"(Bless me father)"

Every year I return to Eliot’s  poem, because it was my first introduction to the idea of "Ash Wednesday"  The first I remember, anyway.  As I said last year:

This was Eliot publicly turning to Christianity.  Back to Christianity?  Most likely.  I don't know that he was ever that public an atheist.  He was turning to the establishment church, too, as he joined the Church of England at about this time, a church that, liturgically, is more or less properly called "Catholic lite."  So the language here may seem distinctly Catholic, to non-Catholics like me, anyway.  But it is also distinctly Anglican.

This was my first encounter, in high school where I first read Eliot, with the idea of Ash Wednesday.  Needless to say this poem was not terribly enlightening on the liturgical calendar for this observance.  But I return to it every year because it challenges me to understand, much in the same way I try to understand my relationship to God, and to everyone else.  I don't mean because I am so far removed from people, or even in some teen-angst sense from myself.  But every year I start over, "Because I do not hope to turn/Because I do not hope/Because I do not hope to turn again/[Still] Desiring this man's gift or that man's scope."  I tell myself I no longer strive to strive toward such things; but my self knows better than I.

Is that odd? 

I was going to (finally!) explicate the poem today. Maybe I will.  Maybe I'll even connect "Burnt Norton" and The Four Quartets" to Xmas and Advent, now that Lent has begun.  My penance for never finishing what I started.

Maybe.  But right now, I just want to leave you with this, which maybe has nothing to do with Eliot at all.  Or maybe I can connect nothing with nothing.

Maybe.

But then, how is that different from most of us?

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration  

I can't see Dillard and Merton ever getting along; but maybe they would surprise me.  Dillard's despair is as firm and real as Merton's faith and confidence.  Two sides of the same coin?  No.  Two feet on the same path.

I am an older man than I was when I first encountered Dillard's words (long before I read any of Merton's),  Couldn't have been earlier than 77.  I was a feckless ignorant child of 21 when that year began; 22 and married and wholly unprepared for adulthood by the time the year turned to '78.  I didn't understand what she meant then; lord, do I understand now.  And I understand it is only for understanding, not for explication. Sometimes analysis is increase and insight; but sometimes it is decrease, and willful blindness.  Sometimes you just need to leave it at the realm of spirit bare, of longing and grief everlasting, and let that be reality for even a moment. It is good to have a day, ritually, for that.

Christmas Day 2025: "The World In a Bowl of Soup"

I used this in lieu of a sermon for my very first Christmas Day Service (in the end I only ever did two Xmas Day services both in that small country church of truly wonderful people).  Nobody really cared about the sermon; they were there for the hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls. which even the "liberal" UCC was afraid I would call "communion."  No matter; a splendid time was had by all.

I'm not doing a sermon this year on Christmas Day either; but I can still offer you this:

The World in a Bowl of Soup

by Annie Dillard

Once there was a great feast held in a banquet hall of such enormous proportions that you could not believe men built such a thing.  Two thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling: lumber cut from all the world’s forests made the walls and parti-color floor.  Great loose areas of the hall were given to various activities: there were dances and many kinds of gaming: a corner was devoted to the sick and injured, and another to the weaving of cloth.  Children chanted rhymes wherever they gathered, and young men sought pretty girls in greenhouses or behind the damask hangings of booths and stalls.

The feast lasted all night long.  Guests sat at a table as long as a river that stretched down the middle of the hall.  No one cloth could cover such a table, nor could one centerpiece suffice.  So the table was decorated in hundreds of different themes, with different combinations of colors and kinds of tableware, with various carved figures and various drinks, and with lively musicians in costume playing to each set of guests a special music.

There was only a single course served to the guests, but that was a soup made of so many ingredients it seemed to contain all other dishes.  The soup was served continuously, all night long, and there were so many guests that all the places at the table were always taken, and the benches always full, when the servants ladled the soup into the endlessly decorated array of metal, glass, wood, and pottery bowls.

