NIGHTMARE - LES

[I hear things moving at night in my room. We’ve had mice; we’ve even had rats in the walls, but in my room I never see anything, I just hear things. That’s one reason I sleep with my lights on. There are other reasons. I’m 83. I would prefer to die in my sleep, softly, gently. None of thus “rage, rage against the dying of the light” for me. In fact I’m always a bit surprised when I wake up, and the thing is I wake up frequent;y during the night. I like the lights on when that happens: 12:30 a.m.; 1:45; 2:36; 4:02. Usually I fall back to sleep. If after 15 minutes I am still there, awake, that is, I open the kindle until my eyes get heavy or until I fall asleep with the kindle on my chest.

And then again I hear things. There’s a small refridge next to me; it makes its own special kinds of noises. Sometimes those noises wake me; startle me at times. I hate that, and to teach it a lesson, I open it up, pull out a mango Chobani smoothie, all 7 ounces, twist off the lid and have my revenge. “One less treasure, Beast!” The fridge softly slumbers on. But the noises that bother me are always on the other side of the room: behind the chair, under the chest, in the corner just out of sight.

And then there are the whisperings. I have along with many other health issues, tinnitus, so like a seashell, there is always that gentle roaring going on in side my head. The air conditioner, located in an adjoining area, also makes its own special noise day and night. But the truly eerie sound is the low-voiced whispering that sounds like either Walter Cronkite or like Edward R. Murrow on the radio.; the sounds are like an insistent voice but one that is just below the range of intelligibility. So that’s the way it is each night, ghoulish sounds not quite intelligible. Anyway, enough with eerie noises in the night, so as Murrow always said to end his broadcasts, “Goodnight and good luck.”

GHOSTLY WHISPERINGS IN THE NIGHT

Soft low breathings scare me quite;

Something’s moving in my room,

Papers rustling in the gloom.

There’s that breathing sound again;     5

Back to sleep I’ll just pretend

Nothing’s there that might offend.

Nothing’s there with fangs or claws

Or with terrifying jaws.

I’ll pull my covers end to end.                 10

And hope God’s grace will harm forfend.     

Still, with night just half begun

Could be Demons having fun

Until the rising of the sun!                        14

Images: Dr. Dog considering, wondering what it’s all about; the second is Edward R. Murrow, telling us what it’s all about. That’s the way it is; good night and good luck. Take care of yourselves and one another.

DESIRE - LES - comments & Quotes

For the detective Jack Colt, as I suspect for many men, women are beautiful, desirable and essentially mysterious. In the third volume of William Baer’s New Jersey Noir trilogy, near the end, Jack visits one of the beautiful women in the hospital. We see immediately that she is very “pretty,” as are all of the women he names from all three novels a bit later. Savannah, the injured woman on the hospital bed, wants to know about the nature of their relationship: “What are we, Colt?” You can read his response in what follows:

She looked up at me. It was hard to ignore how pretty she was, even with her head bashed in. “What are we, Colt?”….

“We’ll figure it out,” I said.

Which I said without the slightest conviction that I could ever “figure” it out.

Or figure out Zoe. Or Roxs. Or Rikki O’Brien, the girl from Cape May two months ago. All of whom deserved a whole lot better than me.

Which I don’t say with some kind of self-effacing sense of self-demeaning modesty. I’ve got nothing but confidence about myself. I know myself. Thank you, Socrates.

Except in regards to the irresistible sex.

“What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Just past midnight.”

“You can go home, Colt. I think I’m stoned anyway.”

I laughed.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Like Snow White after the apple.”

I laughed again.

“Kiss me before you go.”

I bent over and did as commanded.

Why are women so delicious?

Am I allowed to say that?

I felt better.

Which was all her doing….

Jack Colt in New Jersey Noir: Barnegat Light, book 3 in the delightful trilogy by William Baer (Emphasis mine).

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As I said above, for Colt throughout the three novels, women are incredibly beautiful, desirable, and essentially mysterious. Of course the author has Jack give a nod to the semantic confusion in our culture by asking the reader, “Am I allowed to say that?” Needless to say, I suppose, I think so. In fact when we don’t make a distinction between male and female qualities, masculine and feminine, we lose the opportunity to understand something significant about the meaning of being human generally, and especially about ourselves.

In other words, to limit my comments to the experience I, as a man, know something about: what does feminine Beauty mean? In our culture the lowest common denominator in male/female relationships is sex, and unfortunately that’s where the meaning is likely to stay in our rabbit culture. Of course a beautiful woman is desirable, but that isn’t the end, sex isn’t the end. What does her beauty really mean? Is she just an idol, an end in herself, or is she an icon or image, a means for beholding something essentially transcendent, the real meaning of Beauty? If students today were given the opportunity to read classical texts with someone who understood them, an answer might manifest itself, as it does in Dante’s La Vita Nuova and in his Divine Comedia or in Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest, for example, or in Milton’s exquisite portrait of Eve and Adam in his Paradise Lost or his delightful masque, Comus.

Advertising especially turns feminine beauty into an idol in order to sell products. “Her” beauty leads men to a desire that ends up in bed as if having sex can somehow let you possess that beauty, but what you get instead is: “an expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” more than likely; that is, according to the Shakespearean sonnet, “the definition of “lust in action.” That is also the lowest common denominator and the loss of an opportunity to understand.

So what does human desire mean first according to the classical, orthodox Christian theologians? See the following definition. Second, what does Dante have to reveal about feminine beauty and its meaning? That’s below too, after the theological explanation.

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“Desire is given so that we can understand the purpose for which we are living.

“To pray is to exercise our desire. St. Augustine tells us that ‘the desire of your heart is itself your prayer. If you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire. The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer.’ In a mystical dialogue, God says to St. Catherine of Siena, ‘Do you know how I show myself within the soul who loves me in truth? I show my strength in many ways according to her desire.’

“Why is desire so crucial? We realize from experience that our desires are taking us somewhere. Desire opens us up to an exciting plan bigger than ourselves, and it entices us to go after it. C.S. Lewis speaks of desire as ‘the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want. The thing itself has always summoned you out of yourself.’

“God also says to St. Catherine, ‘I who am infinite God want you to serve me with what is infinite, and you have nothing infinite except your soul’s love and desire.’

“Be aware that desire itself is God’s gift to us, and desire is given so that we can understand the purpose for which we are living. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that ‘there is no desire which is not directed towards a good. A natural desire cannot possibly be vain and senseless.’ 

“Our desires are given to us precisely to lead us to the One who gave them to us. Desire is given so that we can participate personally in the happiness of the One who created us. And ‘we can only really possess what we desire’ (G. Bernanos).

“The Catholic poet Paul Claudel offers this encouragement: ‘Christ tells us, I have come to bring you the desire and the direction, that secret understanding, throughout your travels, of your destination. To the burden that weighs you down, I have added longing.’ Let’s give in to our longing and let desire do the heavy lifting in our prayer as we ask with St. Cyprian: ‘May God see our desire, for he will give the rewards of his love more abundantly to those who have longed for him more fervently.’” Fa. Peter John Cameron. (Aleteia)

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Benedict XVI on St. Augustine: “In a beautiful passage, Saint Augustine defines prayer as the expression of desire and afiirms that God responds by moving our hearts toward him.”

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As with Jack Colt and his typically human desire for the beautiful women in his life, here are four brief examples of how the Biblical poems and prophets understand the fundamental human longing for God as the central human desire:

1. Isaiah 26:8-9

   Indeed, while following the way of Your judgments, O Lord,

   We have waited for You eagerly;

   Your name, even Your memory, is the desire of our souls.

   At night my soul longs for You,

   Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently;

   For when the earth experiences Your judgments

   The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

   _____________________

   2. Psalm 42:1-2

   As the deer pants for the water brooks,

   So my soul pants for You, O God.

   My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;

   When shall I come and appear before God?

   ____________________

3. Psalm 63:1-8

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah:

O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;

My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,

In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary,

To see Your power and Your glory.

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,

My lips will praise You.

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4. Psalm 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but You?

And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.

(Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Desires)

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As in the case of Jack Colt, his delight in and desire for beautiful women are immediately clear throughout the three novels. And I should add that he doesn’t sleep around! He simply seems to appreciate their beauty and their desire ability. Jack Reacher, however, does sleep around and what a difference it makes when I think about the novels in comparison. Baer’s novels allow for the possibility of mystery and transcendence in their male/female relationships; Child’s novels do not. Reacher has a personal moral code, but Child’s novels are completely grounded in the material world. Colt appreciates, Reacher beds.

It ought to be clear from the above theological passages that the purpose or the final cause of desire in the human self, man and woman, theologically understood, is to lead us to God. Dante is the poet who defines for us the way in which “romantic” desire fits into this understanding of the desire for God.

First, however, you might think of the way Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, an earlier literary source, unfolds. Romeo and Juliet’s love and their desire for one another is unquenchable. But there is a third thing with them throughout the entire play until it manifests itself more explicitly in the end, and that is of course death! Romantic love of itself can lead only to death. Or to put the idea into its theological context it can also lead either to Heaven or to Hell. To understand how it can lead to Hell, consider the famous lovers in the Inferno: Paolo and Francesca, and how their love, their desire for one another, went wrong. For the opposite destination see the entirety of Dante’s poetry, especially starting with his Chapter 19 in La Vita Nuova.

