Poems I Journey With 14

Emily Dickinson

After Gerard Manley Hopkins, I turn most often to the wonderful and wondrous rhythms of the poems of Emily Dickinson, another spiritual and mystical poet who also loved her periods of isolation and aloneness and even ascetic living like the Victorian Jesuit priest and convert. Dickinson was born in 1830 (fourteen years before Hopkins was born) and died at the age of 56 in 1886 when Hopkins was 42.  While their lives overlapped then for some 42 years in terms of linear time neither would obviously have been aware of the writings of the other given their personal and indeed the social circumstances of the day and indeed the fact that neither sought publication of their work.  But, I personally get a lot of spiritual sustenance from the poems of both great poets. Both were also most unusual is that they both broke away from the then conservative conventions of what poetry was deemed to be. While both are spiritual and mystical poets their work is correspondingly completely "sui generis," unique and authentic to the very syllable of their output.  As her poems are so short I will offer three short favourite poems from Dickinson's pen here below:

1. Hope is a thing with feathers

Hope is a thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

2.  Heaven

"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree—

Provided it do hopeless—hang—

That—"Heaven" is—to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud—

The interdicted Land—

Behind the Hill—the House behind—

There—Paradise—is found!

Her teasing Purples—Afternoons—

The credulous—decoy—

Enamored—of the Conjuror—

That spurned us—Yesterday! 

A somewhat younger Emily Dickinson

3. My cocoon tightens, colors tease

MY cocoon tightens, colors tease, 

I 'm feeling for the air; 

A dim capacity for wings 

Degrades the dress I wear. 

A power of butterfly must be 

The aptitude to fly, 

Meadows of majesty concedes 

And easy sweeps of sky. 

So I must baffle at the hint 

And cipher at the sign, 

And make much blunder, if at last 

I take the clew divine. 

The Briefest of Commentaries:

I love Emily Dickinson's poems because they invariably give me a spiritual lift and a deep insight into the depths that simple things can have. I also like her unique writing style with dashes, which is completely unique to her and revolutionary, indeed, at the time she was writing.  She is simply unique, "sui generis" and so authentic. Who could not be moved by the image of a little bird?  It is at once so fragile and yet can fly to such heights and gain an overall view of things we humans are not privy to. Then the equating of hope - a complete abstraction - with that little physical image of a bird is simply mindblowingly powerful.  That equation or juxtaposition of two utterly different "objects" is so wonderful and wondrous that it strikes us immediately as being insightful. Hope, which we all need to keep going, is often as fragile as a little bird which we often doubt will be able to weather the storms of life. Where does that little bird of hope perch? Yes, in the very cage of our souls!  It sings a tune without words, the delicate and fragile tune of hope.  And that strange little fragile creature, that brittle bird of hope, never asked a single crumb of sustenance from its jailer, that is, ME and YOU and US!!

The second poem is about Heaven. However, no mystic will ever offer a cheap or cheapened image of that place or state or whatever we call Heaven.  Dickinson presents that reality as somewhat unattainable like the apple on the highest bough while we are mere children playing about the trunk of that great tree. There are hints also of Moses not being granted his wish to the Promised Land which has traditionally also been linked with whatever Heaven is, may be or could be. In fact, I like this poem also, and have placed it under the poem on Hope as Dickinson talks about the reaching of the apple being absolutely hopeless.  In that regard let me repeat its opening stanza for our contemplation here:

"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree—

Provided it do hopeless—hang—

That—"Heaven" is—to Me!

The third poem reminds me of the sage advice, or at least the wise comment of Anais Nin (1903 - 1977) that the day will come for all of us "when the risk to remain tight in the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom."  These words resonate with those of the entire poem and especially those of the first stanza. The growth of the little seed in the bud to full flower and blossom parallels the formation of the butterfly from egg to larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to adult butterfly:

MY cocoon tightens, colors tease, 

I 'm feeling for the air; 

A dim capacity for wings 

Degrades the dress I wear. 

Poems I Journey With 1

Introduction

Having written on and pondered the meaning of life from a spiritual point of view for nearly forty years now, I return again and again to poetry for spiritual sustenance.  Over the next several months I should like to record here the poems - with a short commentary on each - that have inspired me throughout those years. They are the poems to which I return again and again for comfort.

Pearse as a Barrister

Given the significance of 2016 for us Irish, namely the centenary of the 1916 Rebellion or Rising as we more commonly call it, I should like to start with a poem by one of our major national heroes, namely Patrick Pearse (1879 - 1916) who, along with many others, gave his life for the future freedom of the Irish nation.  I will start with one wonderfully deep poem from his pen in English.  It is called "The Wayfarer"

The Wayfarer

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

Commentary

This poem captures for me one of the central issues in life, namely its transience, transitoriness or impermanence, call it what you will.  I suppose most of us encounter this impermanence most essentially through experiencing loss, especially that loss we encounter in the death of our loved ones.  Another way of expressing this is to say we encounter in those losses our mortality and the brevity and brittleness of the enterprise we call life.  