***

Now, the host of this feast was a young man of tremendous wealth and power who stood behind a curtain on a balcony above the great hall and watched the guests as they ate and drank at the long table.  He thought: “All night long people have been eating as much soup as they wanted and then coming back to the table for more.  It is good that they enjoy themselves.  But not one person has seen or really understood the excellence of that soup.”

So the host parted the curtain a crack more and let his gaze fall.  It fell directly on an old man who happened to be sitting at the table in his line of vision, looking about and thinking of nothing at all.  At once the old man felt an overwhelming sense of power, an impact as if his spirit had been struck broadside and wakened to a flood of light.  He bowed his head and saw, through charged eyes, his bowl of soup that had come alive and was filled to endless depths with wonderful things.

There were green fields in his soup bowl, with carrots growing one by one, in slender rows.  As he watched, transfixed, men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots, one by one, out of the soil, and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water.  He saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in rivers, with dust on the whorled and curly white hair between their ears.  He saw tomatoes in kitchen gardens set out as seedlings by women in plaid shirts and by strong-handed men; and he watched the tomatoes as, before his eyes, the light from the sun blew each one up like a balloon.  Cells on the root hairs of beans swelled and divided, and squashes grew spotted and striped in the fall.  Wine aged in caves, and the barrel maker went home to his wife through sunlight and shade.

He saw the ocean, and he seemed to be in the ocean himself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school.  Or again he saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks and called, one by one, and flew on.

All these things the old man saw in his soup.  Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail under his eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes, until, with the flight of wild ducks, the worlds resolved into one blue sky, now streaked, now clear, and, at last, into soup again, dark soup, fragrant in its bowl.  The host had let the curtain fall shut.

The man blinked and moved his head from side-to-side.  “I see now,” he said to himself, “that this is truly an excellent soup, praise God.”  And he ate his bowlful and joined the dancers in a daze, a kind of very energetic daze.

May it be unto you according to your faith.  Merry Christmas, and the happiest of holidays, to you and yours.

DHS And The Cloud Of Unknowing

Definitely a message you want to hear from the Department of HOMELAND SECURITY pic.twitter.com/BVhWdrXkhA

— Jason Selvig (@jasonselvig) August 28, 2025

First, let’s put that passage in context.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

12 We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

25 Brothers, pray for us.

26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.

27 I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Not my favorite translation, but it was easy to copy. Notice here that v. 17 is not rendered as a separate sentence, but as a clause in a longer sentence. V. 17 raises two questions, neither of which make this verse more appropriate for government use. The first question is: “what is prayer”? The second is: how do we do this unceasingly?

Jacques Derrida actually introduced me to this verse, at the end of The Gift of Death, if memory serves. Google AI tells me:

For Jacques Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" refers not to a continuous religious act but to a fundamental, indeterminate address to an absolute other, which he describes as a "prayer without prayer". This idea, which is explored in his work Circumfession and his lectures on prayer, transforms the religious command into a radical philosophical and ethical posture.

The pure apostrophe

Derrida distinguishes between traditional prayer and what he calls "pure prayer," or the "apostrophe".

A prayer without referent: While a conventional prayer addresses a specific, known divine figure, Derrida's pure prayer addresses a "you" whose identity is unknown and indeterminate. It is a call directed to "nobody" in particular.

An uncertain act: This prayer is defined by its skepticism and suspension of certainty. You cannot be sure anyone is at the "other end" of the call. If you were certain of a response, it would cease to be prayer and become an order.

Pure performativity: This pure prayer is a pragmatic or performative act rather than a theological statement. It is a demand for the other's sheer presence, not for anything specific. The prayer is "absolutely heterogeneous to the minimal description, evaluation or narration".

A radical spirituality

This concept of ceaseless prayer is part of a "radical spirituality" that goes beyond traditional religious frameworks.

A "spectral" faith: Derrida's prayer is enabled by a suspension of belief in a supernatural being, making it a more "spectral" and radical form of faith. This perspective allows him to embrace an atheist perspective while still engaging in "prayers and tears".

