On Cat Naps and the Poverty of More

Peace maketh plenty;

Plenty maketh pride;

Pride maketh plea;

Plea maketh povert;

Povert maketh peace.

~ Anonymous (circa 15^th century)

As I write, two tortoise shell cats curl on the bed by my knees. They have no sense of want. They sleep, they eat, they have occasional cat frenzies at midnight. Life is simple for them. Some days I wish to be one of their kind.

The cyclical and seasonal nature of life is always with us. Cats seem to grasp this intuitively. The words of this anonymous Brit testify to it, and I have to agree.  However, while peace can provide a place for plenty, I confess that I do not always take advantage of it. In fact, I tend to rapid cycle on to pride, which leads to a feeling that I deserve more (the “plea” part), which drives me into a deeper more grinding poverty of the soul. 

I stop to consider now the number of times I have felt that I have earned all that I have. On the surface, I certainly have earned it. I have studied hard and worked hard and made the necessary sacrifices to attain a certain measure of achievement and comfort for myself and my family. But all that I have earned has been made possible by the efforts of those who have gone before, and by the collaborative efforts of those working in concert with me, and first and foremost by the grace and gifts of a giving God.

That is what I believe in my core.  Yet how easily I forget and move to pride and then plea.  As soon as I am in a position of “Give me more” I am poor. It is as simple as that.

But I get to the last line from Anonymous and stumble.  The idea that poverty in itself provides the conditions for peace to me seems highly naïve, uninformed, and even patronizing.  Maybe in those old days before running water and central heating and democratic capitalism, sure, I could see how one might need to get philosophical about such things.  But do you seriously expect me to buy into the notion that not being able to feed your family will give you inner peace?

Sudden slap on the back of my head – that was my better, smarter self saying, “You know better.” This poem is not talking of material poverty, not really, not just that.

So how is it that “povert maketh peace?”  I’m still working on that. I admit peace can be elusive as I worry about paying the bills or making deadlines or ensuring a perfect life for my perfect child.  I think maybe the poverty that leads to peace is the sort that has poured itself out and is no longer striving. It is a spiritual state of having nothing left to lose. It is the emptiness that says, “I am poor in spirit and deserve nothing” rather than “I have earned it by rights, give me more.”

It may be the secret of being content in plenty or in want that the Apostle Paul wrote of to the Philippians.  If I could write a letter back to Paul, I’d ask him to tell me more about that secret.  

Or maybe I’ll just have a chat with my cats.

Reference

The Oxford Book of Short Poems, Chosen and Edited by P.J. Kavanagh and James Michie (Oxford University Press, 1987)

Some Time Still

Once again my thanks goes out to C.S. Lewis scholar and teacher, Andrew Lazo, for his musings on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. For more insights from Andrew, visit his website here: http://www.andrewlazo.com.




Image of Andrew
by Lancia E. Smith

Some Time Still
Emily Dickinson says:

The soul selects her own society, 
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

Let’s spend a few moments thinking about just those first seventeen words (and by the way, “obtrude” means to thrust forwards, to force oneself upon others unasked): The soul selects her own society, / Then shuts the door; / On her divine majority / Obtrude no more.

Though it may prove the height of hypocrisy for a man like me to say it, I suggest that we need to pull the plug, and on a much more regular basis. I know I do. Smartphone, iPad, two screens at work, two screens at home, laptop, radio, car radio, TV monitors everywhere—each grocery store and restaurant and airport terminal or almost anywhere I go. Input. Noise. Language and image and sound.

It’d be easy to dismissively wave it all off and long for the olden days, to lament the news (or the rumor mill passing for it these days), to sigh for a quieter time.

I suggest, in spite of all this, a very mild form of asceticism. Seek silence. On a regular basis. Or, if we cannot bring ourselves to that, at least let us notice the small pockets of silence offered to us, even in this busy world. Turn off the TV or the radio in the morning. Most of us can do very little indeed about Syria or the upcoming elections. Everyone I know feels whirled round by how much remains yet to do at the end of a too-long day.

Maybe we need, as Emily says, to shut the door, to allow nothing to obtrude. I don’t really know what she means about “divine majority” of the soul, but to me I always assume it means those minutes when I quiet myself and acknowledge God here with me. And then nothing else matters.

