To say that God knows those who don’t know God Should not offend those who do not believe In the existence or the mind of God, But they might be insulted who do not Find comfort in whatever they believe, Those for whatever reason knowing God As one who doesn’t care or won’t receive Their prayers, the hopeless souls who think that God Is never there, and anyone who’s thought That God hates those who struggle to believe That God is love... But this I do believe, That God will walk with those who don’t know God And weep with those who say he wasn’t there And listen to an unbeliever’s prayer.
I’ve other things to think about than you and me and whether we will ever be together anymore if ever we were there before. I’ve better things to do, considering my separate point of view, than parse the existentiality of “us.” (I could lose myself in metaphors that never end (ground, sun, river and wind) and feel the power of presence and the force of perpetuity that even in a moment lets me glimpse the greater course from whence I come to where I would pretend.) You are too far away from me for me to see, so why should I pursue the possibility of “we”? And who am I to presuppose the theory that I am yours and you belong to me? You are not mine, I don’t belong to you, and maybe I was never meant for you, and maybe we were never meant to be. (There is a bend that hides each metaphor’s beginning and a bend that hides each end; I have no certainty about my source or my conclusion. I can’t see beyond my current place and yet I can’t divorce my here from there or sever now from then. I am what I have been, will ever be the steel, the spark, the sweat, the breath of me.) from Turning the Metaphor
It is probably best that I do not divulge which one of you I am thinking of now. Eventually, privately perhaps, I will tell you, but first let me quickly assure you all who it is not. I am not speaking to anyone left behind in my past: not my ex-wife, not my forgotten friends, not my departed father. This is also not particularly addressed to those who most inspire me, though each of you deserve more appreciation (which will follow). Nor is this to one of my children, though both of you should know you are worth my undivided attention and will always have the whole of my love. Finally, this is not just a note to myself, no more than it is a vain pitch to everyone in the room. Each of you are invited to listen to my story and I am happy to have you all here, but I am speaking less to the rest of you, more to the other.
(continued) John wrote: this was Andrew’s random choice for a moment of devotion, my sound request in the midst of anger, vespers to escape the disorderly storm... and the soundless stream of consciousness that flows into matins the morning after, Where it is silent if not peaceful. I write as the children sleep. I read: the Word, capital W. I underline: the Word of life, the Life made visible. I know: we saw it, we share it and now I write, small w, that joy may be complete: yours, ours, we share this Life, capital L, as we live in each other’s lives.
And now I am writing to you, son, because your sins have been forgiven, this is true, and I am writing to you, daughter, because you have come to know the One, the creator and the forgiver who has existed since the beginning. I am writing to you, children, because you have defeated the darkness and come to know the Father of all fathers I am writing to you now because you are strong and filled with the Word and continually filling in the blanks, discovering the One who has existed since the beginning, sharing the One who forgives, the One who first said, “Let there be Light.” Beautiful choice, Andrew. And Kirsten, beautiful premise. There will be anger and insolence and there will be times of silence too, But you, each of you, are beautiful and you complete the Joy, capital J, that helps me fill in the blanks Of my own life. fromTurning the Metaphor
Theistic evolution, that god plus evolution equals now is your answer, and all that remains is deciding who God is. Yes, and who are you and what is now and where are we going from here? I believe — do you want to know what I believe? Not really, you say. Clever little conversation stopper, and yet you have learned that you can tell everyone what you believe if only you do not lead with a question. Believe it and impose it. But I believe you are right. (Now do you want to know?) Blank plus evolution is, you say, and we fill in the blank with Buddha, Christ, Mohammed. Or godlessness, emptiness, chance. You get to choose what leads you to now: the blank is true, and beyond this we may never know the empirical truth but we will rest in our faith. But I believe — a statement, not a question, that I cannot rest in godlessness, that Genesis is true, setting us free, that God is the beginning and the end, the Big Bang and the final Word, the constant Grace and the now, Immanuel. This is what I believe. And you can call me, as you call yourself, a theistic evolutionist with a neat little formula, and you can rest in this, but now read on. Read the poetry of John and the songs of David, the trial of Job and the angst of Qoheleth Read the Gospels and Acts and the letters to the early churches. Read Revelation, and argue with it all, question if you must, but register all the incompetent hyper-human history of one corner of the world, the bumbling children of God, trying to get to now, trying to understand. fromTurning the Metaphor