A ceaseless desire: This constant state of prayer is a ceaseless human aspiration and longing, not a religious ritual. It is a fundamental hope and expectancy that cannot be monopolized by organized religion.

A childlike and skeptical posture: He describes his own prayer as having a childlike aspect intertwined with the "suspicion of the childish". It is a humble, ongoing call marked by both hope and an absolute lack of certainty.

The impossible prayer

Derrida suggests that authentic prayer must, in some way, affirm its own impossibility.

A fragile hope: The prayer for the absolute other is made precisely because the other's presence is not guaranteed. This hopelessness, or "epoché," is necessary for prayer to be authentic .

Contamination is inevitable: In texts like "How to Avoid Speaking," Derrida acknowledges that a pure, indeterminate prayer is ultimately threatened by contamination. Any articulation of prayer, with its concrete language, codes, and rituals, inevitably reintroduces the metaphysical elements that pure prayer seeks to avoid. However, this contamination may also be what makes prayer possible at all.

In summary, for Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" is to live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other, an incessant call that persists without the comfort of religious certainty.

This is more helpful than it seems because Derrida is discussing prayer outside a specific religious context. That actually helps the government’s use of the phrase; but it’s clearly not what Paul, or DHS, meant.

I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up, trying not to address this artificial summary as the words of Derrida.

First, the “certainty” of religion is always uncertainty. Abraham was certain God had demanded Isaac as a sacrifice, but the terror of the akedeh (the ritual binding of an animal for sacrifice in Hebrew practice, and the name applied to the story in Genesis, just as Christians speak of “the prodigal” for the story in Luke) lies precisely in the certainty of Abraham and the uncertainty that this is, in fact, God’s will. There is, in fact, more uncertainty than certainty in the Biblical witness. Jesus himself invokes Jonah, famous for his uncertainty about God’s command. Isaiah cries out in frustration “O, that you would come down, as in days of old!” Isaiah is desperate for some certainty. Peter is so certain of death he denies knowledge of Jesus three times. Death is certain. God? Eh, not so much.

I’m not trying to be glib, but certainty is not a mark of faithfulness. “I believe, help thou my unbelief!,” is more like it. Or at least more properly humble.

Which is not to deny we should “live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” The first person to claim they know the will of God is a liar, not a person of faith. Just ask Job and his friends. Again, I’m not proof-texting to settle an argument; I’m trying to appreciate the complexity of the Biblical witness. Certainty is supposed to be a hallmark of religious faith. I think it is only arrogance and a lack of humility, the latter of which is a Christian touchstone (I limit myself because of the verses, not because “religion” is co-terminous with “Christianity.”). A lot of the blast in the last five chapters of Job is against the arrogance of Job and his friends; the failure of God to speak of the events of the prologue just underline what Derrida would call God’s absolute otherness. That’s a good concept to keep in mind; especially for government agencies laying claim to the word of God (DHS is clearly exclusively aiming at Xians, so I’ll use the Christian term for the contents of the Bible.).

We’re still no closer to our questions, though. Derrida says the action (”praying without ceasing”) is a conscious and willed state of existence. (I hesitate to propose that as a proper restatement, but I think Derrida means it as a similar concept to S.K.’s Knight of Faith. In the terms of Johannes de Silentio, one always making the movements of the Infinite. Yeah, I know that doesn’t help much, either. But the Action

(Paul’s admonition) is a matter of will in existence, a sideways answer to Tolstoy’s question: “How should we then live?” Sideways because, despite the conclusion drawn by Google AI, we still don’t have a good definition of “prayer.”) Praying without ceasing is, to simplify it, the ultimate act of faith, with all of one’s life turned toward the goal. How, for example, do you learn to be last of all and servant of all, without devoting your life to the task? And yes, says Johannes de Silentio, that is what the Knight of Faith does, even as he appears to live an ordinary, bourgeois life. (Here we seem to part company with Derrida, because the Knight of Faith is in the religious, and Derrida’s pray-er is still seeking an ethical alignment. But I don’t think Fear and Trembling (ironically, a phrase from another Pauline epistle) is the fundamental touchstone it’s often made out to be. Not any more than religious faith is about absolute certainty. We can keep the ethical with the religious, for now; although the terms are NOT co-terminous.)