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(The following “chapter 19” is from Dante’s La Vita Nuova as translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. [If I knew how to tighten the stanzas I would, but every time I attempt such things, everything falls apart. This time I do not blame my failure on the imp (of the perverse), but who knows for certain.]. Each stanza of this Canzone is 14 lines. The reason for including this poem at this point is that here Dante reveals how love, desire and image work, or ought to work in human romantic relationships. Dante’s desire and love for Beatrice, the real human woman, becomes the means by which he comes to understand Beauty, Grace, Goodness, and God and thus to desire God. Whew!

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“XIX After which it happened, as I passed one day along a path which lay beside a stream of very clear water, that there came upon me a great desire to say somewhat in rhyme; but when I began thinking how I should say it, methought that to speak of her were unseemly, unless I spoke to other ladies in the second person; which is to say, not to any other ladies, but only to such as are so called because they are gentle, let alone for mere womanhood. Whereupon I declare that my tongue spake as though by its own impulse, and said, “Ladies that have intelligence in love.” These words I laid up in my mind with great gladness, conceiving to take them as my commencement. Wherefore, having returned to the city I spake of, and considered thereof during certain days, I began a poem with this beginning, constructed in the mode which will be seen below in its division. The poem begins here:

Ladies that have intelligence in love,

Of mine own lady I would speak with you;

Not that I hope to count her praises through,

But telling what I may, to ease my mind.

And I declare that when I speak thereof

Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me

That if my courage fail’d not, certainly

To him my listeners must be all resign’d.

Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind

That mine own speech should foil me, which were base;

But only will discourse of her high grace

In these poor words, the best that I can find,

With you alone, dear dames and damozels:

’Twere ill to speak thereof with any else.

An Angel, of his blessed knowledge, saith

To God: “Lord, in the world that Thou hast made,

A miracle in action is display’d

By reason of a soul whose splendors fare

Even hither: and since Heaven requireth

Nought saving her, for her it prayeth Thee,

Thy Saints crying aloud continually.”

Yet Pity still defends our earthly share

In that sweet soul; God answering thus the prayer:

“My well-beloved, suffer that in peace

Your hope remain, while so My pleasure is,

There where one dwells who dreads the loss of her;

And who in Hell unto the doom’d shall say,

‘I have look’d on that for which God’s chosen pray.’”

My lady is desired in the high Heaven:

Wherefore, it now behoveth me to tell,

Saying: Let any maid that would be well

Esteem’d keep with her: for as she goes by,

Into foul hearts a deathly chill is driven

By Love, that makes ill thought to perish there;

While any who endures to gaze on her

Must either be made noble, or else die.

When one deserving to be raised so high

Is found, ’tis then her power attains its proof,

Making his heart strong for his soul’s behoof

With the full strength of meek humility.

Also this virtue owns she, by God’s will:

Who speaks with her can never come to ill.

Love saith concerning her: “How chanceth it

That flesh, which is of dust, should be thus pure?”

Then, gazing always, he makes oath: “Forsure,

This is a creature of God till now unknown.”

She hath that paleness of the pearl that’s fit

In a fair woman, so much and not more;

She is as high as Nature’s skill can soar;

Beauty is tried by her comparison.

Whatever her sweet eyes are turn’d upon,

Spirits of love do issue thence in flame,

Which through their eyes who then may look on them

Pierce to the heart’s deep chamber every once.

And in her smile Love’s image you may see;

Whence none can gaze upon her steadfastly.

Dear Song, I know thou wilt hold gentle speech

With many ladies, when I send thee forth:

Wherefore, (being mindful that thou hadst thy birth

From Love, and art a modest, simple child,)

Whomso thou meetest, say thou this to each:

“Give me good speed! To her I wend along

In whose much strength my weakness is made strong.”

And if, i’ the end, thou wouldst not be beguiled

Of all thy labour, seek not the defiled

And common sort; but rather choose to be

Where man and woman dwell in courtesy.

So to the road thou shalt be reconciled,

And find the lady, and with the lady, Love.

Commend thou me to each, as doth behove.

T.S. Eliot: Journey of the Magi

The Journey Of The Magi (Eliot) with some commentary.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

[Thomas Howard in Chance or the Dance discusses the contrast between the understanding of imagination in the past, as a means of grasping reality, and it’s understanding in the modern world view. In doing so he cites “The Journey of the Magi” and the two ways of seeing. In other words what did they really find there, and what does the journey truly mean?]

“…when a modern man acts as though there is a correspondence running among all things (whenever he uses a metaphor or simile, or any image, that is), he is saying, in effect, “Our inclinations fool us. But we won’t be fooled. We know from scientific research that it is only imagination that leads us to project one thing onto another. To be sure, this is very often useful. It helps us communicate ideas. And it helps us cope with life. But it is just that—imagination—and nothing more. Things look as though they answer one to another, so we may speak of them in that way so long as we do not suppose that we are saying anything true thereby.”

In other words, the faculty in us that establishes these correspondences among things, and hence allows us to see one thing as an image of another, is imagination, and the modern mind (the new myth) understands this to be a flight away from actuality. In this view, when primitive man spoke of the god of the wood, he was peopling an inanimate thing with projections of his own inclination to see things personalistically. Similarly, when the Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, this was a helpful, albeit fanciful, way of personalizing reality, so that an accurate modern rephrasing would be “A sense of modesty and awe when confronted by the phenomena of experience is appropriate.” When Dante fancies hell and purgatory and heaven as real states of being, he is, of course, projecting the human experience of alienation and discipline and bliss into a cosmic geography. When T. S. Eliot speaks of the journey of the Magi as a paradigm of human experience, we must remember that what the Magi found at Bethlehem was only an imaginary (that is, fanciful) thing and that there is no scientific (that is, serious) connection between this and anything real.

Imagination, which is this faculty by which we suppose correspondences among all things and hence see them as images of one another (it is the imagination—the image-making faculty), is understood in opposite ways by the old myth and the new: by the new it is seen as a flight into fancy; by the old it was seen precisely as a flight toward actuality.”

[I highly recommend Howard’s book as a way of seeing the differences between the modern perception of reality [chance] and the older, medieval/Renaissance perception [the dance]. I find that one of the views is exciting and much more likely to lead to a real understanding of the meaning of the cosmos and our presence within it than the other.

Let me provide a brief example. Shakespeare’s imagination at work in King Lear allows us to see the consequences of Lear’s failure to understand the realities of right reason, imagination and especially love. Those consequences unfold brilliantly although tragically in the following action of the play. Lear and his somewhat passive counterpart Gloucester come to see and understand the meaning of those realities by the end of the play though they (especially the King) have given away their power and are helpless to correct the situation. The situation does of course get corrected though not without a series of tragic losses.

Once the world view has shifted from that of Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and others to the new world view of Descartes and the Enlightenment, Jonathan Swift’s brilliant imagination has revealed to us exactly that which has been lost in the journeys of Lemuel Gulliver. Gulliver, as an embodiment of an aspect of the new world view, what Eliot would come to call the “dissociated sensibility,” has essentially lost the meaning of right reason and the human capacity to love, though his understanding of reason is now that of the truncated reason of the Houyhnhnms in the fourth book of the Travels. As a satiric character rather than a tragic one Gulliver never achieves an insight into what he has lost or failed to understand. By the end of the “novel” his real blindness to the earlier understanding of human nature that we see in Shakespeare still exists. He is out in the stable sleeping with his horses rather than inside his home sleeping with his wife. In a very clear way Gulliver is now one of C. S. Lewis’s “men without chests,” which Lewis explains in The Abolition of Man. Swift, I think, clearly grasped what had been lost in the understanding of human nature. As a clear example of that, contrast the perspective of Gulliver with that of the compassionate Portuguese sea captain who rescues him at the end. The sea captain has a perspective on human beings similar to that of Cordelia in King Lear.

For a slightly different perspective on that understanding of human nature and the cosmos that existed before the Enlightenment see Lewis’s The Discarded Image.]

Beauty as image - les

BEAUTY

“She walks in beauty, like the night…”

Lord Byron

I love her from afar each day,

For she is beauty, good and true;

But I’m a wretched fellow,

One of the fallen crew.

I see the light of Heaven

Shining in her sparkling eyes,

While mine are dull as worn out soil,

Which she would soon despise.

Her hair is dark as raven’s wing,

Glistening in the full moonlight;

Her curves are perfect as the form

Of Eve for Adam’s just delight.

Her beauty’s not an end, you see,

To grasp and firm possess;

Rather a means of seeing—

For one who’s dispossessed.

Beauty’s a means of looking through

To that which lies beyond;

A glimpse of glorious Heaven

For one of Earth not over fond.

les

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[Now for the real thing:]

She Walks in Beauty

BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

• COLLECTION

THE TRINAL TRIPLICITY—the Angelic hierachy

Philip Kosloski - published on 09/28/17

Each angel is created for a specific purpose within the cosmos.

Angels are spiritual beings created by God, naturally invisible to the human eye, but all around us and constantly carrying out the tasks God has given them.

Traditionally the angels are classified into what are called nine “choirs” or “ranks.” This division is based on nine names of angels found in Sacred Scripture.

Saint Paul writes about them in his letters:

“[May] The eyes of your heart [be] enlightened, that you may know what the hope is of the glory of his inheritance in the saints … Which he wrought in Christ, raising him up from the dead, and setting him on his right hand in the heavenly places. Above all principality, and power, and virtue, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1:18, 20-21)

“For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him.” (Colossians 1:16)

The Old Testament adds Cherubim and Seraphim (in multiple places) and “archangels” are named both in the New Testament (Gabriel, Michael) and in the Old Testament (Raphael and Michael).