So let’s greedily seize silence, craft quietness, carve out a few moments to hear nothing more than our own good selves breathing. Just for tomorrow, don’t sing in the shower, don’t go for the on switch, or at least without thinking. And perhaps let us practice a mindfulness of this little moment, just for ten seconds to push back and draw breath and close up the shop of our eyes and their eagerness, and softly, for a beat or two, dwell on our own “divine majority.”

God may slip in like the wind or like water. He might fill up the silence we craft when we try for this moment to shut up the eyes of our heads, that we might for a minute pry open the ears of our hearts. Michael Card once remarked that the silence of prayer is God straining to hear us; perhaps we can strain toward Him too with nothing on our lips, nothing in our ears. To me this means that I “select my own society,” that I choose the company of only the Maker and myself. And shut the door on all else.

In The Way of the Heart, his wonderful little book about the Desert Fathers, Fr. Henri Nouwen reminds us that “silence is the mystery of the future world. It keeps us pilgrims and prevents us from becoming entangled in the cares of this age. It guards the fire of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.  It allows us to speak a word that participates in the creative and recreative power of God’s own Word.”

He’s right, at least in my own poor experience. Abba Arsenius redemptively, wryly challenges  us: “I have often repented of having spoken, but never of having remained silent.” Ironically enough, instead of practicing this great wisdom of the sealed lips and the sanctified inner fire, I have blabbed these quotes to dozens of acquaintances over the years. But this day is not yet done, and there remains unto us some time still to unplug, to acknowledge, to invite God Himself to speak into a silence we may yet today even help to create. C. S. Lewis steers us well here, away from “the coinage of [our] own unquiet thoughts.” Lewis implores the Spirit, who groans too deeply for words: “From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee, / O thou fair silence fall, and set me free.”

It’s Easter. Certainly sing out, and greet people with the greatest of news, that Christ is risen indeed. But maybe this week we might find in a moment the grace to push back, to unplug, to “shut the door.” We mindfully might yet seize onto some unassigned minute and listen as deeply as this jarring world will allow, to the silence. To the wind. To Emily’s “divine majority,” here in this room, alone with the one Word that this whole world hangs on.

Poetry Redeemed: JRR Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia”

It is my pleasure to welcome poet, teacher, and friend Dr. Holly Ordway back to All Nine to once again share her insights and musings, this time on the poetry of JRR Tolkien. Holly is an apologist exploring the intersection of literature and faith, reason and imagination. Follow Dr. Ordway's reflections on the practice of living a holy life at her website at http://www.hieropraxis.com/ or on twitter @HollyOrdway.

Dr. Ordway up a tree on Addison's Walk, Oxford, UK, August 2011 
(image by Kevin Belmonte)

Poetry Redeemed: JRR Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia”

The closing stanza of JRR Tolkien’s poem “Mythopoeia:

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

(the whole poem can be read here: http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html)

Sometimes I write poetry when I suppose I ought to be doing other things: grading papers, answering email, doing laundry, making dinner.

As I write this, it is almost Easter; we are beginning Holy Week. The long penitential season of Lent is hurrying toward the celebration of the Resurrection. Easter marks what has happened and what is to come: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

When he does, when all creation is made new and the Body of Christ is resurrected into eternal life, will there be a place for poetry?

JRR Tolkien’s long poem “Mythopoeia” answers that question with a profound Yes.

Tolkien wrote this poem to his friend CS Lewis, when Lewis was wrestling with the claims of Christianity. At that point, Lewis believed in God, but he was having difficulty with grasping the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. He did not yet see that in Christ, both Reason and Imagination are fulfilled; that, as Lewis himself would later write, in the Incarnation and Resurrection “myth became fact.”

Tolkien was wise enough to know that fairy tales, myths, and indeed poetry can speak truth in ways that reasoned argument alone cannot. And so he wrote this poem to his friend, urging him to apprehend the truth that the Imagination opened up to him.

While Tolkien’s words were intended first for the reader of imaginative literature, I think these words are of great value to the makers of story and poetry as well.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.

These words remind me that truth and beauty have an ultimate Source. Even now, this side of Paradise, as a poet I can try to mirror “the likeness of the True.” While this may at first seem limiting, in truth it is not: since that Source of truth and beauty is the Source also of all creation, I have in Christ an inexhaustible wellspring for poetry. And a good thing too, since my own imaginative resources would run dry immediately if I could only look to myself for inspiration.

Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.

When I write, sometimes the poem comes together, but other times it remains a jumble of lines and fragments, the meaning slipping between my fingers and escaping. Tolkien hints that perhaps the poems I try and fail to write are not for nothing after all.

