accompanying the ship for several days "for food or play."  The mariner had disregarded the fact that the presence of an albatross had traditionally been considered by sailors to be a good omen.  The poem suggests that there are moral laws to the universe that set limits which humans cannot pass without ensuing consequences.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote at a time when poetry tended to moralize more than it does today.  Nevertheless, if he were writing his tale of the mariner today, I would hope he would still include in its final stanzas another set of lines we memorized in high school. 
They go like this:

"He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

~ ~ ~

(Do any of the lines of Coleridge spark any thoughts or feelings in you?)

(All quotations are from Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
 taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by M.H. Abrams, et al., ©1968.)
(Both pictures are in the public domain.)

Finding Joy despite the Shadow of Sadness

 The Covid pandemic of 2020 and 2021 has forced everyone in the world to live with a shadow cast over their lives.  Sometimes that shadow has become greater with the loss of a family member or friend.  Even for those who have not experienced that kind of loss and grief directly, life has become more circumscribed with social-distancing and other restriction for safety.  We all need to be able to find a kind of joy -- even if only a small hidden joy -- despite the pandemic. That is why I found the following article from Wisdom in Leaves five years ago uplifting.  I hope it can also be so for you. It was titled "Laughing Beneath the Meteors."

~ ~ ~

What was it about the written reminiscence that made it so appealing?  Why could I so easily identify with the firsthand experience that was being described, and with the inner feeling the writer remembered?  It was a recollection by a poet in his twenties, thinking back to an occasion of nighttime camaraderie with peers:

"Some day I must tell how we sang, shouted, whistled, and danced through the dark lanes....  and how we laughed till the meteors showered round us,

 and we fell calm under the winter stars.

 And some of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time.

 And seeing it so far above us, and feeling the good road so safe beneath us,

 we praised God with louder whistling...."

As I read this recollection, I almost wished I were there myself.  The cool night air.  The feeling of relaxation among friends.  The happiness and contentment.  The star-filled sky above.  The wonder of a sudden meteor shower.

Even as relaxing and restorative as those things were, there was also a deeper layer that gently emerged.  It seemed to have to do with that experience young people can have when they feel their youthful idealism beginning to be channeled into the paths of their individual identities:

"[S]ome of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time."

I felt as if I knew those subjective emotions because I had experienced them myself at that stage of adolescence:  The paradox of joyful freedom despite not knowing what the future will hold. The only thing I had not experienced as such was the meteor shower.  But I still felt as if I could understand the meaning of what the author described.  Today, in our U.S. popular culture, such things as meteors get mentioned mostly in the form of the fear that a massive asteroid might hit the Earth, bringing devastation.  Modern science also tells us that our sun will eventually burn out, bringing death to the Earth.  Terrifying scenarios caused by uncontrollable events in outer space abound (guaranteeing work for screenwriters of disaster movies).  In contrast, the young poet remembers laughing with his companions as the meteors rained down.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

The reminiscence has a power of its own.  But it is given added poignancy by knowing that it was written by the British poet Wilfred Owen, who died at the age of 25, fighting in World War I.  Owen's war poems have a sensitivity of feeling not unlike that which is revealed in this reminiscence, shared by letter with a friend the year before Owen was killed in battle.

To me, the reminiscence, even as brief as it is, conveys an experience of belonging.  The combination of the companionship of friends and the surrounding realm of Nature convey a sense of ultimate belonging.  Wilfred Owen is now gone.  But nighttime is still cooler than the day. Overhead, there are still stars.  And there is still, I am sure, at least one more shooting star ready to be seen as it pierces the air
we breath.

~~~

Have you ever experienced a moment of deep contentment while you were in Nature?

(Owen's reminiscence is quoted in "Memoir (1931)" by Edmund Blunden,

in the Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, © 1963.  p. 172.)

(The photograph of Owen is in the Public Domain because its copyright has expired.)

Being Inspired Even at a Distance

The Covid pandemic that began in 2020 put a kink in many people's usual plans for summer vacations, even in 2021, when vaccines were available for most adults in the U.S.  Life had changed, turning many in-person gatherings into virtual gatherings.  Adults had to depend more upon their memories of firsthand experiences they once had. And children needed to rely more on second-hand knowledge and their imaginations.  As I reflected on that situation, the following Wisdom in Leaves article, published four years previously, seemed particularly relevant.  It was titled "Hearing the Sea in a Shell."

~ ~ ~

It is an experience every child should have for the first time:  Holding a large shell to one's ear and hearing the sound of "the sea" supposedly still in the shell. How many parents or grandparents have initiated their child or grandchild to seashore wonders by instructing the child to "hear the ocean" in that way?  How many children have smiled upon first hearing the sound a large seashell makes, imagining for a moment they really heard the sea?  I recognize that an acoustical scientist could give a good, detailed explanation for the perhaps puzzling effect.  But I am more interested in how that experience can be an opening to how we and all things are part of a larger whole.  That is the very matter the poet William Wordsworth explored in his long poem The Excursion.

Even though the sea-in-seashell symbol could be a good literary opening, it appears in the middle of Wordsworth's poem when, in his memory, he sees himself as a boy:

"A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for from within were heard

Murmurings, whereby the monitor [the shell] expressed

Mysterious union with its native sea."

In the very next line, Wordsworth opens up the metaphor of how -- if we orient ourselves properly -- we can "hear" in the natural world intimations ("Murmurings") of a larger, deeper reality:  "Even such a shell the universe itself / Is to the ear of Faith...."  Moreover, Wordsworth later addresses his words to a larger divine Spirit that includes all of our own spirits, just "as the sea her waves."

The magic of children innocently believing (at least for a moment) they are hearing the sea in a shell derives from a child's wonderful delight in first discovering the world.  And so, a stanza early in the poem began with the statement "Such was the Boy."

oil portrait of
William Wordsworth
by Benjamin Haydon

Even though we adults cannot actually return to our childhoods, Wordsworth expresses how, even in old age, our memory can restore to us some of our original exaltation. That ability of memory to recreate something not physically present is similar to the seashell's ability to recreate the physical ocean, which is not physically present:

"If the dear faculty of sight should fail,

Still, it may be allowed me to remember

What visionary powers of eye and soul

In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top

Of some huge hill -- expectant, I beheld

The sun rise up, from distant climes returned....

... my spirit was entranced

With joy exalted to beatitude...."