St. Gregory the Great puts all of these “choirs” into a single list in one of his homilies. “We know on the authority of Scripture that there are nine orders of angels, viz., Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Throne, Cherubim and Seraphim.“

It is believed that each of these choirs was given a specific task by God. Theologian and philosopher Dr. Peter Kreeft gives a nice summary of these different choirs and their roles in his book Angels and Demons:

The first three levels see and adore God directly:

The seraphim, the highest choir, comprehend God with maximum clarity, and therefore their love flames the hottest. (“Seraphim” means “the burning ones.”) Lucifer (“Light-bearer”) was once one of them. That’s why he’s still very powerful and dangerous.

The cherubim contemplate God too, but less in himself than in his providence…(“Cherubim” means “fullness of wisdom.”)

The thrones contemplate God’s power and judgments. (Thrones symbolize judicial, juridical power.)

The next three choirs fulfill God’s providential plans for the universe, like middle management personnel:

The dominations or “dominions” (…”authority”), command the lesser angels below them.

The virtues receive their orders from the dominations and “run” the universe, so to speak, especially the heavenly bodies. (“Virtue” used to mean power, might, or energy.)

The powers serve the virtues by fighting against evil influences that oppose the virtues’ providential plan.

The last three choirs directly order human affairs:

The principalities care for earthly principalities, that is, cities and nations and kingdoms.

The archangels (such as Gabriel) carry God’s important messages to man.

Ordinary angels are the “guardian angels,” one for each individual.

This traditional ordering of angels is an accepted Catholic belief, though not part of official Church dogma. St. Thomas Aquinas is another Church theologian who found these different choirs of angels throughout Scripture and sought to find a coherent way to arrange them. Aquinas devotes an entire question in his Summa Theologiae to this concept and Kreeft’s summary above is partially derived from it.

What’s interesting is that according to this arrangement, only archangels and (ordinary) angels have direct dealings with humans. The many multitudes of the other choirs of angels are either with God or govern the world invisibly. An exception is St. Francis of Assisi, who was given the stigmata, or wounds of Christ, by a seraph. For this reason he is known among Franciscans as “our Seraphic Father.”

What a feast it will be for our eyes when, as Christ told Nathaniel, we “will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

[In the Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser referred to them as “The Trinal Triplicity.” That’s such a lovely phrase as it rolls off the tongue! C. S. Lewis has a chapter on angels in his delightful scholarly work, The Discarded Image. However, anyone who is truly interested in Angelology should consult the work of the sixth century writer known as the Pseudo-Dionysius, especially “The Celestial Hierarchy” and “The Divine Names.”]

Image: all my Angel images were unusable; however, this image of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of my favorites. This image is part of a set for sale found at the House of Joppa.

PLANT LIFE - LES

Sophie

Sophie sits on my window sill,

Leafy green and perfectly still;

Quiet as an Air Force glider,

Or a truly well-fed spider.

Though she’s root-bound in her pot,

It doesn’t phase her, not a lot.

We give her water so she’ll thrive

Like bees on honey in their hive.

As she sends up new green shoots,

She stays fresh with her pot-bound roots;

As she grows some leaves turn yellow,

A sign that all is well, and mellow.

Sophie is my sole companion,

For good or ill she’s always fresh,

Lovely, like a great green Banyan,*

Or a dryad bound in flesh.

* The Banyan represents growth, strength, and self-awareness through reflection. meditation, and a quieting of one's mind. It is said that Buddha found enlightenment after sitting under the banyan tree for 7 days.

This verse was also included in “Tiny Verses,” but I forgot, and I also wanted a picture of her to go with it. So, I thought I had also better put something new with it; thus “Love Divine.” The lovely hymn goes “Love Divine all loves excelling.” My verse is a rough draft, done this morning; after my borrowing of the hymn’s first line, sort of, any other relation to the real hymn is purely accidental. I don’t know why I can’t get things more than half right! It’s depressing. I feel like Antonio Salieri in Amadeus looking at Mozart’s first drafts. “Here’s the very voice of God,” he says before dropping all the sheets of music. Mozart’s wife asks, “is it not good?” Salieri says, acknowledging the truth he’s just seen: “It’s miraculous.”

        Love Divine

Love Divine all love exceeding,

Calling at the temple door;

Knocking softly, seeking entrance,

Love Divine will not implore?

Does He stand outside a beggar?

Will He stand there evermore?

Time will tell that once time’s vanished

There will be no time, no more.

Inside the temple on a pew

Sleeps a solitary creature,

Wasting all his given days.

Even though Truth was his teacher,

Truth was just for him a phase.

Love Divine cries out “Awaken,

For your Time’s about to end.”

Once that’s gone and Truth gone with it,

Love Divine can no soul mend.

So thou sleeping foolish soul,

Awaken before your Time’s all gone,

And the sun sets leaving darkness

For in that darkness there’s no dawn.

Image: Sophie by Fred

TINY TALES IN VERSE- LES

The Hydra

The Hydra stretches through the skies

Hidden by her starry guise;

Every time the slithery beast

Lost a head there was increase;

Two took the place of the missing one.

Heracles, however, discovered the key,

Clever as clever as he could be.

He buried the one immortal head

Under a boulder, down to her shoulder,

Effectively making her dead.

Though water snakes  have no shoulders as such

No one complained, not even the Dutch!

Monoceros

Monoceros Monoceros,

A creature with one horn,

Who stands outside a garden gate,

Lost and quite forlorn.

We know him as the Unicorn

Surrounded by a fence,

Led there by a chaste young maid;

How could he be so dense?

Finally he’s a symbol though

Of love both chaste and true,

Shining down on each of us

From God’s most heavenly view.

Sophie: Soul Companion

Sophie sits on my window sill,

Leafy green and perfectly still;

Quiet as an Air Force glider,

Or a truly well-fed spider.

Though she’s root-bound in her pot,

It doesn’t phase her, not a lot.

We give her water so she’ll thrive

Like bees on honey in their hive.

As she sends up new green shoots,

She stays fresh with her pot-bound roots;

As she grows some leaves turn yellow,

A sign that all is well and mellow.

Sophie is my sole companion.

For good or ill she’s always fresh:

Lovely, like a great green Banyan,*

Or a dryad bound in flesh.

* “The Banyan represents growth, strength, and self-awareness through reflection. meditation, and a quieting of one's mind. It is said that Buddha found enlightenment after sitting under the banyan tree for 7 days.” [What more could a room-bound person ask for?]

ON BEING BUGGED - LES

Housefly

Silly, sad, and sentimental,

I had a three day pet.

He was just a common housefly,

How lonely can one get?

He followed me from room to room,

He sat upon my head!

He tried to lick my supper plate,

But I shooed him off instead.

He was the only pet I had,

So fifty fifty what to do?

He was just a pesky housefly

When into my cup he flew!

I clapped my hand down on the top

And trapped him good and well.

I shook the cup for quite a bit,

And rang him senseless as a bell.

Silly, sad,and sentimental,

I took him to the loo,

Flushed him down our tidy bowl,

Without too much ado.

He was in truth a three day pest,

But not a nuisance only;

I’m sad I flushed him far away,

For once again I’m lonely.

God appears in many forms,

In puzzles and conundrums;

This time he buzzed in happily,

Though I offered no bread crumbs.

I offered no bread crumbs, you see,

Because he oft offended me;

Thus I sent him on his way—

Perhaps I should have let him stay.

If this bit of verse sounds as though it was based on a true story, well, of course it was. I admit I developed a little affection for the bug over the three days he inhabited my room with me. Once or twice he even landed on my computer screen but seemed totally oblivious to me. I tried to catch him several times but he easily evaded me. When he landed in my empty coffee cup I proved quicker than he was. What I didn’t say in the verse was that I also quickly spit a mouthful of water into the cup, hoping that would help keep him there.

When I removed my hand and peered down into the cup, he was conscious, flapping his wings busily, and looking like a small motor boat, somewhat out of control and moving in swift circles on the surface of the water. I concluded that if he could survive having his bell rung and avoid drowning perhaps he could survive an intense flushing. The last I saw he was motor-boating around the surface of the toilet water just as he had the water in the cup. Thus I pulled down the handle and saw him disappear in a fast swirling whirl pool. He seemed a hardy creature; I rather hope he survived.

The problem with houseflies as pets is that you never know what they have been standing on and eating outside before they found their way inside, if you know what I mean. In the past I had cleaned up the yard too often to be optimistic about that. Thus it was finally thumbs down for the little guy. Alas.

Of course as I was sitting in the bathroom last night, I saw this large black spider with about seventy legs dash across the floor and disappear under a pile of folded up rugs. God willing she will stay in the bathroom and not visit my room and drop on me in the middle of the night. Still, a pet’s a pet until it bites you in the middle of the night, especially one with seventy legs and numerous numerous eyes.

les

TIME - Anthony Esolen

[Sometimes I can’t help myself: therefore time for something by one of my favorite authors. Nudge, nudge! I highly recommend that if you enjoy this essay, you should seek out his online magazine:

“Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber.”]