Prayer as an “openness,” however, appeals to me more than prayer as an action, or especially as a demand. Yes, there are prayers for intercession, and prayers of supplication; there are five categories of prayer, if memories of seminary serve. Useful for thinking of uses of prayer beyond “O Lord, won’t you buy me a…,” but ultimately just a way to justify the prayers we want to pray. Every Christian knows the Lord’s Prayer/Pater Noster, but how many think of it as a blueprint for prayer?

The prayer comes up when Jesus is asked: “How should we pray?” And Jesus says: “Like this.” And then we all take off one shoe, to follow his example. The prayer is instructions. We turned it into rote recital. I still can’t recite the 23rd psalm from memory. But the KJV version of the Pater Noster?  I could probably get a severe blow to the head and still recite it without thinking.

The instructions are pretty simple:

Address your prayer to God, and keep God’s name holy.

Seek first God’s kingdom (by which I mean work (without ceasing?) to see that it is here, now, and carry on accordingly)

Ask for nothing more than food for the day, mindful it is from God

And be humble; ask for forgiveness only insofar as you forgive. A reminder, IOW, that it’s not about you.

The doxology is a later addition. We’ll skip over it for now.

Okay, there are your instructions. That’s how you should pray. Not much room for a plea for a Mercedes Benz ; but plenty of room, I dare say, for “a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” That ethical openness inexorably directs you to others, without whom there is no ethical responsibility (there are no ethics for an individual on an island. But no person is an island, separate into themselves.). And “religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.”  So, to whom are you responsible? That’s a very ethical question, isn’t it?

If not, indeed, a very personal one.

We still haven’t settled what “prayer” is. Is it a generalized activity directed at nothing in the blind hope there is something after all, and our ethics are not, after all, just the behavior of the successful people in our society (Aristotle’s Nicomachean ones)? The point then is us, not the…whatever…to which our prayers are directed. Which is not far from wrong, though the effort to ground an ethic in something transcendent, if not knowable, seems a little weak to me. “Do to others what you would want done to you” seems like a pretty solid ethic, so long as you’re not in a society of masochistic sociopaths.

There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

But the question of ethics and how we should then live is not our question today. Our question is: how should we then pray? And why? What, in other words, is prayer for? And what is it?

Annie Dillard, by the way, is on Derrida’s side:

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

"Quit your tents" is a reference to Exodus, to Moses in Sinai. Terrified by the theophany of Moses receiving the law from God, they tell Moses they’re just going to stay in their tents until the show on the mountain is over. It is, as they say, a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

There’s a connection here, which is why Dillard reaches from Moses to Thessalonians. Sinai marks the end of one way of life for the Israelites, and the beginning of another. Paul is marking the same for his church at Thessalonika.  He wants them to start it with doing everything in prayer. For their sake, obviously. He doesn’t say, doesn’t even imply, that God needs their prayers. He says they need it. The admonition to prayer is made to them. No different than Annie Dillard, actually. But her direction is towards the silence. Because her God is similar to Derrida’s: one who is not personal, and is wholly other.

We think of government that way: impersonal and wholly other. And usually dealing in directives. We call those “laws.” So is the tweet from DHS a directive? No; but what else would it be? And we still haven’t moved from “to what/whom?”and “how?”

If prayer is for us, are we just talking to ourselves? Possibly. As Derrida says, we can’t know. But we can trust; which is to say, have faith. We can believe. Which, as William James said, doesn’t mean believing what you know ain’t so. Back to Derrida: we can’t know.

