The Grand Design

This is how you are to bless....

- Numbers 6:23 (NIV)

The grand design of the universe proceeds

regardless of apologies and creeds,

no matter what’s believed or not believed:

that God exists precedes how God’s perceived

and all the universe thus far perfected

is God’s reality on us reflected.

What good, then, if we separate the light

into a thousand rays of wrong and right

when there is truth in each ray we receive?

I may not always know what to believe,

but I believe that God’s expecting me

to keep reflecting everything I see

without distortion, judgment or rejection

and faithful to the source of my reflection.

God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great,

and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy

unbiased by thy aid or opposition,

no matter what thy rank or reputation;

God shine His face upon thee for thy favor

and turn His face toward thee for thy peace

regardless of thy service or rebellion,

uncolored by thy honor or thy shame.

By grace thy soul is given understanding

just as by God the sky is given lightning

and as the force that first did cause the heavens

is still creating every force within:

so bless thee, as the miller turns the millstone,

and keep thee, as the tender feeds the flame.

The grand design of the universe is carved

and I am but a sliver in the carving:

all I know is shaped by the designer

and all I am, a part of the design.

I am an ant with perpetual movement

around me, earth and heaven ever moving

like a mindless dragon: I am but a mote

within its mouth, and yet for all the motion

I am never swallowed as the dragon

sleeps and stirs. And even this great dragon

is given its own task upon the millwheel,

unmindful of the fires and misfortunes

of time, and I’m an atom on this millwheel,

holding to my place in the design.


from Walled Gardens

Creed and Confession

I have been bound to imagery and form,

without regard to their source and eternity;

I have taken scripture at its word,

and found God’s essence in chapter and verse; and yet

I have bowed down to devils wearing the rings of kings.

“He sat upon the throne” was all I needed.

I have praised the images in my church,

never thinking of God as the artist;

I have followed the form of the worship service

never considering the contingencies.

I have come to believe that God will send

the devils on their way, but

I have never dared to move beyond

“He sat” to “He has no place.”

I have been bound to the image of a throne

and the form of one who wears a fitting crown;

I have let the scriptures tell me what is true,

as even “he that sat upon the throne revealed...”

I have proudly worn my Christianity

and celebrated God’s descendancy;

I have put this at the center of my creed,

believing that my God will come again, even as

I have known my God’s been with me all along,

every time, forever everywhere, even as

I have looked and still I look for a direction

to bow down to, traditions to cling to, even as

I have needed, always needed, something new,

something certain, something true.


from Walled Gardens

Moleskin 5.3

Let me linger for a moment now, back at my sixth home and its place on the Buffalo River: a muddy river, full of the soil of the fields around it; a rising river in the spring, finding its way into our basement from time to time; a meandering river that shapes its own valleys in the shadow of the Red River of the North; a river of gravel road bridges and big mud turtles. My mother had her small job of reading and reporting the river heights at the bridge station just down the hill from our home; my father worked at the church up the hill on the other side of the river, a quarter mile down and up that hill. I swam in the Buffalo River, as muddy as it was, and I explored the woods behind our house that bordered the river and give it riparian solace. I met neighbors and friends my own age all along the river: across form us, the Akers, a mile east and south, the Horpedahls. Spiritually I am still sitting, will always be, along that river, with water that seems to barely move.

Voices in my Head - September 27, 1990

Another dream: Jill Emmons, my neighbor and occasional bus-mate, is with me, and she is hitting on me.  I am weak —I put my arm around her once, twice —but I consider Carrie, and nothing more happens: there isn’t the time, but I think I will be able to resist.  We are watching a movie: Richard III.  There is a scene where they pitch pennies (not really) and one character nonchalantly mentions the date on the coin: 1956.  We get a chuckle from the subtle humor.

from March to December

Voices in my Head - September 26, 1990

September 26

Quick dream (I should give this more time): Dan and I are in my car, Dan is driving.  We are stopped and backed up by several cars at the corner of Prospect and Touhy; we are south of the intersection.

I take the opportunity to jump out of the car to quickly run an errand in one of the Prospect shops.  I have some film to turn in and some old record albums I want to sell.  There is a one-stop shop that can take care of both of my needs.
  