On Time"

John Milton

ANTHONY ESOLEN

JULY 19

“Time is money,” people have been saying in English for at least 300 years, but I prefer what the strangely perspicacious little boy in Dickens’ Dombey and Son said to that man of business who begot him: “Father, what is money?” And the father was taken aback. He pulled up short, and then he told him, with great seriousness, though the boy did not understand it, that money was the most powerful thing in the world. Mr. Dombey did not know that the Son he had planned to be at his side, in his imagination, in his management of time, would never live to be a partner of Dombey and Son. “Fool,” said the Lord to the rich man who thought he was the lord of his own time, so that he could live easy on the wealth he had accumulated, “even this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”

When I look back in time on the glimmers of beauty in my boyhood, I see that none of them have to do with wealth or prestige or the pursuit of heady pleasures. They are like the light, not to be hoarded or grasped, but to be grateful for: the wild cornflowers I picked for my mother from a vacant lot; the inscription “Gloria in Excelsis Deo,” painted high up in the nave of the church I attended when I was seven, long since torn down; Ernie Ford singing “Sixteen Tons,” on one of the few records my parents owned; my mother singing softly in the kitchen while I lay on the floor a few feet away, in our tiny living room, absorbed in drawing a comic strip (I was four years old then). Somehow it seems to me that these moments are more permanent than the Twin Towers or the Colossus of Rhodes or the pyramid of Cheops. Maybe “permanent” is the wrong word. The moments seem to be within time but outside of it, beside it; and we have the promise of God that nothing truly good will be lost forever.

[“Time Flies,” William Gerard Barry. Public Domain.]

That’s why Milton’s poem “On Time” has always moved me so deeply. You might think it is just an intellectual’s exercise in distinguishing between the things that pass away, the gross things that weigh us down, and the everlasting things. But I think it is a brave challenge to Time, which he personifies, and to us all when we are tempted to live as if time were all in all — time, and the things we use time to acquire, such as Mr. Dombey’s idol, money, and other ultimately foolish and disappointing idols. It’s foolish to give yourself over to what devours itself, as Time does. It is to miss the heart of love and joy.

The poem is in the form of a stanza from an Italian canzone, made up of long lines and short lines, somewhat irregularly interspersed, and often the rhymes are irregular too. Milton’s rhymes are quite regular, as you’ll see, with the first eight lines divided nicely into groups of four, followed by rhyming couplets, and then ending with four lines that rhyme ABBA. But when you read it, you don’t think of stanzas and couplets nicely rounded off, because Milton varies the lengths of the lines, driving us on through the poem with impressive force. Then we come to the final line of all, which is a stroke of sheer poetic genius. It’s a six-beat line, when all the long lines before it have only five beats, and yet there’s a strong stop after the fifth beat, leaving the simple words “O Time” hanging — as if you’d pause right before them, narrow your eyes, and address that ultimate loser, sardonically. “You aren’t much, then, are you?” you say — “O Time.”

FLY, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss,
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine,
About the supreme throne
Of Him, to whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then, all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit,
     Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.

JUVENILIA - LES

I’ve been doing bad verse for a very long time, though every once in a while I manage to knock out a half decent one.  Obviously the following is not one of them.  In fact I may have written this thing for a high school English class.  I memorized it, and I believe I even recited it for that class, a poor suffering lot.  Having gained a bit more sophistication since then, admittedly not much, I changed the Knight’s name from Sir Crazy to what you see here, and Knight’s Hall of Fame to Night’s.  Darkness besets us all.   There were also minor changes which probably don’t improve anything.  If you can’t get all the way through it, I understand, but it’s stuck in my mind and now it’s stuck here.

Verse: Mock Epic Romance

“Sir Whiskey the Fifth”

There was a knight in the days of old

Who was always half-looped, so the story is told.

Honest Sir Whiskey the Fifth was his name;

His armor made the Night’s Hall of Fame!

Now what did he do, you peasants may ask?

He killed ten shots from a highball glass!

With a souped-up horse who lived on straight scotch,

Outran any dragon, was always top notch!

One day there came a dispatch to his far and mighty realm;

‘Twas nailed upon an oak tree, for they couldn’t find an elm.

It called for any brave man to venture off afar

To kill a mean old dragon who lingered here and thar!

Well, off rode Sir Whisky on his souped-up horse,

Out through the palace gates, a splendid show of force!

He searched the hills and he searched the dales;

For a sign of the dragon he braved fierce gales!

When he finally found him in a dark and smelly cave,

The dragon roared, and pitched and shouted, ‘twas really in a rave!

As Sir Whisky was tight, he could hardly see;

He dashed right in to the dragon’s own lee!*

When the dragon said, “Now!” the combat began,

Sir Whisky, the dragon, both man to man.**

Well, the dragon went first, twas torn out his liver;

Sir Whisky went last, his heart wouldn’t quiver!

Now the moral of this story, though not in plain sight,

Is: don’t fight a dragon when you are half tight!***

*lee = his protecting shelter.  I had to check it out too.

**”man to man” The dragon had upward yearnings and desires.

***In the good old days stories always had morals and were often used to educate the young.

Author:

Bottom Half-Shot,

Doubledour and

Sometime Square of the Night

As for the minor changes, I went through the verse again and changed most of them back to the original.  I had misremembered some and then found that the memory of the originals that I had changed were actually better.  Not everything, I’ve discovered, is improved by change.

I remember that I recited it in a college class I taught once at Ohio University.  The reason why mostly eludes me, though I think it might have been due to the fact that a senior faculty member was sitting in on my class to evaluate my teaching. My youthful panache was showing.

Image: Edward Gorey: dragon and man exchange gifts.

The HOUND OF HEAVEN - LES

The Hound of Heaven

[With apologies to the real poet, Francis Thompson (1890), whose poem, like everything else, is available on line.]

Sensing him close behind me,

Down corridors of night I ran,

Feeling the Hound of Heaven

Snapping close at hand.

Ahead I saw two entrances:

I chose the one with light,

For I saw that it turned sharply,

Sharply to the right.

Now I saw before me,

The way to twist and turn,

To escape the fierce and fiery beast

Whose breath was sure to burn!

Still I ran through darkness

Through darkness much like light,

The beast behind me baying

While I stumbled through bright night.

Onward up I scrambled

Seeking myself to save;

Though all I did was scrape my knees—

Forgive me; I’m not brave.

I fell down in the darkness

Hitting chest and head.

The hound leaped upward toward me;

All I felt was dread.

He bit my head, chewed my brain,

And clawed open my chest;

Always driving toward my heart,

He quite consumed the rest.

I tried to move him off me,

But he quickly found my heart.

He sank his teeth in deeply;

He tore my heart apart!

I died that day in August,

Many years ago;

But, oh, the difference death has made,

For the love I’ve come to know!

Coda:

The Spirit of God is the breath of life,

Who soars and sings like the birds of the air

Who enables us to proclaim the faith

That Jesus is Lord—not death and despair!

Image: No, that’s just Schuster, though notice the somewhat demonic face on his chest. Given his behavior I sometimes believe he may very well be possessed.

ENOUGH! -LES - AN ESSAY

An essay on our culture and the current nastiness awake and abroad!

Nazi Germany and the holocaust require some serious thinking about faith and the presence and absence of God. The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is always how could God allow this to happen? It seems to me lately that what we see in Nazi Germany is the extreme consequence of using our human freedom to deify the will. The final result of that action, the extreme result of that is a City, so to speak, completely absent of the presence of God, completely absent of divine grace. Nazi Germany is what the City looks like from that perspective, and it is a crematorium: the complete, absolute denial of God and the meaning of humanity. It is truer, I think, to say that God does not allow this to happen; we do. We will determine what humanity means and to whom the definition applies. God is not in the business of overriding human freedom every time human freedom leads us to commit an evil act. Eventually, therefore, we get a historical reality like that of Nazi Germany and an image of what the denial of God and of objective truth means and actually looks like.

There are Biblical images of the same perspective: Sodom and Gomorrah come immediately to mind, but they are not the only ones. Even the culture of Israel comes to that condition; thus the role of the prophets to oppose the blindness and the evil, and thus, when it doesn’t happen, the exile to Babylon in 587 BC as the final consequence for Israel’s failure to repent and change its perverse and evil ways. Learn the lesson and start again. Do better the next time. Keep the two commandments front and center and obey them. ???

While Sodom and Gomorrah and Nazi Germany present us with three images of a City absent of any sense of divine presence, the point of this reflection is an attempt to clarify my own thoughts on the nature of reality and the presence or absence of God.

In the first place, while the historical reality presents us with a real image of the complete absence of God, we can see that the image is true: this is what that City of total self love and denial of the divine looks like. Ontologically and historically, however, we might discover that it’s not finally the entire picture. Ontologically, for example, I find that a scholastic definition of God, that God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere is a way of saying metaphorically or in a graspable image, that God is present at all times and all places. It follows then that God was present in Nazi Germany too. Historically the nature of that presence manifests itself in the lives of those who opposed and resisted the Nazi evil and their definitions of reality, many of whom gave their lives in their resistance. Perhaps the best and most recent instance of that is the martyrdom of the Jewish Christian Saint Edith Stein, now known as Sister Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, who along with 300 other Catholic Christians was killed at Auschwitz in October of 1942 in reprisal, I understand, for a Dutch bishop’s denunciation from his pulpit of the Nazi terror.

