Hello friends,
Probably like you, I am giddy with spring. Chicagoland, being mostly devoid of greenery, is a strange place to herald in the return of green things. Very often the world here seems to exist only in a series of 90-degree angles, what with the boxy plots of fescue lawns, whole blocks of concrete, and rows of American foursquares.
And then it happens—things become good and green again. Not without some difficulty, as the remnant threat of winter still lingers.
But then come the crocus and the glory-of-the-snow. The squill follows closely. Then the tulip, magnolia, pear, and dogwood. And that’s only the flora.
When the din of traffic softens and the trains are safe in depot, the tinnitus of bees.
Ants pilgrim on to the source of some sweetness too small for eyes.
Swallows painted opal. Warblers donned in golden cassocks.
Christ untombed. World unwombed. Mothered forth from death.
ΔU=Q−W
Through all of this I keep returning to a singular thought: that season to season nothing of this world is created or destroyed, but only ever conserved. This is just as true of matter as of the energy that animates it.
I’m not typically one to find myself meditating on the laws of thermodynamics (does anyone do this?), but in the face of spring’s brilliance I can do little else but recite them like a prayer.
I’m as perplexed by this as you are. Yet I can’t help but think of what each bee, bird, or blossom was before it was this bee, bird, or blossom. And more, what they will be once they return to whence they came.
Conservation of Matter, The Circle of Life, Saṃsāra — whatever you call it, it’s a pattern in nature that at once mystifies, inspires, even horrifies. One that begs consideration of the Big Questions—What is fate? What is time? Why am I here? Who is this I? Where does all of this begin? Where does it end? Etc.
The Pattern begs. And yet for poets like Mary Oliver it seems more like an invitation to a different posture entirely: repose. She reflects on the Pattern in “Gannets”:1
I am watching the white gannets blaze down into the water with the power of blunt spears and a stunning accuracy— even though the sea is riled and boiling and gray with fog and the fish are nowhere to be seen, they fall, they explode into the water like white gloves, then they vanish, then they climb out again, from the cliff of the wave, like white flowers— and still I think that nothing in this world moves but as a positive power— even the fish, finning down into the current or collapsing in the red purse of the beak, are only interrupted from their own pursuit of whatever it is that fills their bellies— and I say: life is real, and pain is real, but death is an imposter, and if I could be what once I was, like the wolf or the bear standing on the cold shore, I would still see it— how the fish simply escape, this time, or how they slide down into a black fire for a moment, then rise from the water inseparable from the gannets' wings.
There it is: the Pattern. Oliver hears it begging. She lends it her attention and leans in close. Close enough that she sees it distilled into an event only seconds in length. The same matter comprising the falling gannets is refitted into gloves and flowers. They are just as much her kin—ancestors, descendants—as the bear and wolf.
Whatever liquor Oliver has extracted from this moment yields no drunkenness, but heightened sobriety. And under her gaze, creation sobers with her and comes also to repose. Nothing new is created, nothing old is destroyed, only carried over from one thing to the next. Death becomes in her eye—even if momentarily—an imposter.
This is not just the effect of one poet’s gaze, but of every poet’s. And lest you believe that the poet deals only in putting pen to paper, in condensing the senses into metaphor and syllable, I assure you this is not the whole picture. The poet is above all a giver of attention.
To give attention is to give repose—life and peace.
But my attention can only go so far. Distraction, that old subtle foe, so tempts me that not one hour myself can sustain. No amount of attention I give to the Pattern can give it so much as a moment of pause.
So I lament with St. Paul—O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
Who shall deliver me?
Attention, when it is pure, achieves something remarkable, though. It ceases to be mine, and so is no longer something I can give. In its purity it becomes pure gift, something I may only receive.
The self is forgotten (who is this I?) and it is no longer I who live. Only God, watching through me, remains. My attention and God’s Attention are merged into a single line of sight.
This is perhaps among the many truths revealed in Meister Eckhart’s teaching that “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me."
He continues: "My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”2
It is not only His Attention, then, that shines through my eye but His Repose, too—His Life and Peace. It’s from this point of view that I see things as they truly are:
God, the True Poet, simply by keeping His eye alert and open (His eye and mine are one), recollects to Himself all things bound to the Pattern of this world until each thing becomes most truly itself.
Each bee no less than this bee. Each bird, this bird. Each blossom, this blossom. Each self, this self. Each body, this body. Born anew, resurrected, into the undying Pattern of Love.
This New Pattern is what Oliver’s vision hints at. But E.E. Cummings sees just a bit further, writing,3
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
The you in Cummings’ poem is ambiguous. It’s not immediately clear to whom he’s speaking. His attention, made pure, has worn thin the lines between you and i (attention has re-spelled the self in lowercase), doer and doing, and the rest of the world this two-made-one inhabits.
Furthermore, here, in the Pattern of Love, all questions of cyclicality resolve. The Sun and Moon, whose own patterns mark out the change of seasons, have found their answer. Most of all, though, fear and want give way to Repose, itself giving way to yet more Repose. And so it also holds that Peace begets Peace, Life begets Life, and Love begets Love, on and on eternally.