I turn in the film quickly, but they have to assess the record albums one at a time, and there are about fifteen of them.  I wonder if it will take too long, but I decide Dan will have the sense to pull the car over to the side if the light turns green.

The shopkeeper looks at the albums.  They are worth 5¢ ...15¢ ...10¢ ...etc., depending on the newness, popularity, size —all the obvious factors.  The total comes to $1.75.  It’s too small an amount, really, but I am ready to concede, wanting to collect the money and get out of the shop quickly.  But then the shopkeeper convinces me that I ought to hold off on selling them until they increase in value.  As a consolation he gives me a punch card which, when filled, will allow me to redeem a given number of records at a higher price.  

I leave the shop ...and outside I find my car sitting sideways, perpendicular to Prospect Avenue with its nose in the middle of the right hand lane and its rear almost right up against the parked cars on the side of the street.  Traffic is slowed down even more now, as cars have to drive around mine now.  Dan is asleep in the passenger seat.  I go over to the driver’s side —and it is crushed, beyond just a scrape, bashed in all along the side.  I am able to open the door and I determine the car will be driveable, but Dan still doesn’t wake up.  

I shout, in a panic.  Dan wakes up groggily and continues to be only half awake for the rest of the dream...  The cops come... We look the car over... I calm down a little... and Dan goes back to sleep.

from March to December

Voices in my Head - September 22, 1990

Another hotel dream:  This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.  

For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk.  So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room.  I opened it and walked in.

There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked in the room behind me.  He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips.  “Hey!  What are you...?” or something like that.  But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.

I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love.  I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant.  I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed.  I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.

Carrie was there in the lobby.  There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face.  I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose.  So I stepped back a formal distance from her.  I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him.  

Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose.  It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that.  And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page.  Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio.  The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone.  The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.

But I got through it.  And she said yes.

And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms.  I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers.  My room had two beds, and I laid down 
on the bed nearest to the wall.  I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right.  I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach.  “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained.  This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right.  And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.

Her brother George answered.  Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married!  No reaction.  There was Mr. P and Mrs. P and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business.  

But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George.  He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned.  “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much.  I mean, the seventeenth of this month?”  It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.  

George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling.  I assured him that we would be okay.  I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone.  I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now.  

I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street.  Eventually the reception faded.  “George? George?”  I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out —this was the erly days of mobile phones —but even after extending it I could only hear static....

I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream.  It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.

from March to December

Falling Towers

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 369-385 

371  The incognizance of line 366 continues. Compare lines 54-56, where Madame Sosostriscould not find the Hanged Man (which Eliot associates with the hooded figure of Christ (see note 46 and line 364)) and saw only “crowds (now hooded hordes) of people, walking round in a ring.” 

374  The unreal city, previously seen at dawn and at noon (see lines 61 and 208), is now in Tiresias’s violet hour (see lines 215 and 220 and note 378), and at war with bombs bursting, planes whistling and towers falling.  

✭  TOWERS will appear throughout section five, and while the only towers mentioned previously were white with pealing bells (line 289), they are now falling (line 374), upside down in air (line 383), horrible (note 412) and destroyed (line 430). Compare the tale of the Tower of Babel reaching vainly to God, at Genesis 11:4-9: “And they said , Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men [built]....  And the LORD said, Behold, the people ...have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.  So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth...” 

376  London is now placed in context with Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria and Vienna, all centers of empires and cultural hubs for their time, but here they are cracking, falling apart and reforming into something unreal.  See note 207 for other unreal city references.

378  See Pierre Leyris, Poémes, 1910-1930, 155 (1947), relating this passage to paintings ofHieronymus Bosch, perhaps alluding to the baby faced bat in Bosch, Hell (1504) (below).  See also Bram Stoker, Dracula 3 (1897): “I saw the whole man... begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.”

                                             Hieronymus Bosch, Hell (detail) (1504)


✭  Compare THE LONG-HAIRED WOMAN who fiddled whisper music on her hair with the hyacinth girl, found with “arms full, and ...hair wet” (line 38); the woman on talking walls whose “hair / Spread out in fiery points / Glowed into words” (line 108); the woman who walked the street with “hair down” (line 133); and the woman who “smoothes her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramophone” (line 255).  See also hair's tie to fertility in both Frazer, The Golden Bough 3:5.6, and Weston, From Ritual to Romance 4 (see notes0.1 and 0.2).