The underlying reality of my understanding of human meaning and choice is found primarily in St. Augustine’s extensive work, the City of God, essentially his response to the accusations that the destruction of Rome in 410 AD was caused by the advent of Christianity and the rejection of the pagan pantheon. Augustin’s basic definition is that throughout history there are manifested two realities, two Cities defined by human love. The two loves are that of Self and that of God. Babylon is his image of love of Self, Jerusalem is his image of the love of God. While at heart his definition seems simple and clear, it takes him 1200 pages at last count to explain fully the definition, but I have found that book, along with his Confessions, quite compelling, especially the Confessions.

Now, the real point of this essay emerges. Simply it seems to me that our culture is quite given over to people who deny the divine and believe it is somehow their right and duty to tell the rest of us how to think and speak. The last example of that was of a young man in Canada, I think, who was denied graduation from his high school or college because he said there were two sexes, male and female. It seems laughable at first but turns out to be rather frightening. There also seem to be males who believe they can define themselves as women and thus take part in female athletics with the predictable outcomes. And of course there are females who believe that because they say it they can be males.

I have read that people ought to be allowed to chose their pronouns. I read an essay in a local newspaper, the Richmond Register, some time ago where the writer kept referring to either herself or some other as “they.” I considered the possibility that they’s name was “Legion.” And now Pride, from being one of the seven deadly sins, has become a rainbow reality under which those deniers of common sense reality may gather and determine for us our ways of thinking. Anyone who is even half awake [not “woke”] will recognize what I am talking about. Finally my assertion is that our culture has become the kind of image that Nazi Germany is, a culture that denies truth, common sense reality, and the possible presence of the divine. The examples of participating in this abomination are everywhere: consider the LA Dodgers and Target and Budweiser and, finally, the sisters of perpetual indulgence. You would think that anyone with common sense would object to these manipulations, though I suspect that there is much more to come.

NOTA BENE: There in an online free publication called “The College Fix” that I was just directed to as it keeps track of some of the current abominations like the admittance of the “gender-confused” male, William Thomas, now known as “Lia Thomas,” to the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania, thereby excluding several qualified women swimmers. There is a 5 minute interview with his chief rival on the team, Paula Scanlan, at The College Fix’s website: thecollegefix.com Enough!

Image: D-Day: the invasion into enemy occupied territory. One hopes it is never too late!

CRUCIFIXION-LES

How can we not think about it, offer it up? Everyone suffers, but underneath it all there is this:

Crucifixion: After Psalm 22

The first nail’s piercing painful,

It punctures flesh and bone;

The second breaks the other hand,

Immovable like stone.

I scream and cry for mercy,

For the presence of my God,

But no one comes to save me

From this painful path I’ve trod.

Someone’s holding down my feet,

I see the mallet raised,

I feel the point of entry

As my flesh is lightly grazed.

The soldiers look up laughing

At their feigned and foolish blow;

Not one has human sympathy;

They just enjoy the show!

The mallet finds its target;

The third nail finds the wood

Blood spurts from my ravaged feet,

The world’s misunderstood.

I try to move my body,

The pain is hard to bear;

The crown of thorns pierces my flesh

As I’m thrown into the air.

I moved once through the cosmos

Tossing suns with cosmic glee;

I’m pinned now on this wooden cross:

Lord, Why hast Thou forsaken me?

Almost a Sonnet:

         Growing Darkness,

         Desperate Plea

The Light of day is wounded, Lord;

Please help me to see clearly.

The Light of day has dimmed too much;

Help us who love you dearly.

Though after all it’s not the light,

It’s not the heavy morning haze

Or flock of birds or passing cloud—

No, it’s my own distracted gaze,

And failure to unthread this maze

That makes this plea so desperate!

Help me, Lord, to see the Light;

Restore my proper vision.

Let me not be lost within

This vale of dark derision!

Death

Death is truly unkind

It decimates our friends;

In the end it leaves us

Too grave to make amends!

Death will too soon come for me

Knock softly at my door;

Inky darkness shrouds him,

It’s darkness to the core.

I cannot see beyond the vale

To that eternal shore,

Where judgment true awaits me,

And ones whom I adore.

Life is quite unstable,

Full of ups and downs;

Death is just the final move,

Where down is empty darkness

And up is towards God’s crown.

Psalm 27: THE FACE OF GOD - Anthony Esolen

Seeking the Face of God

Anthony Esolen

I’ve often thought that one of the tremendous mysteries of the Jewish faith was that God forbade the people to make any graven images. Everywhere else in the world, man makes his gods in the image and likeness of himself, whether of his body or of the ghoulish projections of his soul. Sometimes we get a hideous Moloch, eager to devour little children. Sometimes we get a handsome Apollo, god of song and sunlight—also of mice and the plague.

But not in Israel. And that makes it all the more powerful when we read that God knew the great prophet and lawgiver Moses face to face (Dt 34:10), and when the singers of Israel long to behold the face of God. They did not yet know the incarnate Lord, nor could they conceive of that incomparable blessing upon mankind. The very angels must tremble before that blessing, as Christ sits at the throne of God, son of both God and man, anointed universal king.

What did they mean? Rather, what did God mean, when he commanded them to seek his face?

The song of the beloved

I ask that question whenever I read Psalm 27, the brilliant song of triumph that David sang—David, whose name means beloved. The first three verses express his firm trust that God will protect him from his enemies, even if they come against him in an army. The Hebrew verb suggests that they turn on him, they come down. Imagine them as rushing down from a height upon the otherwise helpless David below. “Yet I will be confident,” he cries, because God is “the stronghold of my life.”

And then suddenly the poem turns. I cannot read the words without a flush of surprise and gratitude, and wistful longing:

One thing I have asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.

The word we translate as “behold” is almost never found in the Bible except in poetry—the poetry of prophecy, of contemplation, of ecstatic vision. The psalmist cannot merely be talking about going to the temple in Jerusalem to look upon the finery. Surely the Holy Spirit is raising him to an intimation of what he cannot explain. And who could explain it? The Lord is not an abstraction. His beauty is real, achingly real. Why, we find a form of the same word when the bridegroom in the Song of Songs praises his bride: How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden! (7:7).

Then English fails us in the final phrase. What does it mean to “inquire” in the temple? Inquire about what? Are we to engage in an investigation? Yes and no. The verb, baqar, suggests discernment, reflection. The Hebrew would have heard an echo of one of the most significant words at the beginning of creation itself: boqer, morning, daybreak. The idea is that, in prayer, in contemplation, you break into the truth. Not by your own power, though. We may say that God allows the truth to break into you, to dawn on you. Imagine then the beauty of God’s glory suddenly breaking upon you in your natural darkness.

Booths on a mountaintop

From the temple, the psalmist turns back to the world of trouble, but now, so to speak, the house of God accompanies him:

For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent,
he will set me high upon a rock.

In English, nowadays especially, we are apt to think of shelter as an abstraction, as if all that the psalmist means is that God will protect him. He does mean that, but the Hebrew word, sukkah, is far more evocative. Think of the lean-tos that the people of Israel dwelt in, when they fled from Egypt into the desert, and made their slow way to the Promised Land. The Lord then commanded them always to celebrate the happy harvest-time feast of booths, Succoth, for seven days in the seventh month, beginning five days after the great and solemn Day of Atonement, and ending with a kind of anticipation of Easter, the eighth day, a day of holy convocation.

What the Hebrews did was to gather the boughs of beautiful trees, and branches of palm and willow, weaving them together for a booth, that is, a shady makeshift house, to sit beneath, and to eat and drink there, and rejoice in God’s plenty. The contrast between the work of human hands—a temple in stone, a screen of leafy branches soon to wither away—and the work of God is striking. Better to dwell beneath the lean-to of God than to depend upon princes and armies!

That makes me think again of what Saint Peter said when the Lord was transfigured on the top of the mountain, appearing there with Moses and Elijah. Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah (Mk 9:5). He was, the evangelist says, not in his right senses when he said it, because he and James and John were all in great fear. But it was exactly the thing to say. Somehow, Peter sensed that the Lord was instituting a new Feast of Booths, so to speak, just as he would build a new temple, one not made by human hands.

The enemies return

The poet alternates verses singing praise to God, and hoping to enter the mystery of God’s house, with verses that call for help against his enemies. When we read the psalms, we may wonder who the poet’s enemies were and what they were doing to him, but we never wonder that he has enemies. I suppose that enmity is the world’s common state of affairs. Liars expose you to hatred and scorn. Swindlers play upon your innocence or your kindness. The envious want to tear you down, and so they twist your very virtues into vices.

Treachery is worst, when people whom you have helped turn against you, or when those from whom you expect kindness abandon you to your enemies. For my father and mother have forsaken me, says the psalmist, but the Lord will take me up. It is not just to hide him away and keep him safe:

And now my head shall be lifted up
above my enemies round about me;
and I will offer in his tent sacrifices
with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

It is hard to translate the Hebrew ruwa’—think of an ear-splitting shout, or the blast of a trumpet on the battlefield. And after the shout, the songs and the melodies; not so that the Lord will raise him up, but because he has done so, and has raised him up for song and praise. Man never stands so tall as when he sings praise to God, and gives the Giver of all good things what is the closest he can come to a pure gift. You can put a house to use, you can swing a sword to protect your people, but praise is akin to gratitude, and only the truly free heart can give it.

The Holy of Holies

And now comes what for me is one of the most staggering verses in all of Scripture:

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious
to me and answer me!
You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you,
“Your face, Lord, do I seek.” Hide not your face from me.