~~~

Are there ways you restore contact and communion with those who are not physically present?

(The two large excerpts are from Book IV, "Despondency Corrected" of The Excursion [1814]

That full section of the book-like poem can be read at this external link:  The Excursion, Book IV.)

Still One Sun and One Moon

The poem by Amanda Gorman that she read during the presidential inauguration in January of 2021 evoked my memories of other inauguration poets.  The following thoughts -- which I wrote five-and-a-half years ago -- still seem relevant. Perhaps poets' reflections are of more lasting value than much of  today's tweets.

~ ~ ~

The reading of a poem by a designated poet has now become a regular part of U.S. presidential inauguration ceremonies. The first reading was at the inauguration of JFK in 1961.  The already well-known and highly esteemed poet Robert Frost brought a copy of his new poem "Dedication" to read.  No inaugural poet has had to face the elements and imperfect technology the way Frost did.  I remember watching on TV. Frost stood at a podium where an electrical fire had been put out; a bitterly cold wind rattled the sheets of paper he held; and the intense sun blinded his eyes.  The sun won out.  And so, unable to read further, Frost finished by reciting from memory an older poem, "The Gift Outright."

Over the past decade or so, inaugural poets have been less known, but that has not meant that their poems, usually written for the occasion, have been forgotten.  I remember in particular there having been quite of bit of favorable comment about the poem "One Today" read by Richard Blanco at the Obama inauguration in 2013.  The comments about the poem afterwards on radio and TV showed how it had been especially accessible and meaningful to many.  In his poem, Blanco employed the opening image of "one sun" rising in the eastern U.S. and moving across the continent to depict and tie together the varied lives of people as they awoke and arose to their day's regular activities.  Occasionally, a specific detail added depth to the more general descriptions:

"My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,

...on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives --

to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did...."

The poem continued the theme of unity by using the phrases "one sky" and "one moon."

That modern poem came back to my mind when I recently read, of all things, an 8th-century Buddhist stanza.  It was by Yung-chia Ta-shih, and goes like this:

"One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures,

One Reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.

The one Moon reflects itself whenever there is a sheet of water,

And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon."

Even when I was in early elementary school, and read introductory books about astronomy, scientists knew that the planets of our own solar system varied in whether they had one moon, no moon, or more than one.  Astronomers' inventory of our universe is now so vast that we have numerous examples of the variety of moons that orbit about each planet in many planetary systems.  We also now know that other planetary systems sometimes have not a single star but a star system at their center.