✭  THE VIOLET HOUR alludes to the liturgical color of repentance and baptism; see Brooks(note iii). See lines 215, 220, 373 (air) and 380 (light) and notes 77 (purple sails) and 331(purple trenches).  See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.177 (Ophelia’s violets withered when her father died; see Appendix C) and 5.1.229 (Laertes wishing violets would spring from Ophelia’s grave).  See also the "violet and purple morn" in Whitman, Memories 12 (Appendix A).

384  See line 67, “where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the hours.”

385  Jeremiah 2:13,14: “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. ...The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste...”  Compare this with the “children’s voices in the dome” (line 202).

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

VII. The Younger Brother

Look, the brother said, how many
years have I been at your side,
Serving you, following your rules
and never breaking your commands,
And have you ever given me
as much as a suckling goat to share
With friends, a single night that my friends
and I might have a party of
  our own?

Yet here, no sooner had your boy
returned from his great carnival
Of whores, his share of your estate
devoured, for this son of yours
You’ve gone and killed the fatted calf!
And he despised his brother and
Continued with his murmuring,
but the loving father to his son
  replied,

My son, you are forever with me,
and everything I have is yours,
But it was right that we should have
this feast and celebration, for
You see, this is your younger brother:
he was dead, but turn around
And look, he is alive again! Your
brother was lost, and now he has
  been found!”

from Stillwater Symposia

VI. The Older Son

The older son, the one who stayed
at his father’s side and in his place
Was in the field while this went on,
and when his working day was done
At the cue of the setting sun he came
back home again, but as he drew
Up closer to the house he heard
the music and the sounds of
  people dancing.

And looking through the door he saw
that they had killed the fatted calf.
What is the meaning of this? he said,
pulling one of the servants aside,
And the servant said, your brother is home
and all of this your father has done
To welcome him and to receive
your brother safe and sound where
  he belongs.

This only angered the older son,
and he stood where he was looking in,
Refusing to enter through the door
and scowling at the celebration,
And even when his father came
outside to ask him earnestly
To enter in, to be part of
the party, the older child started
  arguing.

from Stillwater Symposia

Moleskin 5.2

My first home was Owatonna, Minnesota, a town built on the banks of the Straight River, Straight, or Owatonna, being the name of a Dakota princess who was first healed by mineral springs on a tributary, Maple Creek. I lived there as an infant and remember nothing of it. My second home was in Billings, Montana, however many blocks away from the Yellowstone River: I was a toddler here, and I do not recall anything about my toddler years. Third was Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the mighty Mississippi courses through; we lived in a trailer park just east of the Miss, but my memories are only third party suggestions: I am told I first learned my address here, and being told this enough afterwards I still remember it. Fourth was Maddock, North Dakota, with no rivers of its own but the Big Coulee two miles west and the Sheyenne five miles south. I remember Maddock —our house anyway —but not the rivers. Fifth was New Hope, Minnesota, four miles west again of the Mississippi, still in the days before I had ever heard of Huck Finn.

V. The Celebration!

The son, just as he planned, began
to say, Father, I have sinned against
The heavens, and in your sight I am
no longer worthy to be your son,
But before he reached the begging part
to work as a servant in the fields
The father wiped his words away 
and turned toward the servants he
  had hired.

Bring out my finest robe, he said,
and give it to my son to wear,
Let him have rings for his fingers
and put new shoes upon his feet,
And then bring out the fatted calf,
have it quartered, chopped and cut
Into the finest veal for our table
that we may eat and celebrate
  the day,

And then as they prepared the feast
and as the plates of veal were passed
The father rose and raised his glass
and gave a toast to all the house:
My son was dead, he said, but now
he is alive!  My son was lost
But here again, you see, my son
is found!  My little one is home
  at last!

from Stillwater Symposia

IV. The Road Home

But when no one gave him anything,
he started talking to himself,
Questioning, remembering
how servants working for his father
Always had enough to eat,
and bread to spare, he said, and here
Am I, so far away from where
I was, with less than I need to stay
  alive.