There are many history commentators with divergent views on Patrick Pearse, but not one can deny his ability as poet, author and perspicacious educationist.  In this poem, "The Wayfarer,"  Pearse expresses his encounter with his own mortality.  Undoubtedly, for those who understand the broader historical motivations of the author, the above poem will have resonances for the reader about dying for one's country.  Pearse knew, indeed believed, that the freedom of the Irish Nation could not be achieved in any other way but through the sacrifice of his life for his country.  However controversial his political beliefs were, and however much we can see their influence in the above poem, nevertheless, anyone knowing nothing of the author will meet the poem in itself, within its own internal coherence without historical interference. It is in this sense of the poem's own internal integrity that I love it. 

The great contemporary psychiatrist and psychotherapist Professor Irvin Yalom has outlined four main ultimate concerns that lie at the heart of every patient or client who comes to his consulting rooms namely (i) existential aloneness, (ii) freedom, (iii) meaninglessness and (iv) mortality.  These four ultimate concerns, he argues, make up the very ground of our being in the world and portray themselves in a vast array of mental complaints in the clients or patients who frequent his therapy sessions.  They also form the four main planks of what he describes as Existential Psychotherapy. 

Pearse as a young boy

Using Professor Yalom's insights into Existential Psychotherapy, and indeed his basic insights into the nature of the human condition we may say that Patrick Pearse engages the two main ultimate concerns of (i) existential aloness and (ii) mortality in his wonderful little poem "The Wayfarer."

The title of the poem is, for me, a very spiritual one, namely that we are all pilgrims or wayfarers on our journey through life.  Without a doubt, the image of pilgrim, wayfarer or journeyer is essentially a religious or spiritual one.  Central to all religions and spiritual traditions is the notion that life is a journey on the way to some destination.  Most religions call such a destination by the name of Heaven or Nirvana or whatever.  Yet within many religious traditions, there are also spiritual sub-strands that emphasise that the journey or pilgrimage itself is what matters and that the NOW of life is what is important, not the goal! If there is a goal, well so much the better, but that often distracts us from the task at hand, namely making the most or the best of the life we live in the now of existing.

Transience (mortality, mutability, transitoriness, impermanence) is noticed in these lines: "This beauty that will pass," "shadows drifted by," and "These will pass//Will pass and change, // Will die and be no more."  Also the beauty of the world will sadly pass, too.

Pearse, when he wrote this poem was obviously overcome with sadness, the sadness of leaving the beauty of the world behind him at his death.  And yet for me, I am never saddened by this poem as I understand his predicament at the time, namely what his sacrifice of his life would cost him.  Moreover, with an understanding of existential psychotherapy as proposed by Irvin Yalom and Emmy Van Deurzen and others of that approach to therapy and to life, it is by encountering our mortality head on that we come to prize life and living all the more highly.  

In the Buddhist tradition, meditation upon dying and death is highly recommended, not from the point of view of wallowing in depression or sadness, but rather in the consequent appreciation of the power of living in the now and valuing all the painful beauty we may meet in that now: of valuing the beauty of the brittleness of the world and the fragility of life, "the leaping squirrel," the beauty of "a red lady-bird upon a stalk," or "some green hill," or even barefooted children running on the sands of the coastal strands, little beautiful towns, "things young and happy," and "things bright and green."

There is no need, like the wayfarer, to go on your way sorrowful that things will pass, but rather to begin the journey to learn to appreciate the presence of life in the now, even if it is fleeting and transitory.  In the end, we are, after all, just a little part of a more eternal cycle. Let us appreciate our little part in that great cycle of things that makes life in the first place. 

For an alternative commentary and a recording of an actor reading the poem see the following LINK.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 33

Poem 33

Knowing others is intelligence;

knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;

mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,

you are truly rich.

If you stay in the center

and embrace death with your whole heart,

you will endure forever.

Commentary

The lifelong task of human beings is surely that of getting to know themselves.  However, that is easier said than done and being "true to oneself" or being "honest to oneself" or being "authentic" or "whole" or "integrated" or "individuated," no matter how one terms full self-knowledge, it is truly a long and painful journey.  That is the essential goal of all conscious life. 