No pagan Greek sought the face of Zeus. Why seek what your sculptors sculpt? No Egyptian sought the dog-face of Anubis. But the face of our God must be sought: and how else, but by love? Here it is not a comely form that shows itself to us first, and we delight to look upon it. “Where there is love,” says the mystic Richard of Saint Victor, “there is an eye.” We love, and then we see. Our Lord himself says to us, Seek, and you shall find, and no one seeks the face of the beloved, unless love has come first.

The great evangelist of love, Saint John, must have been thinking about this verse, and about the face of the Lord he loved, when he said, Beloved—and in his mind, as he thought in his native tongue, he surely heard the name of the Psalmist—we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2).

What do we want from God? No pagan Roman wanted Saturn, cold and morose. No pagan Viking wanted Thor, that muscular half-wit. We want to say, with the psalmist, You are my portion, O Lord (Ps 119:57). We want to be set free from sin and from the prison of fallen man, to see God, whom to see in truth is to love, and whom to love is to love eternally.

Anthony Esolen is professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, translator and editor of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House).

ODE: Mary’s Creatures-LES-Terse Verse

Terse verse: not a word wasted; at least that’s the goal for the following new verses.

I’ve been reading my own books, and I’m always amazed at how delightful and even insightful they sometimes are. Sometimes they even inspire me to get the stylus out and compose, rather than just continue to doze, or decompose!. Thus we have a few new ones.

As I was reading the titles of the small verses, I was reminded that the garden and the animals that frequent were favorite subjects. Since there is a new garden tour about to descend upon us, I created the following ode, so to speak. Humor is supposed to lurk in the verse, as the creatures lurk in the garden. Supposed to….

Anyway it takes a couple of readings of the “Ode” to get the various rhythms right. It’s more fun when the various rhythms are right. I think. The “Ode,” so to speak, still calls for tinkering, I can’t help myself there; the changes usually make the verses work better, more smoothly. Nothing is ever quite finished, except maybe the Pilate verse at the bottom.

Ode to Mary’s Creatures

In our yard you’ll find them,

A vast menagerie;

They come to play, participate,

Become, to eat, to be!

Squirrels by the tons and possums,

Bugs and beetles, bees,

Birds of various features,

Feathering out our trees.

Mockingbirds and blue jays,

Cardinals by the score,

Sparrows, wrens and blackbirds,

Hummingbirds and more.

There used to be two turtles

Living in our pond;

One day they up and vanished;

Alas, we’d grown so fond.

Next, a skunk came waddling by,

A super smelly fellow.

Thank God he kept on going,

Though, for a skunk he seemed quite mellow.

Raccoons about the house bewail

The lack of just desserts;

They seem to think they’re owed a check

Because they’re shameless flirts.

Now a fox has made her nest

Under a neighbor’s shed;

She acts as though she’s not a pest,

By adding two kits to her bed.

And how about those rabbits

Making busy bunny trails,

Nibbling the best and brightest shoots;

Bobbing their off-white tails.

Speaking of those rabbits,

The world’s in quite a fix:

Yesterday I counted two,

Today it’s twenty-six.

Prolific are the denizens

Of Mary’s backyard garden;

I hear there’s even a snake or two

Looking for a backyard pardon.

I have been wearing a catheter for over a year now. What fun. I have an interior bladder and an exterior plastic bladder, and hardly any shame left. Long ago the urologist prescribed pills: flow max, finesteride, plus another one whose name I have forgotten. Obviously they didn’t really work. So to make the best of the situation, I wear the bag, that the evil nature of my hands, among other things, makes it impossible for me to empty. Thus emptying it requires the participation of another member of our household, and it’s not the dogs. The verses are entitled “Physics”:

Physics #1

The catheter tube is long and stout;

It functions well, without a doubt.

But what I most delight to see

Is the pillar of air climb from bag to me!

Ah, rhymes are my delight, so you might notice what I have resisted there. So far. Perhaps there should be three verses here, the third one caving into the—er—pressure. The catheter bags have to be completely changed once a month. The old date always feels like yesterday. The need for this medical device occurs when you have a prostate the size of a bowling ball, or so I have been told. Strike!

The exchange process is absolutely delightful. First they have to catch me. Ha! That done they (usually he) has to empty the balloon that is inside the bladder with 30 cc sterile water. The balloon ensures that the tube stays in place. There’s a small tube for the syringe to withdraw the water. The water out, the nurse says, “Take a deep breath.” Do I ever! Then the tube is fairly swiftly pulled out.

The old tube removed, the relevant area is cleaned and sterilized and the new tube inserted, with another, “Take a deep breath!” After the new clean tube is in the bladder, the new 30 cc’s of sterile water is or are inserted. And so the process goes. Just one of the on-going joys of old age.

Physics #2

I love to watch the pillar of air

Glide up the catheter tube,

Then see the yellow liquid

Flow, down like Jiffy Lube.

Okay. So I have never seen what happens at Jiffy Lube, but physics works the same wherever you are, as Newton discovered, supposedly sitting under an apple tree. Liquids flow downhill. Rain falls. Creeks flow down to rivers and we all know where many rivers go. As in a novel I was reading, the Allegheny and the Monongahela flow down to form the Ohio which eventually empties into the mighty Mississippi that flows down to New Orleans and the ocean beyond. Ah geography. And spelling is so easy with “Hey Siri” living on board.

Now here’s my favorite verse. My advice to young writers everywhere is always to keep writing, for sooner or later you are likely to knock out a good one, sort of like the 100 monkeys with typewriters and time finally producing “Hamlet.” (Actually I find that illustration impossible to believe, but everyone seems to think it’s true.) I think my final verse is a good one. It delights me no end. It feels perfect.

“Truth”

“What is truth?” quipped jesting Pilate;

All the Roman boys looked grim.

The Jewish boys glanced all around;

One pointed and said, “Him!“

Notice the way the two “alls” work; where I put them makes a significant difference from line to line. I tried various verbs for the first line too, like “yawned,” “smiled,” etc. until “quipped” fell into place. When it’s perfect it is also no longer the author’s or writer’s.

Image: another creature from a different kind of menagerie in Mary’s garden. And yes, that is a tin goat.

“BEING” UNDONE - LES

____________________________

Being

#2

Outside my window, old yet free,

Stands a dormant maple tree.

Inside my room, there’s bed and chair,

More like than not a creature’s lair.

Not a beaver, not a bear,

More a house mouse, hardly there.

One who moves with stealth and ease,

But terrified he’ll fail to please,

Or spring a trap he’s failed to see,

Just like the lost and web-caught bee.

When spring arrives the dormant tree

Will toss out leaves abundantly;

While I, still hiding in my lair,

Deteriorate into my chair,

Afraid to call on Christ like some—

You know—the beggar who cried, “Come!”

____________________________________

____________________________________

Being

#3

Outside my window nothing’s there

Besides a maple, leafless, bare.

Now my eyes are growing dim;

I cannot see the nearest limb.

Dogwoods blossom round the town;

Forsythia wears a golden crown.

Daffodils bloom in our steep front yard,

Tulips try, but the ground’s too hard;

While in the room I’m still confined;

I would she were not so unkind.

She has two dogs and I have none;

The one I had—too soon undone!

Good Friday’s cross we all must bear,

For suffering is our lot to share.

Easter Sunday’s here at last,

Following one quite glorious fast.

Christ our Lord is risen today—

I fall down hard, trying to pray!

“BEING,” (LES) - [short verse, with comment]

If anyone wants to know how I am, the following verse should shed a little light on that:

Being

#1

Save for her, yourself and me,

There’s no one here that I can see.

I need you, Lord, I plea, I shout;

I need you, Lord, without a doubt!

And yet when all is said and done,

There’s no one here, not anyone:

Just the silence of a tree,

The whisper of the mystery.

Writing this verse I was a bit like blind Milton in that I would go to bed, start thinking of lines, and try to memorize them before I fell asleep. Then I would think about them again in the morning, frequently very early in the morning. When the final two lines occurred to me this time, I had to get up, struggle out of bed, go to my lift chair and type them into my “notes” app so that I wouldn’t lose them. There’s nothing worse than getting the wording correct in my head and then not being able to remember it later.

The thing about this poem is that it is simple, but I think I got it right. I did not know what the end two lines would be, but when I found them, they seemed absolutely right. Writing, I think, ought to be about discovery as much as anything. Six of the words in the poem are loaded and carry a lot of weight: save, yourself, doubt, silence, whisper, mystery. There are at least two literary allusions at work here: one to a Herbert poem where the poet smacks the “board” and says or yells that he has had enough; I think that’s “The Collar,” with the nice ambiguity in the title. the other is to the prophet in his cave listening for God’s voice in the passing wind. Everyone knows the reference to “the still small voice.” There is nothing quite as satisfying in writing, essay or verse, as the feeling that what you’ve written is exactly the best that it can be. It’s like putting the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle into its proper place. Done! Table cleared! Time for a treat!

The other matter, non literary, the goofy one.

I used to take my iPad over to the bed, but I have bad dreams from time to time which usually end with some violent activity that awakens me. At times I woke up to find that I had either punched out the iPad and knocked it off my metal tray that I slept under or knocked it to the floor.

Without the iPad to pummel (we wisely leave it and the metal tray on the other side of my room), I have taken to hitting other things. Last week, for example, I woke up to a metallic clang only to discover that the dream where I was smacking a person in the kidneys was false. The kidneys turned out to be the small refrigerator that sits on a table next to the head of my bed. I still have the two scabs over the small wounds on my left hand. I never used to dream like that, but the heart doctor has added some potent drugs to treat my A-fib; as far as I am concerned they are the usual suspects.