We are temporal beings, and so each moment’s beauty slips into the past almost before we realize it; but God is eternal. Could it be that all good things, all beauty, all moments of joy are never lost? I think so. Whatever I make that has any value (however flawed) will be redeemed. All those broken lines and half-grasped images: perhaps I will be able, one day, to make them into the poems they ought to be.

Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

Best of all in this poem, I love Tolkien’s calm confidence that we who make poetry do so because we are, in our turn, made in the image of a Maker, the divine Artist whose canvas (or blank page) is the cosmos. If we are made so, we will not cease to make simply because we have been redeemed. And that being so, the poets will be honored in heaven, with “flames upon their head” recalling the flame of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; and each one of us will choose our words and frame our lines, rejoicing.

Perhaps when I set my busy-ness aside and waste time on a poem, I’m doing exactly what I ought to be doing.

Five tips from The Bard on the Powers and Pitfalls of Imagination

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

~ William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

***** 

After a recent frenzy of ideas that spilled out in a series of excited conversations and emails in one busily fruitful afternoon, my manager asked me with gentle amusement, “Kelly, does the disk ever stop spinning?”  At first I had no idea what he was talking about. Disk? What disk?

Oh. Right. Embarrassed chuckle. Me… or rather, my mind. No, sir, the disk never stops. Not ever.

I admit it: I am an idea hamster.  Even more problematic, I am a poet, a lover of words, and at times quite mad.

I find this passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream particularly useful in validating these aspects of my personality, while also providing some useful lessons from lovers, madmen, and poets about the power and pitfalls of Imagination. With lovers and madmen, according to  the words Shakespeare puts in Theseus' mouth, there is no rationality brought to bear on the powers of the imagination. The seething brain has boiled over and has become of no practical use. In fact, in the case of the frantic lover, imagination without comprehension brings danger and destruction to entire nations. 

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

Although lunatics, lovers, and poets are “all compact” when it comes to the question of imagination, Theseus acknowledges a slight departure where poets are concerned. While still in a “fine frenzy,” the poet is given the remainder of this passage as credit to the positive workings of the imagination.

Here are five tips on creativity extracted from Shakespeare via Theseus:

1.      Actively notice everything.  Constantly on alert, the poet not only watches but seeks out the connections between earth and heaven, finite and infinite, known and unknown.

The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

This “glance” is neither passive nor whimsical. Those whose work requires the constant creation of something from seemingly nothing are disciplined about being ever watchful. They notice everything. They read voraciously. They look and look and look until their eyeballs burn and – at last – they see the pattern of the knowable unknown. 

2.      Write it down.  And what they see, the poets record.

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes… 

Poets know that in the business of bodying forth, imagination must be captured.  You cannot rely on memory to give shape to airy nothing.  If you are serious about this creativity business, keep many means of jotting down close to hand. The act of pushing the pen (or keyboard) is the only reliable one I know of that can begin to give shape to unknown forms. It is not a mystery – it is simply the hard work of a frenzied brain.

3.      Be specific.  A general concept can be interesting, but put it on a map with a street name and a cast of named characters, and your audience will be spellbound.

…and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Isn’t “Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt” infinitely more delicious than “his lover’s face in any random location?” Imagination requires specificity of the recorder.

4.      Rejoice. The creative act is nothing short of incarnational joy. It is where apprehension and comprehension meet.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Unlike lunatics and lovers, poets apprehend in order to comprehend, which leads to a deeper and wider experience of knowing. Entering into joy through the imagination leads to a comprehension of a joy-Giver, and ultimately, to a sense of gratitude and renewed purpose.   

5.      Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lest those of us in the business of “making stuff up” for a living get too high an opinion of ourselves, Theseus ends his complimentary lines about poets with this reminder of the pitfalls of imagination:

Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Many moons ago, in the middle of the dot-com boom, I had the privilege of working on the management team of a hi-tech start up. I was shy then, but ambitious, and the hamster brain was already on the treadmill. My boss sensed that I had much to say in creative meetings, but I was holding back. He told me something I have never forgotten: “Put all your ideas on the table. Nine out of ten of them will be terrible, and the rest of us will tell you. But that one gem is the one thing we need more than anything.”

Nine times out of ten, I will see a bear where there is a bush. Nine times out of ten, my colleagues and I will laugh at my hamster brain gone wild. But if I don’t say it to some cooler-headed colleagues, I will never know.