I will stand, he said, and go back to
my father. Father, I will say,
I have sinned against the heavens, and you
have seen me.  I have turned away,
But now I fall before you, one
no longer worthy to be called your son.
Instead, I beg you, let me be
one of the hired servants in
  your fields.

And the son arose and started walking
back towards his father’s place,
But when he was still a long way off
the father saw the suffering of
His child and he was greatly moved.
He ran to him with open arms,
He fell on him with a strong embrace,
he held him to his heart and kissed
  his face.

from Stillwater Symposia

III. The Prodigal Son

There was a man who had two sons
and the one who was the younger stood
Up to his father.  Father, he said,
give me the part of your estate
I would inherit now, as I
can’t wait around for you to die.
And so the father, still alive,
took what he had and gave it to
  his sons.

Then, with his share, the younger son,
who could have been a blessed one
And always had a place to stay,
within a week was out the door,
Taking a different road and looking for
a distant land, somewhere to waste
The substance of his portion, and
the road took him where he meant
  to go,

And there he lived in riotous
abandon, spending all he had,
But then a mighty famine came
and he became a beggar of the land,
An immigrant among the citizens,
consigned to work their fields
And feed their pigs, willing to line
his belly with the husks left for
  the swine.

from Stillwater Symposia

On The Road To Emmaus

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 360-368 





361  Eliot: The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.  See Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage (1919): “When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-strewn sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’” Shackleton’s experience alludes to the biblical passage of The Road to Emmaus (see note 366).  

365  Bhadantácariya Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga ("The Path of Purification," 430 AD, tr. Henry Clarke Warren, 1896): “...A certain woman had married into a family of rank, but had quarreled with her husband, and, decked and ornamented, until she looked like a goddess, had issued forth from Anuradhapura, early in the morning, and was returning home to her family. On her way she met the elder, as he was on his way from Mt. Cetiya to go on his begging-rounds in Anuradhapura.  And no sooner had she seen him, than the perversity of her nature caused her to laugh loudly. The elder looked up inquiringly, and observing her teeth, realized the impurity of the body, and attained to saintship. ...Then came her husband, following in her footsteps, and seeing the elder, he said: ‘Reverend sir, have you seen a woman pass this way?’And the elder said: ‘Was it a woman, or a man, that passed this way? I cannot tell. But this I know, a set of bones is traveling on upon this road.’”

366  See Luke 24:13-31: “And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk , and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:  And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.” 

✭  This reference to THE ROAD TO EMMAUS and the corresponding allusions (see notes321.5 and 361) finally moves the April poem from the pains of Good Friday to a late recognition on the morning of Easter.

367 Eliot: Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen. Herman Hesse, A Glimpse of Chaos: The Brothers Karamazov, or The Downfall of Europe (1920; tr. Sydney Schiff, 1922): (“Already half Europe, at all events half Eastern Europe, is on the road to Chaos. In a state of drunken illusion she is reeling into the abyss and, as she reels, she sings a drunken hymn such as Dmitri Karamazov sang. The insulted citizen laughs that song to scorn, the saint and seer hear it with tears”).  Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov is also alluded to at line 247. Eliot met Hesse in Switzerland in 1922 (see Letters**) and published this translation of Hesse’s essay in the first issue of his magazine The Criterion (October 1922), the same issue that offered his debut of The Waste Land. From the same essay: “Those who cling definitely to the past, those who venerate time-honoured cultural forms, the Knights of a treasured morality, must seek to delay this Downfall and will mourn it inconsolably when it passes. For them the Downfall is the End; for the others, it is the Beginning.” 

from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

II. The Housekeeper

So will the angels cheer in heaven, and
how much more their cheering for
The one returning soul than for
the ninety nine who never wandered?”
And even as the Pharisees
continued with their murmuring, he
Kept talking to them, questioning
and challenging them with parables.

“Imagine you are a woman now
with only ten coins to your name,
And then suppose you find one day
that you had lost one of your coins:
Which of you would not turn up the lights
and sweep out your entire house,
Looking everywhere until you
found that one lost piece of silver,

And in that coin would you not find
the grounds to dance, a cause to call
Your friends and neighbors, all of them,
to share the joy with you?  I tell you,
So do heaven’s angels sing and dance,
God’s very name pronounced
With celebration every time
a single sinner simply turns
  around.


from Stillwater Symposia