For a while I was having falling dreams. I would be on a high diving board, but instead of diving I would fall and wake up. I hate falling dreams. They scare the crap out of me. I hate heights; I hate movies where people are perched precariously on the side of skyscrapers. Fortunately, after the refrigerator incident, I haven’t had any bad dreams where I fell or punched out someone, or any other kind of dreams for that matter, as far as I remember.

I don’t know why my dreams, the ones I remember, occur as they do. I loved to watch boxing on TV, but I don’t think I was ever a particularly aggressive person. For a good while I had a body bag in my garage in Berea and liked to work out with it, but all that was long after the last fight I was in physically. And that fight was three to one, three of them and one of me. The first guy, the big one came alone and we wrestled to no avail, as I remember. When the other two started coming, I left the big guy, probably uninjured, and surprised the next guy by running at him, smacking him in the eye as I passed, at which point I kept on going. I knew the neighborhood; they didn’t. They left hurriedly too! Exciting times. I think I was 21.

The other memorable “fight” occurred with my best friend at the time. It was night, a group of us were on a field behind one of Heidelberg’s dorms. I think there was a fire in a trash barrel. It was a chilly weekend evening probably. We were drinking beer, of course. We always seemed to be drinking beer. All of a sudden my good friend drew back his arm and tried to hit me. I saw it coming, blocked it and returned the punch, but by that time our friends separated us and the night was done. Someone else drove me home.

The next Monday he picked me up for college classes, and all was as it had been. Mostly. The problem is my failure of courage, not in the physical encounter but in the moral and personal one. I never had the courage to ask him why he tried to hit me! It bothers me to this day. He was a really good friend, and he still was after, but it was never quite the same, of course. Maybe I was afraid I might lose it all, and I wasn’t willing to risk that. Now he’s dead and I am not. Not yet anyway. I will always regret not asking.

SONNET 30 - Douglas Murray

[From The Free Press journal: time for something serious.]

How Boris Pasternak defied Soviet tyranny with a Shakespeare sonnet.

By Douglas Murray

February 19, 2023

Why commit anything—and poetry, of all things—to memory? Certain education specialists stress the synaptic advantages of learning lines by rote, especially when young, though that has been an unfashionable idea for some time. Fortunately, there is another reason, a better reason: a more human reason. Over the course of these short pieces I hope to be able to persuade you, the reader, that it is this reason above any other that counts. Poetry by heart is not just something you can swap out for sudoku.

Two foundational stories stick in my own mind. I will tell the second one next week, but I will start with an event that took place in Moscow in 1937.

That year’s annual Soviet writers’ congress took place in the worst time of the purges. At the major show trials in Moscow, people were confessing to things they could not possibly have done. Both the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and the author Fitzroy Maclean, who observed these events, were credited with the line “I can believe everything except the facts.”

The people who got public show trials were comparatively lucky: at least the absurdity of the excuse for their murder was made public. Other people disappeared all the time with nothing heard of them again.

It was a dangerous time to be a private citizen, but an even worse time to be a public one. So the writers’ congress that year included a lot of very dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising the virtues of Leninist–Stalinism, Stalinist–Leninism, and so on. It was the sort of occasion to which all artists were subjected through that era: a ritual of forced humiliation. A way of getting everyone to collude in the world of lies. 

Boris Pasternak was one of the most famous writers in the country. Though he had not yet completed Doctor Zhivago—the novel that would make him internationally famous—in that hall, that year, everybody knew him. And Pasternak faced a challenge. He could not speak, and he couldn’t not speak. Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria and his men were literally standing by the side of the stage. If Pasternak spoke, he could be disappeared. If he didn’t speak, he could be disappeared. So he stayed silent. It was on the third and final day of the conference that the writer’s friends persuaded him that the silence was madness. He had to speak. So finally, Pasternak got up to the lectern.

Everybody knew who he was, of course. He was tall, and strikingly handsome. As he pulled himself up to his full height he said not a word but a number. The number was “30.” As he said it, all two thousand writers in the hall got to their feet, and—with Pasternak—began to recite.

Thirty is the number of the Shakespeare sonnet beginning, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past.” Today the line may be best known for giving C. K. Scott Moncrieff the title for his English translation of Proust’s masterpiece about lost time. But the Russian writers in that hall all knew Pasternak had himself done a translation of the sonnet into Russian. It was already a classic. Those who know his translation say it is as beautiful as the original.

I first heard this story as a schoolboy from the polymath and scholar George Steiner. It is a deeply Steiner-esque story. Because if there was one thing that impressed him, and he impressed upon those of us who listened to him, it was the deep importance of memory. Steiner can be found onlinesomewhere telling the story again. It was one of his favorites, and it had the advantage of being true.

Why did the story move him, and leave such an impression on me? First is the simple fact that this summoning-up of collective memory allowed Pasternak to leave the stage unharmed. But beyond that, what did it mean? What were the other people in the hall saying?

Steiner had an answer to that. Among much else the message is that what you have up here, in your head, the bastards cannot take. They can rob you, arrest you, disappear you, perhaps even kill you. Perhaps they can kill almost everyone, or at least make a very good try. But they cannot take a memory once it is embedded like this. They cannot take the Russian language, or the English language. They cannot take Shakespeare, just as they cannot take Pasternak. They may be able to take many writers—and they did. But they cannot take us all. So long as we carry what we have up here—so long as we furnish our heads with the important things—nothing important can truly die.

That is why I always think of Pasternak, the writers in the hall, and those writers who didn’t make it through 1938 (poet Osip Mandelstam in particular), when I think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30. 

There are other sonnets by Shakespeare that live in full in my head. Depending on my frame of mind I often recite to myself sonnets 12, 29, and 116 in particular. But I have a special place for Sonnet 30, whenever I recite to myself these fourteen lines written four centuries ago.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Image: Russian author Boris Pasternak in the study of his home near Moscow. (Jerry Cooke via Getty Images)

WORSE VERSE - LES

[Don’t say I didn’t warn you!]

Reflections on the Moon

(inspired by my wife)

Why do I find the moon
Such an alluring eye,
Hanging in our outer space
Moving round our sky?

Why’s she looking down at us
From her celestial throne,
From her quiet chariot,
With its one-note rhythmic tone?

Ever changing, ever fixed,
Silently she sees
That few remark her beauty
Or her power o’re the seas.

Her exquisite beauty,
Always chaste and always true,
Reminds us that her classic role
Is not to be but woo.

Contemplative, to look beyond
Her beauty and her grace
To see her heavenly glory
Reflected in her face.

In this wide vast universe
Of galaxies and sun
We always have above us
Our perpetual holy one.

[AFTERWORD: I know, Anthony Esolen would be appalled; I am trying to be appalled too, but the verses are too much fun to read, anyway. Therefore, here it is, with all its dark spots, Grub Street flaws and such.]

Lucy in Love

Sun-grey bark glistening, mid afternoon light,

Leaf-bare cold limbs fend off winter’s dark night.

As Lucy comes walking, praying to God,

A nearby youth hears an Angel unshod.

Barefoot, she stops near the bare maple tree,

Her eyes green as emeralds, lips full and free;

Her black hair falls brightly, shoulder length bred—

She summons him briskly, nodding her head.

The youth takes her hand, still warm from the sun,

Looks in her green eyes, knows she’s the right one;

Her smile is a blessing, remakes his heart,

He’ll love her forever, never to part.

Soft as the fur on a puppy’s small chest,

Smooth as the silk from her flowing white dress,

Such is the brown skin on her lovely face,

As he touches her cheek, Heaven’s sweet grace.

Softly the light on this fine winter day,

Glows with fresh vigor as much as to say,

Vows that you make under this sleeping tree,

Will blossom in springtime for all to see.

(AFTERWORD: Another embarrassing clunker though I did manage iambic pentameter and a reasonable, but hardly exquisite or original, rhyme scheme: aabb. The only thing I can say for it is that I worked it out very carefully over two weeks, determined to make the rhythm; I did at least manage 10 syllables a line, though there are several lines that might be better with eleven or even twelve syllables:

A nearby youth listens to an Angel unshod…

He touches her cheek, feeling Heaven’s sweet grace…

Soft as the fur on a puppy dog’s chest… [just an alternative 10]

Oh well…. I suppose the worst thing is that I actually enjoy reading both of them and then made them public! Ha! Abandon hope! If you follow me!)

[One more lofty experiment. Ha. Again, I loved Simon, and this verse nicely captures that for me. Four days ago our daughter Johanna had to have her favorite dog, Gracie, “put down,” euthanized. Her loss (and her husband’s, Bobby’s, too, of course) brought to the foreground of my mind our loss of Simon. He brought me joy when he was here; he was a lifesaver. Words and images keep my memory of him alive. Even now then he is a lifesaver, as well as being, on my iPad, a screen saver. For two mystery novels that celebrate the goodness, joy and wonder of dogs, read Dean Koontz’s two novels, Watchers and Devoted. Or, if you want to discover novels where the dog actually narrates the mysteries very convincingly, read Spencer Quinn’s mystery novels.]

SIMON

Simon—God’s good gift to me,

As rich a gift as gifts could be.

We went for walks on country trails;

Love’s a gift that seldom fails.

I see him often in my mind;

Perfection of the dachshund kind.

I miss him mostly every day,

Regretting most his too brief stay.