If our own solar system did have more than one sun, or if our Earth had more than one moon, I would hope we would still have poets to remind us that we are all ultimately one people.  And also have poets to at times stretch our minds a little farther, by reminding us that all Life on this planet is ultimately One Life.

~~~

Is there some way you try to come back to an awareness of our unity amidst differences?

(The Japanese print is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

(The Buddhist verse is taken from The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, © 1945, p. 8.)
(The 2013 poem "One Today" by Richard Blanco can be read at this external link:  "One Today".)

Halloween, and Civilizing Nature

Although I cannot remember her name, I remember hearing on the radio several years ago an Asian-American woman relating her immigrant family’s first encounter with Halloween.  As they experienced it, one evening in October, an unknown child knocked at their door.  And, as best they could understand it through the language barrier, the child was wanting something sweet to eat.  Although not having made any preparations for this unexpected visitor, the family did their best to satisfy the child's seeming hunger because they knew from their own background in Asia the dangers of malnutrition and starvation.

But within the hour, another child came to the door of the family's home!  And then still another child, again asking for something to eat.  The family, having soon exhausted their supply of sweets, went to their refrigerator to get more food, but had only some pickled cucumber to give to the child, which they did.  Hearing this story, I could not help but laugh as I imagined the expression of a trick-or-treating child being given pickled cucumber instead of a Snickers bar.

This anecdote, besides providing humor, gives some insight into aspects of our human nature.  Our current-day Halloween has mostly lost any real threat that children will perform some practical joke against us (some "trick") if we do not provide a treat as requested.  The Halloween tradition has evolved into the form of giving candy to unknown children to match their preference for sweets.  And with that act of giving, we extend ourselves beyond our human tendencies to hoard for ourselves, or to share primarily with those closest to us, such as our own family.  Halloween thus embodies a suppression of some aspects of our human nature (selfishness) coupled with the encouragement of other aspects of our human nature (compassion for others).

Even in its earlier manifestation that included real tricks, Halloween embodied a channeling and civilizing of potentially troublesome aspects of human nature.  Namely, the danger of children acting out their powerlessness and frustration by destroying something adults own.  Instead of such destructiveness, on one night each year, children (if they did so anonymously) were allowed to perform practical jokes against adults, such as rubbing soap on a house's windows.  That sort of channeling of childhood powerlessness into tricks has been mostly dropped from the celebration.  The gifts of candy are now usually freely given to any child who rings the doorbell.

There is much argument today about what is our "human nature."  And the choices are often presented in terms of opposites.  This is nothing new.  Three centuries ago, Alexander Pope wrote of humans:

"Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,...

He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;"

It does not require much reflection to realize we have sometimes unjustly indicted animals ("beasts") for seeming faults that we possess as humans.  Nevertheless, Pope's point about the tension within our human natures still stands.  On Halloween night, some children do play the role of the "beast" within them by costuming themselves as monsters. And we adults aim to act out the more generous nature within us by giving candy.

Maybe there also lies waiting at the heart of Halloween a deeper mystery that we might know if we could develop a reverence within ourselves.  That reverence would be woven through with humility, because it would be the act of adults (with all their powers) leaning down to children in an act of giving.  The result could be an experience of self-transcendence.  A century ago, the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore captured the wonder of such a loving act in one of what he called his "song offerings."

Rabindranath Tagore

"When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands,
 I know why there is honey in the cup of the flower
 and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice -- 

when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands....

When I bring to you coloured toys, my child,
 I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds,
 on water, and why flowers are painted in tints -- 

when I give coloured toys to you, my child."

~ ~ ~

(How do you think we might nurture the human qualities Tagore expresses, even if we do not have children of our own?)

(The Pope quotation is from Essay on Man, II, 1.)

(The Tagore quotation is from his book Gitanjali, © 1913, no. 62.)

(All the photos are in the Public Domain.)

The Mathematics of Miracles

Although most people have never read Walt Whitman's long poem "Song of Myself" in its entirety, many people have heard or read stanzas taken from it.  One such stanza concerns a mouse.  The poem as a whole is Whitman's celebration of all people and all of the natural world as they resonate through Whitman's experience of himself in the world.  The mouse appears in these lines:

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

... And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

Whitman has, of course, chosen a mouse in part because of its small size -- in contrast to many Christians of his day citing grand events as miracles. But when I first read that line in college, I was able to appreciate his choice of a mouse because I had for awhile had a pet white mouse when I was in high-school.  My mouse was part of a science project.  (The mouse was not going to be harmed in any way -- I was too soft-hearted for that.  I was just going to try to measure its output of carbon dioxide.)

Whitman's statement "a mouse is miracle" evoked my memory of my little white mouse's miraculous features when observed up close:  The slender flexibility of its tail.  The softness of its body despite so much energy.  Its countless white hairs.  Its small round eyes. (Can they really see like mine, although being so tiny?).  Its pointed nose, always seemingly sniffing.  The way it bent its body slightly from side to side as it explored its world.

John Donne

Whitman's line about the mouse came back to me recently when I read a quotation by a poet who lived two centuries before Whitman.  It was an observation by the poet and church minister John Donne, which struck me as being insightful:  "There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of Nature, and which is therefore done every day, but would seem a miracle and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once;... The ordinary thing in Nature would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once... and only the daily doing takes off the admiration."  Donne points us toward everyday miracles.

Today, most mainstream Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologians would join John Donne in cautioning against searching for the miraculous in some rare interruption of the working of natural laws that science has discovered.  As I go about my day, from getting out of bed to going back to sleep at night, everything going on about me can on some level be described as being natural processes.  I might never find God if I expect to find the Divine only in some interruptions of natural laws.

Donne's theological observation, coupled with my memory of Whitman's mentioning a mouse, made me think about the sextillions of little mice throughout the world, sometimes labeled "pests," but each a little miracle in its own right if seen up close.

~~~

Is there something in Nature you encounter everyday that you think is marvelous?

(The Whitman line is from "Song of Myself,"

 originally in his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass.)

(The Donne line is from a March 25, 1627 sermon, as quoted in Rebuilding the Matrix by Denis Alexander, © 2001, p. 426.)

Scattered Gifts

Have you ever had an old paperback begin to come apart at its spine, with some of the pages falling out?  What a mess!  It is especially a problem if the book is one you like to return to frequently.  (I resorted to putting one of my books in a plastic bag to prevent the loss of any of its loose pages.)

The Italian poet Dante (1265-1321) turns that loose-page nightmare on its head in the climax of his trilogy The Divine Comedy.  He draws upon the classic "book of Nature" metaphor in the Western tradition, which was a way of expressing how the natural world can be an opening into the Divine, a revelation about God.  Dante imaginatively scatters the "pages" of Nature's book.  He does so as an analogy to the way that there are wonders of Nature scattered all about us wherever we go.  He then brings the pages together, providing us this vision:

"In its depth I saw ingathered, bound by love in one single volume,

 that which is dispersed in leaves throughout the universe: 

...as though fused together in such a way

 that what I tell is but a simple light."

That this is no loose-page nightmare but instead a wonderful vision is underscored by this verse being in the part of his trilogy that is entitled Paradiso -- Paradise.