And neither will they.

Reference

Immortal Poems of the English Language, Edited by Oscar Williams (Pocket Books, 1952)

Flying in the Face of What Devils May Do: C. S. Lewis' Re-Adjustment and the Defeat of Despair

My gratitude goes out to speaker, writer, and teacher Andrew Lazo for sharing his insights this week on the poetry of C.S. Lewis. Andrew is a scholar specializing in Lewis and the Inklings, and a force to be reckoned with. Do reckon with him here: http://andrewlazo.com/.

****

Image of Andrew by
Lancia E. Smith

In the Face of What Devils May Do: C. S. Lewis' Re-Adjustment and the Defeat of Despair

By Andrew Lazo

Many thanks to Kelly for asking me to guest in this spot, and furthermore for asking for something on C. S. Lewis.  I have been grappling recently with a cycle of unpublished sonnets by Joy Davidman, Lewis’ future wife, and in so doing have delved back again into Lewis’ sometimes troubling, sometimes transcendent poetry. When her kind request came in, I immediately knew what I wanted to write about: Re-Adjustment.  Holly Ordway based her own Pain Sonnet 9: Unmaking Language on the tenth line that reads, “For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever.”

Lewis closes his poem with a mirroring dewdrop, which of course echoes William’s Blake’s “to see a world in a grain of sand.” And the dew, with its promise of freshness and its significant power to show us all reality, does little to undo the pessimistic tone of the poem.  And this tone forces me to a rare state of affairs: I must disagree with Lewis. But not quite yet, for there is much to this poem that can call us to live well and even to hope in the face of our generation.

Before disputing with Lewis’ pessimistic assessment, I want with full voice to agree with his call to “[u]proot [our] loves, one by one, from the future.” Yes, to treating our loves with care.  Yes, oh yes, to pulling them up from a future that will in all likelihood bear little resemblance either to our deepest hopes or our fondest fears. How vividly Lewis points us to the vital reality that “the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” This is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. calls “the fierce urgency of now.” This is what T. S. Eliot calls “the awful daring of the moment’s surrender.” This very moment, as we read and write, as we remember these words and go about our days, this is the only moment we have. And while we cannot do all things today, this moment, we can do some things. One thing. And we can do it well.

I also agree that forces have arrayed themselves against language.  Devils indeed, and unmaking not only words but the meanings behind. One deep irony that troubles my days comes from thinking about how, in this world based on text, language seems to slip away. The forces I fight from day to day in the classroom and at the keyboard seem all too subtly yet effectively well-armed in their attempt to silence good words, or make off with meaning. I don’t decry emoticons, texts, and tweets, but I despair if this is all we have left. And here’s where I believe that Lewis got it all wrong.

For I regularly find myself in the warm company of “a posterity of gentle hearts.” My friends and I have picked up the signal ringing out, however faintly, from Lothlorien, from Avalon, from the glad and golden courts of Cair Paravel. The echoes come clearly in our eager ears, and we can understand their story. Lewis’ pessimism loses me here; perhaps he has in this poem given way to a carrion comfort of despair that I (and all those I love best) reject out of hand. 

Lewis is right that now offers us some shining wet reflections of all we yet can find. He’s right that moments, though small, offer sometimes disproportionate significance as they make up the tiny puzzle-pieces of these our lives we long to live well. I would argue that Lewis’ despair fails to serve us—but more so, it fails to convince me. For all those with whom I surround myself do understand their story. We read them, argue about them, and then write some ourselves.  Poetry, in measurable and meaningful ways, certainly continues to thrive, and makes eyes shine. I count as the most precious hours of my life those I spend laughing and fighting and creating and reciting and singing and dancing, all as responses to their stories.

Yes. Devils are unmaking language. But my fellowship and I refuse to believe that’s the end of the story—for we’ve read the right sort of books, and we know down to our bones how this and all stories must end. All the more, we who can understand a story have busied ourselves re-making it, stitching it back together, sub-creating, and creating more joy as poignant as grief. And in such celebration of the grace of language, and flying in the face of whatever devils may do, we place ourselves patiently, hopefully, faithfully on the side of the angels.

Honoring Japan with small words

Laid waste on this journey.
My dreams wander scattered
through desolate fields.

~ Matsuo Basho (c. 1644-94)

*****

I pause with Japan to mark one year from yesterday since the earthquake and tsunami that laid waste seaside villages.  