Recent photograph of me

It appears that it is somewhat easier to get to know others, but that is only a superficial perception anyhow.  After all, we really only get to know their social, rather than their "real" selves anyway.  Do we ever master others?  No, indeed.  We possibly might master how to manage our "underlings" or staff or whoever at our places of work, but that is the extent of that.

Our task in life, as we have stated it above, is that of getting to know our true or real selves. This takes courage as we have to stand up to the power and opposition of our egos which are, on the whole, fed with much driving power by society.  Facing down the ego, then, requires much courage!

Greed is one of the basest of desires as we never can get enough of success and possessions and of apparent control of others.  It takes wisdom and the practice of much meditation to arrive at a sense of detachment from others and from the things of this world.  One day we realise that actually we have too much things and that things really don't satisfy our true and real desires.  Even at times the love of others, the we-ness of love itself cannot really satisfy our inner desires for fulfilment.  True detachment and the love that springs from it can be greater than human love.

This is the love that we read about in the Old Testament that is greater than fire and that many waters cannot quench it.  It is a love that stretches beyond death, and we have a hint of eternal life in its expression in that passage.  Likewise, the thoughts of our Taoist poet in the last lines of the above poem are stretching for a similar suggested, if imaginative solution, namely that if we stay in the centre (that is, rooted in the Tao) "and embrace death with (our) whole heart, (we) will endure forever."  In both texts, we have to agree that these are the thoughts of ancient scribes imaginatively reaching towards another world of being - imaginatively reaching to the myth of eternal life.  We remember here that myths are not literal but rather suggest a deeper truth which defies expression.

Journal of a Soul 45

Wooden sculpture, Botanic Gardens, Belfast

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

The above rather long quotation with which I begin this post this evening is the third stanza of W. B. Yeats's masterful poem Sailing to Byzantium.  This poem recounts the Nobel Laureate's frustration with the body as he grows old.  The first stanza talks about Byzantium's being "no country for old men," stanza two that "(a)n aged man is but a paltry thing", and then in the above quoted stanza we read that the poet's heart or soul is "sick with desire//And fastened to a dying animal//It knows not what it is."  In other words, Yeats is cursing the body in a way, or at least writing it off as a very frail vessel for the soul/heart. Now, these poetic sentiments are all very much in the tradition of Western Philosophy and Western Theology, firmly reinforced by the Cartesian dualism inaugurated in the seventeenth century and almost fully swallowed whole by more unquestioning scholars in the centuries thereafter.  What I am speaking about here is what the modern English philosopher Gilbert Ryle decried as the "ghost in the machine," a severe criticism of Descartes' mind-body dualism or mainline Christianity's  soul-body dualism.

Immortality, a work I reviewed here.  The exact sentence that elicited this post were: “But it is precisely in this contradiction that I find the crux of the human condition: our heads are full of dreams but our behinds drag us down like an anchor.” (Immortality  by Milan Kunders, Faber and Faber, London, 1992, translated by Peter Kussi, pp. 269-270). 

Body and Mind/Soul/Self

Art on concrete path, Baldoyle, Dublin

Some of the more vexed questions that bother me from time to time, and perhaps sometimes the readers of this rambling journal, are (i) whether the mind equates to the self, (ii) whether the self equates with the soul, (iii) whether the three concepts are really the same and (iv) whether any one of the three survives after death or more specifically whether in my more spiritual moments I really believe that the soul itself continues in another dimension of existence after we have "shuffled off this mortal coil" (Shakespeare) and have left the "dying animal" (Yeats) behind.  These questions bring me into the land of mystery and wonder, rather than into the land of strong belief on the one hand or the land of strong unbelief on the other.  After much reading, study, reflection and discernment I still remain with an open mind, not too sure at all, at all, but that is fine - after all, what is wrong with open-ended-ness?

Where does all the foregoing speculation lead?

Speculation is just that, speculation.  In the end, we humans are left with our experience.  No concepts, no matter how intellectually convincing they may  be, will, in the end, "cut the mustard" or "come up to the mark" when it comes to matters of deep human or existential concern like when we are faced with life or death crises, deep emotional pain or some such human trauma. And so, where does the speculation lead?  In a sense, all speculations only matter as supports for what's deeply held in our experience.  It's hard most times, I believe, to move from speculation or thoughts or theories into deep conviction, though if we are to believe many authors, both theists and atheists, that thoughts and thinking can and do lead to deep confidence in this or that principle.  However, I have always been captivated by John Keats's remark that "axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses." In other words, we will deeply hold philosophical (or theological) axioms only when we have validated them first in our experience.  Hence, the only place we can really turn, then, when we have ceased all our intellectual explorations is to return to the, perhaps not very solid, but nonetheless somewhat firm ground of our own experience.  It is to this ground of personal experience to which I wish to devote the immediately following series of posts.