   Dante holding his own book,
The Divine Comedy,
with vision over his shoulder
   

Even though references to the "Book of Nature" are common in Christianity before the Scientific Revolution, the references to that metaphor are usually somewhat prosaic.  In contrast, in this passage, Dante opens up the metaphor with a grand poetic flourish, like the swirl of the brush on an artist's canvas.  The picture he paints of pages "dispersed... throughout the universe" is so evocative that I can easily see myself, as if in a dream, walking about in a world in which there are large, ornate pages scattered about on the ground.  As I slowly walk, I thoughtfully pick up one page after another, eager to read what is written there.  In real life, if the pages of that book I keep in a plastic bag were blown about by the wind, I would be alarmed.  But turning Dante's vision into a beautiful dream allows me to see the imagery of scattered pages in a different light.  And see the world in a different way.

Dante's imagery also resonates with the way children sometimes spontaneously collect objects from Nature.  One of the "leaves" of Dante's "volume" might be actual leaves from a tree, scattered upon the ground.  Or the child might delight in a found feather,, especially if it is colorful.  Even a rock, plain by contrast, might have something interesting in its shape.  So many objects to discover in this world of countless objects!  It is as if the child who gathers those things together, bringing them home, is somehow desiring to integrate diverse experiences into the whole of their growing life.

Dante points to another way in which the countless things we encounter in the natural world are united:  They are "bound by love in one single volume."  With that single poetic stroke, he draws upon what has been a central concept in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  Namely, that the key to understanding Ultimate Reality is to see the world we live in as if it were full of delightful gifts from One who loves us.

~~~

Are there some threads by which you make sense of your experiences of the world?

(The quote is from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, 

 [La Divina Commedia, 1321], Paradise, XXXIII, 85-90.)

(The portrait of Dante by Bronzino is  in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Filling a Life with Light

I recently checked out of the public library three small books that were old and heavily worn, even though they had probably not been used much in recent years.  Even beyond their contents, the books were fascinating, what with their now antiquated card-pockets and check-out cards.  (One of the volumes, a 1905 book even bore on its title page an impress revealing that it once had been in the Colored Carnage Library, now thankfully gone as an emblem of the U.S's officially segregated past.)  All three books, published between 1905 and 1927, were collections of poems by a man who loved God and loved Nature.

His name was Henry van Dyke (1852-1933).  Even though his poetry broke away from a heavier style (such as that of Longfellow) by using more variation in the lengths of lines, Van Dyke's poetry is of a rhymed style that is no longer popular.  And yet, there are things to commend about his work and life.  His prose narrative "The Story of the Other Wise Man" has been given some modern adaptations.

His 1907 hymn "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" has also endured, being still in some current hymnals.  I think one reason, besides its exuberant alliterations and vivid imagery, is that its content transcends many theological differences.  I would even suggest that much of its content can transcend boundaries of faith-traditions in its awe-filled spiritual experience in Nature. Such as:  "Field and forest, vale and mountain, Flowery meadow, flashing sea, / Chanting bird and flowing fountain, Call us to rejoice in Thee."

I think my Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature identified the style of living that lay behind the potential universality of those hymn lyrics.  That reference book explains that Van Dyke engaged in a "lifelong attempt to fuse religion and practical, everyday living in a keen personal enjoyment of life."  Given his profession as a religious leader, things could have turned out otherwise.  But something guided him away from parochialism even as a minister at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York.

I find a wideness of spirit even in his early poems.  Scanning the tables of contents in those three old library books, there is one poem in all three books whose title stands out for its expressiveness:  "God of the Open Air."  In that multi-page 1904 poem, Van Dyke conveys his heartfelt religious devotion.  But I think he does so in a way that can transcend religious divisions -- particularly because he conveys his devotion to a God that is found beyond the walls of any sanctuary, synagogue, temple, or mosque:  "To thee I turn, to thee I make my prayer, / God of the open air."  In the poem's closing lines, Van Dyke echoes the famous appeal of Goethe on his deathbed for "Mehr licht!" ("More light!").  Van Dyke proclaims that upon dying:

"Let me not creep

Into some darkened room and hide

From all that makes the world so bright and dear;

But throw the windows wide

To welcome in the light."

~~~

Is there a way that Nature adds an exuberance to your life?  When and how?

(The hymn lyrics are taken from The Presbyterian Hymnal, © 1990. #464.)

(The description of Van Dyke's religious aim is from

Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, © 1991.  p. 1084.)

(Van Dyke's full poem can be read at this external link:  "God of the Open Air")

Hearing the Sea in a Shell

It is an experience every child should have for the first time:  Holding a large shell to one's ear and hearing the sound of "the sea" supposedly still in the shell. How many parents or grandparents have initiated their child or grandchild to seashore wonders by instructing the child to "hear the ocean" in that way?  How many children have smiled upon first hearing the sound a large seashell makes, imagining for a moment they really heard the sea?  I recognize that an acoustical scientist could give a good, detailed explanation for the perhaps puzzling effect.  But I am more interested in how that experience can be an opening to how we and all things are part of a larger whole.  That is the very matter the poet William Wordsworth explored in his long poem The Excursion.

Even though the sea-in-seashell symbol could be a good literary opening, it appears in the middle of Wordsworth's poem when, in his memory, he sees himself as a boy:

"A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for from within were heard

Murmurings, whereby the monitor [the shell] expressed

Mysterious union with its native sea."