Finally, death becomes the imposter it was always shown to be. The Old Pattern, that widening gyre, too goes on, but its center cannot hold. Death dies and Repose remains. Christ untombed, world unwombed, mothered forth from death.
Where to look
As I’ve considered this month the Pattern that threads all of nature, and the peace our attention begets, I’ve been fascinated by the music of Simeon ten Holt. Erik Hall’s recent recording of ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato is especially compelling. It strings together repeating melodies from four different keyboards that spiral and sing back to one another, shifting in mood and texture over the course of 106 slight variations.
In the liner notes of Hall’s recording he says,
“There is a pseudo-meditational benefit to working on a longform piece that’s built on repetition. Every stage—from internalizing the music, to executing the performance, to editing and mixing the record—requires deep and sustained presence of mind. I’ve always been drawn to a hallucinatory combination of harmony and repetition, and I found the entire process addictive.”
Listening to the fruits of his labor, however, may actually just be meditative, no qualifier necessary. It’s also addictive, in the most life-affirming way possible.
You can stream or purchase Hall’s recording here, or through the player below.
As you listen, notice not only what modifications are made to the thesis as it progresses, but also what changes you perceive in yourself. Most of all, just have fun with it.
Oliver and ten Holt are certainly rich enough to carry one quite far into spring. But Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River (translated from the Japanese by Van C. Gessel for New Directions Publishing in 1996) is another wonderful companion for these days of contemplating rebirth.
The publisher’s description is best:
The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by war-time memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numada, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and, the butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces.
Endō, a Roman Catholic, writes with such compassion for each of these tourists that he sees them as so much more than that—pilgrims, all looking to give themselves over, in some fashion, to the River of Life.
In this way, Deep River perhaps reads as Endō’s attempt, near the end of his life, to reconcile his own Roman Catholicism with the Shinto and Buddhism that have so deeply shaped the cultural imagination of his native Japan, and with the Hinduism that his pilgrims encounter at the Ganges. But how does one reconcile a religion so carefully reasoned and systematized—the religion of, say, Augustine and Aquinas—with the nebulous worlds of kami, bodhisattva, and avatāra?
By the novel’s end, Endō seems to bid farewell to everything exclusively “Roman” from his Catholicism. What he manages here is a vision of Christ that exempts no one from the sway of the current of Love.
Writing on Catholic tradition from another angle is Willa Cather in Death Comes for the Archbishop (Knopf 1927). Cather first captivated me with her resplendent vision of life on the American Plains in My Ántonia, and her descriptions of the early settlements of the American Southwest in this novel are no less stunning. What Cather provides here, through a series of semi-fictitious vignettes, is a rather complex account of Catholicism’s spread amongst the indigenous peoples of New Mexico. As her story progresses, the two priests at its heart find themselves drawn more deeply into the lives—mundane and spiritual—of the natives amongst whom they work. In that way, it serves in some sense as an American counterpart to Endō’s novel. Her prose throughout is pristine and vivid, and she never lapses into moralism. Instead, she offers stories, plain and simple, that speak for themselves.
Turning back to music, I can think of few songs that sound more like our souls in the early days of spring than Tom Waits’ classic “You Can Never Hold Back Spring”.
Waits’ shambolic growl softens at the mere thought that “winter dreams the same dream every time”. (If “shambolic growls” aren’t your cup of tea, the only honest interpretation of the song that I can point you to in good faith is Sandra McCracken’s.) All those breathy saxophones fall like sighs of relief that pair beautifully with Jane Tyson Clement’s Easter story “The White Lily”.
Finally, with May being the traditional Month of Mary, I’m going to be spending some time this month reflecting on the Holy Mother. I’d love you to join me in sitting with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “May Magnificat” throughout the month.
There are perhaps more recommendations in this month’s issue than I’d planned on providing (I told you I’m giddy!), but take what you will. Above all, though, go out and be a poet. Not necessarily with pen and paper, but by giving attention to Beauty where you find it. It may be waiting for you in books and music (I wouldn’t be writing here if that weren’t the case), but above all it’s in the simplicity—the meekness and humility—of just being awake that we make ourselves available to its discovery, to receive freely the Attention, and thereby the Peace, that surpasses understanding.
As always, I look forward to hearing from you wherever I may encounter you.
Gratefully yours,
Connor
In New and Selected Poems. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1992)
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons - Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Ccel.org. Retrieved from https://ccel.org/ccel/eckhart/sermons/sermons.vii.html
In G. J. Firmage (Ed.), Complete Poems: 1904-1962. Liveright Publishing Corporation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in (Original work published 1952)
I love your reflections here Mr. Brown! These words in particular struck me on your reflections of Endō‘s Deep River. That “what he manages here is a vision of Christ that exempts no one from the sway of the current of Love.” As Father Rhor would say, a truly Universal Christ. Thank you for sharing your writing with us!
This is a beautiful meditation.
“I’m not typically one to find myself meditating on the laws of thermodynamics (does anyone do this?)”
Well, I do. :)
While the laws of thermodynamics do require that matter and energy are conserved, the nefarious effect of entropy leads to an ultimate state in which energy is unusable. The clock eventually runs down in the total universe.