There’s actually a great deal we can’t know. I can’t really know what people think of me (maybe they’re just being polite). I can’t know that some people love me. I trust they aren’t lying; it’s all I can finally do. I can’t even know that atomic theory, or relativity, or quantum mechanics are sound. Others tell me it must be so; but mostly they trust what they are told. The whole world, really, runs on faith. It has to. There’s no other way. Religious faith is really no different. I’ve never seen a germ, a molecule, RNA. But I’m told mRNA can be the basis for vaccines, and I accept that I’m given that vaccine and not saline or poison. I trust, where RFK, Jr. does not. My faith in science is, I think, better than his denial. I certainly do less harm than he will. And I believe I am ethically, and existentially, obligated to take care of others, to do what is in my power to help them, even if it’s just a cup of water, or a visit when they’re sick. What is RFK’s ethical obligation? And to whom?  He seems to believe in something even more unknowable than the God of Abraham. And to address himself to a more certain nothingness than the cloud of unknowing described by the anonymous Christian mystic as the way to knowing God.

You address your prayer to that, and you have taken a step in the right direction. The prayer is for you, anyway. To remind you of your position in the cosmos; your posture toward it; what you should expect from it; and your position and posture toward the people you are fortunate to know. It’s not for nothing that you do it. It is not towards nothing that you direct it. But it is a cloud of unknowing that you enter into when you assay it.

Things the DHS knows absolutely nothing about. So ignore them.

Scott: At the end of the day, can't we just think the good lord we have a president who cares about all Americans? pic.twitter.com/R0AENrv5hc

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2025

Yeah, I guess that’s what we’re really supposed to think. But that’s just credulity; not faith. That’s actively not knowing. Who needs that?

Evening Reflections on Ash Wednesday 2025

I didn't grow up in a liturgical tradition. In fact, my vague memory is that communion was an infrequent affair. I suspect, though my memory betrays me, that it was only celebrated in my Presbyterian church, in good Reformed tradition, once every three months or so. The "high holy days" I recall were Christmas Eve (ironically, now that I think of it), Maundy Thursday (of course; and appropriately), and maybe Easter Sunday (though I'm not sure about that). I think the other day was supposed to be Pentecost, but I don't recall hearing much about Pentecost, or Lent, or even the Easter season, in my youth in that church. Perhaps, as I say, my memory betrays me, because I have only the vaguest memory of Advent, either, and that usually started with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving (very American, in other words) and meant Christmas carols through Christmas Eve. So I never really learned anything about Ash Wednesday until I came across Eliot's poem. Which is why I always connect it with the day, even now.

I first received ashes in seminary, ironically. I think it's because the seminary was historically Evangelical (not in the sense that word is bandied about today), which meant Lutheran in practice, and besides, St. Louis is such a Roman Catholic city that the Baptists in St. Louis stand out because they don't have a smudge on their heads today. If the Catholics in my hometown (one of the few in East Texas with a Catholic church), or the Episcopalians, got ashes, I either never noticed, or they wiped it off quickly. Again, perhaps it's simply my faulty memory.

So I am still coming slowly to the practice and observance of Lent, and still doing it more through Eliot's words than through habit and custom. I have the former; I don't have the latter. And I will try, again, to keep Lent; and will probably do a poor job of it. I wrote some of  this over 15 years ago now.  I won't be going down to the altar to receive the ashes this year.  It's something I miss, now, every Ash Wednesday, because I am no longer a member of any congregation, any faith community.  That is enough reason to make my confession and take another stab at penitence, as I said I would do, originally, 15 years or more ago. It's a new year, and yet another beginning.  We'll see how I do this time.  For you, I cherish the admonition of the Evangelical tradition that ordained me, the words recited, ironically, at communion, and for reasons to do with the very idea of communion:  "May it be unto you according to your faith."

Amen; which is to say, "May it be so."

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do hot hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

(VI)

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


--T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 60-61, 67)


MEMENTO, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.
Remember, human, that you are dust, and to dust you will return
--Genesis 3:19

HEAR my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call.
My days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
My heart is stricken and withered like grass;
I am too wasted to eat my bread.
Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a little owl of the waste places.
I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
because of your indignation and anger;
for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
your name endures to all generations.
You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to favor it;
the appointed time has come.
For your servants hold its stones dear,
and have pity on its dust.