In the very next line, Wordsworth opens up the metaphor of how -- if we orient ourselves properly -- we can "hear" in the natural world intimations ("Murmurings") of a larger, deeper reality:  "Even such a shell the universe itself / Is to the ear of Faith...."  Moreover, Wordsworth later addresses his words to a larger divine Spirit that includes all of our own spirits, just "as the sea her waves."

The magic of children innocently believing (at least for a moment) they are hearing the sea in a shell derives from a child's wonderful delight in first discovering the world.  And so, a stanza early in the poem began with the statement "Such was the Boy."

oil portrait of
William Wordsworth
by Benjamin Haydon

Even though we adults cannot actually return to our childhoods, Wordsworth expresses how, even in old age, our memory can restore to us some of our original exaltation. That ability of memory to recreate something not physically present is similar to the seashell's ability to recreate the physical ocean, which is not physically present:

"If the dear faculty of sight should fail,

Still, it may be allowed me to remember

What visionary powers of eye and soul

In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top

Of some huge hill -- expectant, I beheld

The sun rise up, from distant climes returned....

... my spirit was entranced

With joy exalted to beatitude...."

~~~

Are there some particular experiences in Nature that allows your spirit to feel how it is included as part of some larger Spirit of life and of the universe?

(The two large excerpts are from Book IV, "Despondency Corrected" of The Excursion [1814]

That full section of the book-like poem can be read at this external link:  The Excursion, Book IV.)

Unable to Detach from the Past

1872 painting by John Gast

Examine the population and growth patterns of cities in the U.S., and you will find that many of them have grown more heavily toward their west sides than to the east, especially in the post-World War II boom. Although a fair number of cities are now seeing new growth in older, inner areas (often because of the appeal of shorter commute times), suburban sprawl is often greater on U.S. cities' western sides.  This peculiarity developed out of a much larger growth pattern in U.S. history:  The movement of European settlers on this continent has been primarily to the west.  A century-and-a-half ago, Horace Greeley quoted John Soule, commanding, "Go West, young man," and people in the U.S., men and women, young and old, have done just that.  Today's cities echo the nation's past.

This phenomenon is but one case of how we cannot escape our past, even as much as we might want to.  Frequently, our ties to the past remain unconscious.  For example, because of the westward growth of many cities, more people commute by driving into the sun in the morning and into the sun again in the evening -- an inconvenience we would have avoided if it had been the only factor affecting our decisions of where to live and work.

This inconvenience of squinting into the often blinding sun as we commute reveals another way in which we cannot escape the past:  We cannot break away entirely from patterns of Nature that were laid down long before Homo sapiens were around.  The sun is not about to change its course in response to where we build our houses and places of work.  The 20th-century author Maya Angelou cleverly wrote, "Nature has no mercy at all.  Nature says, ' I'm going to snow.  If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough.  I am going to snow anyway.' "

Given that we are unable to detach ourselves entirely from the past life on this planet,  how might we relate to it?  The answer all of the world's faith-traditions have given is that we should cultivate an appreciation of and a desire to emulate the highest values of the past.  Despite that commonality among traditions, people of one faith-tradition have not always comprehended the methods of another.  For example, Lin Yutang, an early 20th-century Chinese émigré to the U.S., explains how Christian missionaries mistook Chinese shrines honoring ancestors as being idolatry.  Thus the translation of the name for practices at the shrines as "ancestor worship" in English.  Lin Yutang clarifies the practices in this way:  "Only by the wildest stretch of imagination could they be called idolatry..."  Instead, the practice "for the Chinese, is the embodiment of reverence for the past and continuity with the past....  It was the basis of all that was good and honorable and of the desire to go forward."

Maya Angelou also had some succinct words about those who went before:  "They existed. We can be.  Be and be better.  For they existed."  That statement could describe non-humans in our evolutionary past just as much as it describes our human ancestors.

~~~

What have you received from the past that you are particularly grateful for?

(The Greeley/Soule quote [1851] is taken from Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, © 1968.  p. 678b.)

(The Angelou quote is from "Maya Angelou: An Interview," Oct. 1974, in Conversations with Maya Angelou, ©1989,)

(The Lin Yutang quote is from From Pagan to Christian by Lin Yutang, © 1959.  p. 37.)

(The painting by John Gast [1872] is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Laughing Beneath the Meteors

What was it about the written reminiscence that made it so appealing?  Why could I so easily identify with the firsthand experience that was being described, and with the inner feeling the writer remembered?  It was a recollection by a poet in his twenties, thinking back to an occasion of nighttime camaraderie with peers:

"Some day I must tell how we sang, shouted, whistled, and danced through the dark lanes....  and how we laughed till the meteors showered round us,

 and we fell calm under the winter stars.

 And some of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time.

 And seeing it so far above us, and feeling the good road so safe beneath us,

 we praised God with louder whistling...."

As I read this recollection, I almost wished I were there myself.  The cool night air.  The feeling of relaxation among friends.  The happiness and contentment.  The star-filled sky above.  The wonder of a sudden meteor shower.

Even as relaxing and restorative as those things were, there was also a deeper layer that gently emerged.  It seemed to have to do with that experience young people can have when they feel their youthful idealism beginning to be channeled into the paths of their individual identities:

"[S]ome of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time."