The pictures and news stories are still so clear in my mind, scattered as if through Basho’s desolate fields: a boat perched ridiculously on top of a house; an injured dog discovered by his mate on a stranded beach, a first sign of hope; a distraught mother, her baby snatched from her hands and swept out to sea just moments before.

As these images came rushing in on the tide of the 24/7 news cycle, I wept. I had come to feel a connection with many poets from Japan over the past few years, through my exploration of modern haiku poets on twitter (I tweet poetry and follow other Twitter poets under @haikunut).

I learn by doing, and back in 2008-ish (can't quite remember when) I wanted to learn what the fuss was about with this thing called "Twitter." My goal was to learn about this social media tool and how to use it, not to develop ties or even really to grow in the writing craft (though that seemed a nice potential perk at the time).  Be forewarned if you have yet to tweet with the poets – they will capture your heart.

So naturally, back last March, when the news became too much, I turned to what had become a form of release -- tweeting poetry. Here is one short poem I wrote after the disaster:

 

I see a boat
on a house
half a world away
and hug my son
tighter to my chest

Writing seemed at the time an anemic gesture, but it was what I had to offer to the journey laid waste.  My fellow haiku poets in the north east towns and villages of Japan would never be the same.  I honored them then and do so now the only way I have ever known how: with small words.

Reference

Classic Haiku: The Greatest Japanese Poetry From Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki and Their Followers, Edited and Introduced by Tom Lowenstein (Duncan Baird Publishers, London, 2007)

Guest Blog: Scott Morgan: If Only...

Writers write. But a writer who writes to writers about writing, who cheers your writerly soul and shouts practical advice from the margins like your favorite hard-talking good hearted coach… now that is someone special.

I was fortunate enough to see retweets of Scott Morgan (@write_hook) floating through my Twitter stream some fine day in the past twelve months as I was wrestling with another bout of writer angst. I was instantly energized to get back in the game.

Scott and I have swapped blogs this week. Scott’s blog – Write Hook: Write for the Jugular – provides great counsel to, from, and for professional writers. That said, I have yet to read a post that would not be of benefit to anyone who seeks to improve their facility with the written word. Check him out.

For All Nine, Scott shares what stirs him about Rudyard Kipling’s If.

If Only ...

When it comes to the written word, there are exactly two pieces of writing that give me the chills. One is The Letter To Mrs. Bixby, written by President Lincoln during the Civil War. The other is Rudyard Kipling's If.

The funny thing is that unlike President Lincoln, Rudyard Kipling never wrote another thing I like. Kipling wrote volumes and volumes of poems and stories and books in addition to If, and not one of them sticks in my head, nor means a thing. To this day, I read If and it moves me to tears.

The truly infuriating thing is that the poem is so good, the only way to describe it with any justice is to use hackneyed twaddle that any frustrated high school sophomore would use to tell a girl that he would die for her. So forgive me if I sound trite. The very totality of this poem makes it impossible to narrow it down to anything as simple is "I loved your opening line."

Perhaps the wisdom of If is a reflection of Kipling's age when he wrote it. Perhaps my growing fondness for it is a reflection of my aging self as well. I'm well past my 20s (and somewhat past my 30s), and as the realities of the world and making my way through it have scrubbed the shine off my dewy youthful optimism, the delicacy with which Kipling explains the price of adulthood is staggering.

The truly sublime thing about this poem is that it is always best in your own voice, in your own head. I've read If a thousand times, but I have never heard it recited particularly well. To me this is the zenith of the written word, the intersection of the universal and the personal. Countless men (more so than women, I have found) internalize this poem and commit all 32 lines to memory. And yet each hears it differently. Experiences it differently. Responds to it differently.

If is magic. In it is the secret of life; the voice of the common man, and the voice of God. It is the universe, in all its aged wisdom and the promise of new life. It is a guide path through the morass; a map that can be referenced any time, from anywhere, that always leads me to safety. And that place of safety is always within myself.

To say that I aspire to write this well is to say that I aspire to breathe and laugh and love. And yet I take comfort from the fact that I never could. I do not compare myself to Rudyard Kipling, as a writer or a sage. And, in truth, I don't really want to write a poem like If.

But what If gives me to aim for is the unreachable ideal. The drive to connect, to resonate. The desire to leave this world with something that says "I was here. And it mattered that I was."

And if I can smile as my hopes for transcendence come to nothing, I will have lived up to the ideal that If lays out. It's a tall order for sure. But would it be worth it if it were any other way?