Today is as good a day as any to re-post a sub from 2011. It was just at the beginning of March, and I was reading T.S. Eliot. His body of work is vast and deep, and I hadn’t read this one in a long while. So. Let’s time travel back to pre-Easter 2011:
Lent, whatever your religious stripe, really is a good reminder to us that we shall not surely die without our Cherished Things. It’s an exercise in self-discovery to realize how much we suffer when we deviate from the little streambed of our usual haunts and activities. How like ants we are, only traveling along our same little lines, doing the same things the same way, whether they’re good for us or not. Lent gives people the excuse to jump out of their ruts.
So, too, the Lenten season.
Every year around this time, I ATTEMPT to read and fully understand T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday, and every year, I realize I have to settle on a single section of it, and go with that. The entire poem is rife with subtle references, both Biblical and otherwise, and there’s a lot there to miss.
Sometimes, I feel like I have to read Eliot with annotations and a dictionary on hand, but because I love his sonorous voice (I have heard recordings, people, I am not THAT old. Listen to it for yourself, or read it in its entirety here.) and can just imagine him speaking these circuitous, profound and allegorical lines, I keep knocking my head against this one. Today I read this portion aloud:
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon usBecause these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.Excerpted from ASH WEDNESDAY, by Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1930
This is a poem is about doubt, about coming two steps forward in belief, and perhaps moving three steps back. It is a poem about difficulty, and faith. It is hard — very, very, very hard. In more ways than one.
I think I actually enjoy the difficulty of this poem, in a weird way. Every once in awhile, it’s okay to be challenged. It’s okay to give things up. It’s okay to try, and try, and see the edges of where we fail and fall apart.
And pick up again next year. And try again. Even among these rocks…
Do you ever read back over your old blog posts? For some reason, I was searching for the title to a book someone had told me about years ago, and ended up just reading through some of the bleakest months of late winter-spring, and finding how much I was clinging to hope in dark places sometimes — and finding food, again, in those things which fed me back then. A good practice, sometimes, this looking back, to see where we’ve been led in the past…
Yes, Eliot is tough for me too, but there is so much richness in this one. I love that this is a poem one can return to again and again and still hunt for meaning.
Thanks for sharing this.
Honestly, one of the best things about blogging is that it’s a time capsule of the person I was then. I just came across an old blog post today that reminded me of how far I’ve come and how much more I long for–but reassured me in a weird way that the essence of who I am remains the same. Despite the curve balls and the obstacles and the times when I can’t get out of my own way…I’m still striving for that different way of being in the world. Still delighted by the sights along the way. I see that in your beautiful prose and your transcendent poetry.
@Barb:When I was in high school, I wrote the day’s activities on each square of this massive calendar I had. I only have my senior year one squirreled away somewhere, but it really told me exactly who I was right then — and that person is amusing to look back upon (someone who actually cared about such weird things). I think the most important lesson we learn from looking back is, “I got up after that, too.” Such a good message for us both just now. Courage.