I felt as if I knew those subjective emotions because I had experienced them myself at that stage of adolescence:  The paradox of joyful freedom despite not knowing what the future will hold. The only thing I had not experienced as such was the meteor shower.  But I still felt as if I could understand the meaning of what the author described.  Today, in our U.S. popular culture, such things as meteors get mentioned mostly in the form of the fear that a massive asteroid might hit the Earth, bringing devastation.  Modern science also tells us that our sun will eventually burn out, bringing death to the Earth.  Terrifying scenarios caused by uncontrollable events in outer space abound (guaranteeing work for screenwriters of disaster movies).  In contrast, the young poet remembers laughing with his companions as the meteors rained down.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

The reminiscence has a power of its own.  But it is given added poignancy by knowing that it was written by the British poet Wilfred Owen, who died at the age of 25, fighting in World War I.  Owen's war poems have a sensitivity of feeling not unlike that which is revealed in this reminiscence, shared by letter with a friend the year before Owen was killed in battle.

To me, the reminiscence, even as brief as it is, conveys an experience of belonging.  The combination of the companionship of friends and the surrounding realm of Nature convey a sense of ultimate belonging.  Wilfred Owen is now gone.  But nighttime is still cooler than the day. Overhead, there are still stars.  And there is still, I am sure, at least one more shooting star ready to be seen as it pierces the air we breath.

~~~

Have you ever experienced a moment of deep contentment while you were in Nature?

(Owen's reminiscence is quoted in "Memoir (1931)" by Edmund Blunden,

in the Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, © 1963.  p. 172.)

(The photograph of Owen is in the Public Domain because its copyright has expired.)

Getting Beyond the Bitterness

I turned to the poem in the anthology partly because of an experience involving a friend when I was in college.  That fellow student's family owned a produce company that brought together vegetables from a number of farmers, cleaned and packed them, and distributed them to grocery stores.  One evening, my friend took me to see the company's processing center after the day's operations had been completed.  There I saw more radishes than I had ever seen in my life or will probably ever see again.  The radishes were neatly packaged in small bags piled five-feet high on a pallet five-feet square.  An estimated 125 cubic feet of the familiar reddish radish, each no more than an inch in diameter!

As I said, it was partly that memory that prompted me to turn to a particular poem -- one with "radish" in its title -- in an anthology of sacred poetry.  The poem was a simple three-liner by the 18th-century Japanese poet Issa:

"The man pulling radishes

pointed the way

with a radish."

So short, the poem forced my mind to pause, taking it a few moments to picture the gardener on his knees, one arm outstretched to give directions, using the humble radish in a new-found way, as a pointer.

Growing up, I was introduced to radishes when our family had Sunday dinner at a restaurant.  On each of our restaurant salads was a single brightly colored radish, mostly as garnish.  It would require returning to that restaurant a few times before my sister and I could begin to nibble like rabbits on the humble, red vegetable as we became accustomed to its bitter edge.

In the collection of spiritual poetry, I turned to the biography of this man Issa, and found there more bitterness than I was prepared for.  The biography described how "Issa (1763-1827)... lost his mother at the age of three and was continually beaten by his stepmother....  His later life was marked by poverty... and the death of his first wife and four young children.  But somehow he triumphed over all these obstacles and kept his simple, affectionate nature.  His is particularly admired for his love of animals and his championing of the underdog."

My heart warmed to this somewhat overlooked man, and so I turned back the pages of my book to read another haiku poem by him:

"In the cherry blossom's shade

there's no such thing

as a stranger."

This second three-liner was a very upbeat poem, the kind our U.S. society today prefers to have populating its collections of religious poems.  However, having read of Issa's life -- both the bitter and the beautiful -- I decided to treasure both of the poems, printed back-to-back on a single leaf of paper in my book.

~~~

Has there been in your life any bitterness you have had to get beyond to find your way?

(The poems and biography of Issa are from The Enlightened Heart,

 ed. Stephen Mitchell, © 1989.  pp. 99, 158 & 100.)

A Small, Sound Voice on Stillness

Cultural historical memories are fickle:  A few people are remembered; many are forgotten. This holds true for literature as well.  How many people have written poetry?  The number is unimaginable.  And yet, open any anthology of poetry, and you will find poems by fewer than a hundred poets, usually only a few dozen.

Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

One early 20th-century English-speaking poet who has been a victim of this cultural forgetfulness is Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967).  His poems are mostly forgotten because he got labeled as being a "war poet" for his poems expressing the horrors of World War I.  But his war poems could not match those of his contemporary Wilfred Owen, and so Sassoon became eclipsed by Owen.  However, only some of Siegfried Sassoon's poems are about war.  Many are spiritual.  Some are also about Nature.  One in particular speaks of winter in a way that is meaningful whether the world is at peace or at war.

The poem begins with the words "December stillness," setting the nearly-still atmosphere of both the poem and the winter day the poet is experiencing.  The next words quickly show that it is more than stillness Sassoon is evoking.  He is also speaking about an invisible depth behind the stillness, a spiritual depth -- one that some readers might want to use the word "God" for, even though Sassoon never employs that word:

"December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries."

At this point, it would be tempting for any poet to begin describing those "trees."  After all, winter evergreens can be majestically beautiful, as can the outlines of bare trees with winter snow in the background.  Instead, Sassoon seizes upon another phenomenon of winter -- that the bareness of trees can better allow us to look up at the sky:

"Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

And let me learn your secret from the sky,"

Continuing to convey his firsthand, immediate experience, Sassoon has his clear line of sight caught by something seemingly unexpected:

"And let me learn your secret from the sky,

Following a flock of steadfast, journeying birds"

Now, Sassoon's contemplative openness to Nature on this still winter day leads to his becoming more aware of, and being able to express, a yearning within his heart.  The desire he speaks in the poem's final line mirrors something he perceived in the birds:

"Teach me to travel far and bear my loads."