I sing because I'm happy I sing because I'm free His eye is on the sparrow and I know he's watching me - Civilla D Martin In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan “Grand Inquisitor” poem and Father Zossima’s last words are polar opposites, yet they share similar themes. Separately, they discuss the concepts of freedom and happiness and the values of miracle, mystery, and authority. The two speakers even begin to agree on some points, although their differences on these issues are numerous, to say the least. But the main distinction that separates Ivan’s Inquisitor and Father Zossima more than points on any of the individual concepts is the difference of the speakers’ perspectives. The Inquisitor lectures pedantically as from a podium, but only one person is meant to hear him; Father Zossima bears witness to only a few people around his deathbed, but it is a testimony for the world. As the Inquisitor speaks, he sees the universe with the conditions of “them” and “us”; Father Zossima does not separate as such, but says, here is what I have seen, how it has been for me, and how it can be for you. This difference in perspective is evident in all the individual issues. Freedom, the Inquisitor says, brings “unrest, confusion, and unhappiness” (301), and so “[we] have vanquished freedom... in order to make [them] happy” (294). “...They will submit themselves to us gladly and cheerfully” (304). Father Zossima, too, sees negative aspects in the world’s idea of freedom: it brings “slavery and self destruction... separation and isolation” (369). His response, however, is not to perpetuate the us/them separation and enslavement, but to acknowledge the alternative, truer freedom of a Christian. Zossima does not quote the apostle Paul, but the allusion is implied: “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all” (1 Cor. 9:19). There is no us and them in Zossima’s kind of servitude, because it is universal. Meanwhile, the Inquisitor is concerned with conquering people and holding them captive for the sake of their happiness. “We shall reach onr goal and be Caesars... [for] the universal happiness of man,” he says (302). “We shall give them quiet, humble happiness, the happiness of weak creatures” (303). Father Zossima also talks about happiness in terms of humility and the universe, but again he does so with a different perspective. He speaks of being “consumed by a universal love, as though in a sort of ecstacy” (376). He also addresses global conquest: “...by humble love... you may be able to conquer the world” (376). Thus, he reverses the role of the happily humble, making them captors, not captives, with the force of love. The Inquisitor’s forces are threefold: “miracle, mystery and authority” (299), the three things denied us when Christ resisted the devil’s temptations and established our dreaded freedom. But the church resumes control of these forces, providing the bread of satisfaction, possessing people’s consciences, and wielding dominion to make the world “happy;” thus, man knows “whom to worship, to whom to entrust his conscience and how... to unite all” (302). To Father Zossima, although love remains “the strongest [force] of all” (376), he, too, values the forces of miracle, mystery, authority; unlike the Inquisitor, though, he appreciates this triune on the same plane as the recipients, and furthermore, he sees their combined force as inclusive of God’s plans. In fact, he finds miracle, mystery, and authority not only in God’s world and in God’s people, but also in the Word of God itself: “What a miracle and what strength is given with [the Holy Bible] to man!... And how many solved and revealed mysteries!” (343). And he sees this power in “sorrow... [passing] gradually into quiet, tender joy” (343); in “Divine Justice, tender reconciling and all forgiving,” and in the central promise of a future life. And it is all a difference of perspective. fromMarch to December (Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
For the violet hour motif (here and at TWL 220), see note, TWL 378. I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Eliot's note: Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ’character’, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one- eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest: Cum Iunone iocos et ‘maior vestra profecto est / Quam, quae contingit maribus’, dixisse, ‘voluptas.’ / Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti / Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota. / Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva / Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu / Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem / Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem / Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae’, / Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, / Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem / Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. / Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa / Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto / Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique / Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte, / At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam / Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto / Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore. See Ovid, Metamorphoses III: 412-443: Twas now, while these transactions past on Earth, And Bacchus thus procur’d a second birth, When Jove, dispos’d to lay aside the weight Of publick empire and the cares of state, As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaff’d, ‘In troth,’ says he, and as he spoke he laugh’d, ‘The sense of pleasure in the male is far More dull and dead, than what you females share.’ Juno the truth of what was said deny’d; Tiresias therefore must the cause decide, For he the pleasure of each sex had try’d. It happen’d once, within a shady wood, Two twisted snakes he in conjunction view’d, When with his staff their slimy folds he broke, And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke. But, after seven revolving years, he view’d The self-same serpents in the self-same wood: ‘And if,’ says he, ‘such virtue in you lye, That he who dares your slimy folds untie Must change his kind, a second stroke I’ll try.’ Again he struck the snakes, and stood again New-sex’d, and strait recover’d into man. Him therefore both the deities create The sov’raign umpire, in their grand debate; And he declar’d for Jove: when Juno fir’d, More than so trivial an affair requir’d, Depriv'd him, in her fury, of his sight, And left him groping round in sudden night. But Jove (for so it is in Heav’n decreed, That no one God repeal another’s deed) Irradiates all his soul with inward light, And with the prophet's art relieves the want of sight. Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see See John 9: 25: Whether [Jesus, by healing on the Sabbath] be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. Compare Tiresias's PERCEPTIVENESS with that of Madame Sosostris (TWL 54); the one-eyed merchant with his allusion to the one-eyed Odin (TWL 52, 54 and note, TWL 208); and the pearly-eyed sailor (TWL 48). For another perspective, see Eliot, Gerontion (1920), which begins: Here I am, an old man in a dry month and concludes with ...Tenants of the house, thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. Gerontion had been part of The Waste Land but was cut at the suggestion of Ezra Pound. See T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot (1971).. For more of the eye's limitations, see note, TWL 308. At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, Eliot's note: This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in mind the 'longshore' or 'dory' fisherman, who returns at nightfall. See Sappho, fragment 95 (ca. 600 BC, tr. Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895): Evening, thou that bringest all that bright morning scattered; thou bringest the sheep, the goat, the child back to her mother. See alsoRobert Louis Stevenson, Requiem (1879): Home is the sailor, home from the sea. See also Dante Alighieri: Purgatorio 8:1-2: Twas now the hour that turneth back desire In those who sail the sea... The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Typists, the two-career household and ready-to-serve meals, were part of the war and post-war trend. See note, TWL 256. BREAK TIMES: Compare the typist’s teatime with Countess Marie’s coffee break (TWL 11), the bar talk at last call (TWL 139), or lunch with the Smyrna merchant (TWL 213). See also note, TWL 263, and note how time moves here from eveningto breakfast to teatime. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. Combinations are undergarments; stays are corsets. Contrast the piled up bed and the hyacinth girl's hair and clothes in need of drying (TWL 38) with Cleopatra’s chambers (TWL 77). I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest — I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, Carbuncular: Pimpled. The expected guest,a young house clerk or a typist home at teatime, is "one of the low." See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2.401: Hamlet recites Aeneas’s description to Queen Dido of Achilles’s son Pyrrhus; while avenging the death of his father, Pyrrhus is said to have “eyes like carbuncles.” Compare these to the sailor’s pearly eyes (TWL: 48). One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
Bradford was an English manufacturing town and home to the nouveaux riche. Compare the socialite chess players at TWL 137. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which are still unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
Compare this to the impetuous attack of Tereus (note, TWL 99). (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) See A.C. Swinburne, Tiresias (1885): I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes / Much evil... In the end, though merely a spectator (see note, TWL 218), Tiresias has nonetheless “foresuffered” the scene and, being blind, “gropes his way” out of the room. Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . Beyond Metamorphoses (see note, TWL 218), TIRESIAS also appears in Homer, Odyssey 11: 561-565 (ca. 800 BC, tr. A. T. Murray, 1919), where Odysseus tells his crew, Ye think, forsooth, that ye are going to your dear native land; but Circe has pointed out for us another journey, even to the house of Hades and dread Persephone, to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias; in Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 468-474 (429 BC, tr. Francis Storr, 1921), where Tiresias curses Oedipus: Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared To twit me with my blindness--thou hast eyes, Yet see'st not in what misery thou art fallen, Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate. Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know'st it not, And all unwitting art a double foe To thine own kin, the living and the dead; in Sophocles, Antigone 5: 79-83 (441 BC, tr. Francis Storr, 1912), where Tiresias curses King Creon for threatening to bury his niece Antigone alive I prophesy. For, yet a little while, And sound of lamentation shall be heard, Of men and women through thy desolate halls; And all thy neighbor States are leagues to avenge Their mangled warriors who have found a grave I' the maw of wolf or hound; and in Dante Alighieri, Inferno 20: 34-42, where Tiresias, being one who sees the future, is consigned to walk backwards in the eighth circle of hell. See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders! Because he wished to see too far before him Behind he looks, and backward goes his way: Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed, When from a male a female he became, His members being all of them transformed; And afterwards was forced to strike once more The two entangled serpents with his rod, Ere he could have again his manly plumes.
See Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: The Grand Inquisitor (1880, tr. Constance Garnett 1912): In Ivan’s dramatic “poem,” Christ’s only answer to his inquisitor is a kiss: The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea. Christ, like Tiresias, then leaves into “the dark alleys of the town.” from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)