“Thirteen years would be too short,”

Says the Judge in the Heavenly court;

“Yet thirteen years is more than none

When everything is said and done.

“Rejoice then in your past good gift,

Though now between you time’s a rift,

A fissure that you cannot cross:

Love’s way more than grief for loss.”

[To redeem your experience here, so to speak, I discovered this passage in an essay on depression in the University of Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal. The title is Curing Depressed Humans, Not Nervous Systems, written by Sofia Carozza & Maria Graziano. (February 02, 2023)]

SOURCES: Beauty, Truth, Goodness in the Aquinas account of human nature (les):

[…. The] Thomistic tradition is set apart by its internal coherence and expanse. Its view of the human being as a composite of a body and rational soul, which possesses the powers of intellect and will, offers a fruitful ground for a non-reductive consideration of depression.

The Thomistic Account of the Human Person

Nowhere is the expanse of this anthropology clearer than in the magnum opus of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologiae. Through this work, he systematically explains Catholic teaching, and his account of the human person as a body-soul composite lays the groundwork for much of his explanation.

The distinction between what falls under the “body” and what falls under the “soul” is not as straightforward as one might think. The body is, in short, what neuroscience and medicine can address; this includes sensory input, sensory understanding, and emotions. It includes the aspects of the person that we share with other living things. For example, dogs can experience and understand sensations, and, as anyone who has observed a dog can tell you, they clearly have emotions—though those emotions may differ in nature from our own.

The body is concerned with physical and emotional interactions with the surrounding world, and therefore primarily, in the view of Aquinas, with beauty. Without the sensory input and understanding that are concomitants of our corporeality, we would be incapable of experiencing the beauty of creation or of feeling the emotional responses that accompany these experiences.

For a body to be a human body, however, it must be animated by a soul that is spiritual. Aquinas explains the spirituality of the human soul in terms of the intellect and the will. The intellect accounts for our ability to create abstract ideas from our sensory experience and to achieve rational—rather than merely sensory—understanding. It also makes it possible for us to discuss, analyze, set goals, and plan on the basis of that abstract thinking and rational understanding. The will, for its part, accounts for our desires and our ability to freely act on what the intellect knows and understands. In short, while the body deals with beauty, the intellect deals with truth, and the will deals with goodness.

THE BEATITUDES: POETRY OF PRAISE (Anthony Esolen)

Magnificat: Essay: POETRY OF PRAISE: The Beatitudes

[February 2023]

Let Us Climb the Mountain of Truth

Anthony Esolen

The preacher sat on a stony outcrop of the hill, while the crowd gathered below. The air was still, and he had a powerful voice, fit for his broad shoulders and his far-seeing eyes.

Who can tell why the people were there, or who they were?

Ordinary sinners, unhappy in their sin, seeking the truth and half-afraid to find it.

Mothers who had lost a child, and could not be consoled.

Young men burning to follow a spiritual captain, to free their people.

A spy from Herod, ready to curry favor with that puppet and slave.

Roman soldiers, keeping their counsel, some of them the usual bullies, but a few of them listening closely.

Scholars of the ancient law, eager to find fault.

Children, wide-eyed and wondering.

Countless people whose names we do not know, who heard from the man the ring of a mighty truth.

Then like a prophet of old, but as giving rather than relaying the truth, he opened his mouth and began to teach: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Treasure for the heart

When Jesus spoke those words from the mount, he meant us to treasure them forever. And so, in the Beatitudes, he gives us a sacred poem, one that a child can learn by heart, but of inexhaustible meaning and of simple yet radiant beauty. At the last verge of life we may forget all we knew about politics or science, we may forget the names of our cousins and the streets where we lived, but the child’s poem and prayer we will not forget:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

The Beatitudes are like that. We hear the ring of the poetry even in translation, so even if we forget their order or we leave out one or two, we will not forget them all.

But they did make up a poem. English fuzzes it up, because in English we have a lot of small words to bind one idea to another, whereas in Hebrew the things stand like great blocks of stone, so that the very terseness strikes us with powerful and simple truth. So when Jesus said, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, nine words in English, with a weakling verb, obtain, the Hebrew (or Aramaic) would have been four:

Blessed the-mercy-giving,
for they-shall-be-given-mercy.

Each of the Beatitudes is like that, two or three words on each side of the verse, bound together, as above, by a change on the verb, or by a parallelism or a surprising contrast:

Blessed they-who-mourn,
for they-shall-be-comforted.

It’s not the language you use to buy a mule or send your son to round up the goats. It is meant to penetrate that hardest stone of all, the human heart.

What it means to be blessed

What must have been their experience, when those Jewish people heard the poem for the first time! Blessed, Jesus began, and they recalled the first word of the Tehillim, the sacred songs of their worship: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked (Ps 1:1).

Or they recalled the grace of God who had chosen them from all the peoples of the world: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Ps 33:12).

What was Jesus’ first word? I’ll give two possibilities in Hebrew, their language of worship, though Jesus could have spoken his poem in Aramaic, a close descendant. It could have been ’esherei, which is always used like an interjection: O their happiness!That’s not to describe their feelings, which may well be glad—in Hebrew sameah, quite a different word. For they may not be glad, either: Happy is the man whom God reproves (Jb 5:17). The point is that God has singled them out for a great benefit.

Or it could have been barach: to bless. That’s a stronger word, with strong associations. Look at that joint between your hip and your ankle. One of the ancient fathers said that the devil does not have them. When God blesses you, you take that blessing with deep gratitude, on your knees—Hebrew berech, knee. You make yourself small. Consider the differences in strength, wealth, age, and sex that seem to disappear when people kneel!

Perhaps kneeling opens the eye and ear. When you stand, it’s easy to be full of yourself, so we say that a man “stands on his dignity,” often on tiptoe, and the taller he so stands, the farther he may fall. But no man kneels on his dignity. Yet it is as Chesterton says: we grow taller when we kneel in prayer. We surrender all we are and all we have, to receive as a gift whatever God may bless us with. Consider the posture of those most mysterious of the blessed whom Jesus names: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

We stand on a pinnacle to see the earth beneath. But to see God we must cleanse the eyes of the heart, and fall to our knees.

The God who promises

From the beginning in Eden, God reveals himself as the God of promises, of covenants. In one way, it is like what other peoples have believed about their gods. The Romans propitiated Jupiter by making the right sacrifices according to ancient formulas. Do ut des, they said in Latin: I give, so that you will give. It is a religion worthy of an efficient government, or of a Mafia. I know of no Roman who ever prayed or even desired to grow near to Jupiter in heart and mind and soul.

Yet there never had been any religion like that of the Jews. “Seek my face,” says God to the psalmist, who replies, Your face, Lord, do I seek (Ps 27:8). The Lord is my portion, sings the pious Jew in the great hymn of praise for the law (Ps 119:57). Yes, the Jews prayed to God to bless their nation on earth, but it was God who initiated the relationship, God who chose them, God who proposed the covenant, whose terms in themselves are not difficult. They never demand that man achieve something great or destroy something impressive to catch the Lord’s eye. Mainly they require that the children of Israel refrain from evil, keep themselves clean, and grant even to slaves and strangers the consideration they would wish for themselves.

And yet they fail. We fail. The apple tastes like ashes. It always has; but we eat it anyway, thinking that this one time it will be sweet. It’s like leaping off a cliff and hoping that gravity will be suspended. But God does not rescind the promise. So he says to captive Israel: I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes (Ez 36:27). That is like a resurrection from the dead.

So then, each of the Beatitudes is a promise. The people expected as much. But what does Jesus promise?

The new blessing

It is what we hear at the beginning and at the end of this sacred poem of promises: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That phrase, the kingdom of heaven, appears nowhere in the Old Testament. Yes, God is king, and heaven is his throne. But what does it mean that the kingdom of heaven shall belong to the poor in spirit, and to those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness? What authority does Jesus have to utter the promise?

When Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, the people had heard it from the psalmist, in the same words (Ps 37:11). Still, it was mysterious. How can you inherit the earth unless you bustle in the world and make a grand nuisance of yourself, as we teach ambitious students to do? And yet what do they inherit? But the meek, the lowly, who know they have nothing of their own, are most ready to receive the blessings of God.

Still, in offering the kingdom of heaven, and in a familiar poetic form, Jesus invited the people to venture farther into the mystery of God. He was not speaking only of a place, as when the psalmist says, The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the sons of men (115:16). Otherwise, what could he have meant when he said, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Mt 4:17)? Is it a feeling? Some people read the verse The kingdom of God is within you (Lk 17:21) as referring to inner peace, such as might content a Buddhist sitting in calm benignity. That cannot be so. The kingdom of heaven is secret, like yeast, but active and wondrous (Mt 13:33). It seems to promise little, like the mustard seed (Mt 13:31), but it grows tall and the birds of the air build their nests in its branches—like the swallow who lays her young at the altars of the Lord of hosts (Ps 84:4).

It is everything to us. It comes in time, and it transforms time. It sends its roots into the earth, but its crown is in heaven. God gives it not as an object but as himself, his love. Only Jesus can promise it, because only he dwells in the bosom of the Father (Jn 1:18).

And the people heard the poem, and they remembered, even though they could not understand it all. On this side of heaven, who can?

Anthony Esolen is professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in N.H., translator and editor of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House), and author of three volumes of essays, How the Church Has Changed the World (Magnificat).

Image: the conversion of Saint Augustine.