We may all be eventually forgotten.  Nonetheless, may our lives more often touch the depths of our own living by being touched by the depths of Nature.

~~~

Even if winter has only begun where you live, have you noticed any changes in Nature?  Have you noticed any changes in the stirrings of your heart at this time of year?

(Sassoon's poem is from Collected Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, © 1918, 1920.)

(The entire poem can be read at this external link:  "December Stillness.")

Looking Up to Trees

Down the block from the house where my wife grew up, there is a modest but nice park.  There is only a little bit of playground equipment.  Instead the park is mostly a place for kids to run and adults to walk beneath the tall, very old trees.

One evening near sunset, I strolled alone into the park, and found myself for some reason pausing before one of the trees.  With no one else around to make me feel embarrassed, I felt a desire to unhurriedly contemplate the tree.  At first I saw up close the rough texture of its bark and the pockmarks from where life's diseases had left scars.  Despite those signs of the tree's vulnerability, I was next struck by the tree's massiveness.  It's height and solidity.  I thought about how the tree had endured countless nights, standing there unattended through wind, rain, and dangerous lightning.

I found myself not only looking up at the tree in its immense height, but also looking up to the tree for its virtues.

To some people, it might seem strange to turn to trees to look for virtues to inspire.  But Tennessee Williams, in his play The Night of the Iguana, turned to a tree for guidance on the distinctly human challenge of facing one's mortality.  In that play (superbly adapted into a movie), a middle-aged spinster artist is traveling through Mexico with her 97-year old grandfather, who is a poet.  The two are broke, trying to hang on by her drawing portraits of tourists and by his recitation of poems for tips.

Intermittently throughout the play, the now nearly deaf and nearly blind grandfather repeats the opening lines of a poem he has been working on but has been unable to complete:

"How calmly does the orange branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch..."

The play's climax is expressed poetically through the grandfather finally having completed his
poem mentally, which he then recites while his granddaughter transcribes it.  The completed poem expresses how the tree, even though it lives "without a prayer" (unlike humans), nonetheless shows "no betrayal of despair" in the face of its future:

grandfather reciting poem
in The Night of the Iguana

"Sometime while night obscures the tree...

A second history will commence.

...the broken stem

The plummeting to earth...."

This return to the earth is:

"An intercourse not well designed

For beings of a golden kind."

It is instead " [a] bargaining with mist and mould."

And yet, despite that altered future, the living tree still holds its head high.  So much so that the soon-to-die grandfather looks up to the tree, expressing in the final stanza of the poem his desire to live like it:

"O Courage, could you not as well

Select a second place to dwell,

Not only in that golden tree

But in the frightened heart of me?"

~~~

Are there any qualities of trees that you would like to share in?

(The poem quoted is recited by Nonno in The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams, © 1961.  Act. 3.)

(The movie-still from The Night of the Iguana [1964], directed by John Huston, is used under Fair Use.)

(The full poem by Tennessee Williams, in print and read by a different actor, is at this external link:  "How calmly does....")

Flowers Against the Stereotype

Many a poet has drawn upon the delicate beauty of flowers for literary inspiration.  The softness of the petals.  The sweet fragrance.  Flowers thus lend themselves to being a symbol of femininity. (Also, notice how in our U.S. culture, women will be given a corsage to wear vastly more often than men are given boutonnieres.)

Here are some poetic examples of flowers in an inspiring role:  Shakespeare's Juliet, in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, depicted herself as "a beauteous flower."   Alfred, Lord Tennyson connected the physical characteristics of a flower even more explicitly to those of a woman, writing:

"Lightly was her slender nose

Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower."

The 19th-century German writer Heinrich Heine went straight to the point, titling one of his poems "Du Bist Wie eine Blume," which translates to "You are Like a Flower."

I wonder what such poets -- who thought of flowers as being delicate and feminine -- would have thought about a flower from Sumatra that I heard about on the radio. Far from sounding feminine, it was described as being "like a giant finger jutting straight up... eight feet tall and [weighing] 250 pounds."  Nor would a person want to extract the essence of the aroma this flower gave off, because it had a "distinctive rotting-corpse-like odor."  The evolutionary explanation behind that flower (scientific name Titan arum) is that the putrid odor enables it to attract insects who believe they are coming to the carcass of an animal on which they might feed.  The insects flocking to the flower get tricked, while the clever flower gets itself pollinated.

It was not only insects who have been disappointed in the case of this particular flower, which was on display at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.  Many of the museum-goers who flocked to the flower, hoping to get a whiff of its repellent odor, were disappointed because the colossal flower emitted its odor for only a few hours, and did not have the courtesy to schedule its opening so as to align with the museum's daytime hours.

The finger-shaped Titan arum is not the only tropical Asian flower to have evolved such a trick of deception.  Another species, the Rafflesia arnoldii, has a more typical floral shape, being circular with petaled edges.  But it is similarly oversized (two or three feet in diameter) and also smells like a carcass during part of its blooming period, even if only briefly.

I was not among either the disappointed or the pleased museum-goers at the U.S. Botanic Garden. Nevertheless, I take delight in that news story about the non-stereotypical flower for two reasons.  I take delight first in being reminded again about how evolution, with all its immense variety, has developed a living being that defies our human expectations, particularly our cultural associations.  Secondly, I am pleased to hear that so many people can themselves take delight in an example of biodiversity that we ourselves would not have designed, and might have usually found repulsive.

~~~

Do you have any thoughts about these huge, putrid flowers?

(The Tennyson lines are from "Gareth and Lynette," line 574, in Idylls of the King. 1859-1885.)

(The news story was "Lure of Flower's Putrid Essence Draws Crowd," July 22, 2013. © NPR.)
(Second photo, by Henrik Ishihara Globaljuggler, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.) 

“Bard of the River and of the Wood”

It seems to me that a large number of the poems written in the U.S. today contain the word "I" in their first sentence.  Even if the word "I" is not actually present, many contemporary poems focus on the poet's individual experience.  Two centuries ago, one American asked what American writing should be weighted toward to distinguish itself -- what it should be drawn to. And he had a different answer.  He thought this new nation should have its poetic attention drawn to Nature, particularly the extraordinary woods, mountains, and skies of the American landscape.  Through his own poetry, his editorship of the New York Evening Post, and his cultivation of other poets and artists, he had that very effect upon 19th-century American creativity.  His name was William Cullen Bryant.

"Kindred Spirits"
(depicting Bryant and Cole)

Even if you do not recognize his name, you may have seen an often reproduced painting in which he and another man stand side by side at a cliff's edge, surrounded by green forest, a waterfall within earshot, and mountains in the hazy distance.  That painting's title, "Kindred Spirits," describes the friendship of the two men depicted.  One of them is the painter Thomas Cole, who led the Hudson River movement, and whose own landscape paintings both glorified the American wilderness and struggled with its relationship to human civilization.  "Kindred Spirits" was painted by Asher B. Durand in 1849 as a memorial to Cole the year after he died.  The second man in the painting, holding a hat, is none other than William Cullen Bryant, who is sometimes wearing just such a hat in some photographs of him later in life.

Following the American Revolution, the question arose in some American minds of how this new country could differentiate itself from the ancient, warring nations of Europe -- not only politically but also culturally.  Born only a decade after the American Revolution ended, Bryant came to promote the idea that an American freedom of poetry and art could be developed by drawing upon our communion with America's distinctive manifestations of Nature.  Walt Whitman described Bryant as "Bard of the river and of the wood, ever conveying a taste of open air."

Bryant's spirit was personally suited for such a task.  He wrote of himself, "I was always a delighted observer of external nature."   His most famous poem, "Thanatopsis," opens with a description of how we can feel a kindredness with Nature despite its variability:

"To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware...."

~~~

How do you draw strength from friendships?  How do you draw strength from Nature?

(Whitman's description and Bryant's description of himself are taken from

 the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, © 1977.  Vol. II, p. 328.)

(The full text of Bryant's poem [1811, 1817] can be read at this external link:  "Thanatopsis".)

Resonance and Reverence

I can't remember the first time I heard about Aeolian harps. Maybe it was when I was in high school; maybe in college.  I do know, however, that I was fascinated with the idea from the very start.  Imagine a musical instrument that would play without the touch of any human hand, needing only a breeze to vibrate its strings, creating enchanting tones!  That is what Aeolian harps are.  Despite my fascination with them, I did not realize how Aeolian harps could be a key to understanding the West's struggles with science, Nature, and spirituality ever since the Scientific Revolution.

Their name (fascinating in itself) speaks of ancient Greek culture and mythology.  The Aeolians were people who settled in central Greece around 1100 B.C.E.  Aeolus was the god of the winds, his name derived from the Greek aiolos, meaning "quick-moving."  Although the winds in ancient Greece may have moved quickly, the image evoked by Aeolian harps has usually been that of peace and sensitivity.

Although Aeolian harps (sometimes called "wind harps") are ancient, they captured the imagination of many Western poets, particularly the Romantic poets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, who had a love for Nature.  Ralph Waldo Emerson hung an Aeolian harp in his open window.  They were drawn upon as a metaphor by William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, and Thomas Hardy.  Most famously, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem titled "The Eolian Harp."

In that poem, Coleridge addressed an ongoing concern of himself and other poets of the Romantic era.  Namely, in an age in which more and more knowledge and control of Nature has resulted from science's treating Nature as inanimate objects that can be manipulated, how do we restore  a more intuitive way in which Nature can touch our souls?  Similarly, in an age in which God is getting shoved back to the beginning of time as the Maker of natural laws that seem to allow the world to operate mechanically, how can we again come to sense the Divine as immediately present in the natural world?

Here is where the Aeolian-harp metaphor of resonance with Nature's breezes came to be useful.  What if we could tune our hearts and imaginations to resonate to the beautiful subtleties within Nature?  And what if we could perceive a Living Spirit present behind all life?  Coleridge daringly asked a similar question in his poem: "And what if all of animated nature / Be but organic Harps diversely framed, / That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps ...one intellectual breeze, ...the Soul of each, and God of all?"

These efforts to restore a harmony in our sensibility towards Nature were also efforts to restore a split within our human selves.  That idea was expressed in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in which he also expressed a role for reverence:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before."

~~~

Are there occasions in which you feel a special resonance with Nature?  When?

(The Coleridge lines are from "The Eolian Harp" [1796], lines 44-48.)

(The Tennyson quatrain is from "In Memoriam" [1850], Prologue, stanza 7.)