--Psalm 102:1-14

I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

--Ecclesiastes 3:18-20

THE cross, with which the ashes are traced upon us, is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The words "Remember that thou art dust and that to dust thou shall return" are not to be taken as the quasi-form of a kind of "sacrament of death" (as if such a thing were possible). It might be good stoicism to receive a mere reminder of our condemnation to die, but it is not Christianity.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

"Bethlehem," by Annie Dillard

I don't know where this came from.  I found it in my archives, an unpublished draft from a few years ago.  I decided to post it simply because of the reference to the cave as the place of the nativity (let the reader understand). That's a reference that doesn't appear in the canonical gospels, but first shows up in the Arabic Infancy Gospel. Tradition, contrary to the aim of the Puritans and their spiritual descendants, is not limited to the canonical scriptures. That alone seemed to make this worth posting.

One of the queerest spots on Earth — I hope — is the patch of planet where, according to tradition, a cave once stabled animals, and where Mary gave birth to a son whose later preaching — scholars of every stripe agree, with varying enthusiasm — caused the occupying Romans to crucify him.  Generations of Christians have churched over the traditional Bethlehem spot to the highest degree.  Centuries of additions have made the architecture peculiar, but no one can see the church anyway, because many monasteries clamp onto it in clusters like barnacles.  The Greek Orthodox Church owns the grotto site now, in the form of the Church of the Nativity.

There, in the Church of the Nativity, I took worn stone stairways to descend to levels of dark rooms, chapels, and dungeonlike corridors where hushed people passed.  The floors were black stone of cracked marble.  Dense brocades hung down old stone walls.  Oil lamps hung in layers.  Each polished silver or brass lamp seemed to absorb more light than its orange flame emitted, so the more lamps shone, the darker the space.

Packed into a tiny, domed upper chamber, Norwegians sang, as every other group did in turn, a Christmas carol.  The stone dome bounced the sound around.  The people sounded like seraphs singing inside a bell, sore amazed.

Descending once more, I passed several monks, narrow men, fine-faced and black, who wore tall black hats and long black robes.  Ethiopians, they use the oldest Christian rite.  At a lower level, in a small room, I peered over half a stone wall and saw Europeans below; they whispered in a language I could not identify.

Distant music sounded deep, as if from within my ribs.  The music was, in fact, people from all over the world in the upper chamber, singing harmonies in their various tongues.  The music threaded the vaults.

Now I climbed down innumerable dark stone stairs to the main part, the deepest basement: The Grotto of the Nativity.  The grotto was down yet another smoky stairway, at the back of a stone cave far beneath street level.  This was the place.  It smelled of wet sand.  It was a narrow cave about ten feet wide; cracked marble paved it.  Bunched tapers, bending grotesque in the heat, lighted a corner of floor.  People had to kneel, one by one, under arches of brocade hangings, and stretch into a crouch down among dozens of gaudy hanging lamps, to see it.

A fourteen-pointed silver star, two feet in diameter, covered a raised bit of marble floor at the cave wall.  This silver star was the X that marked the spot: Here, just here, the infant got born.  Two thousand years of Christianity began here, where God empties himself into man.  Actually, many Christian scholars think “Jesus of Nazareth” was likely born in Nazareth.  Early writers hooked his birth to Bethlehem to fit a prophecy.  Here, now, the burning oils smelled heavy.  It must have struck many people that we were competing with these lamps for oxygen.

In the center of the silver star was a circular hold.  That was the bull’s eye, God’s quondam target.

Crouching people leaned forward to wipe their fingers across the hole’s flat bottom.  When it was my turn, I knelt, bent under a fringed sating drape, reached across half the silver star, and touched its hole.  I could feel some sort of soft wax in it.  The hole was a quarter inch deep and six inches across, like a wide petri dish.  I have never read any theologian who claims that God is particularly interested in religion, anyway.

Any patch of ground anywhere smacks more of God’s presence on Earth, to me, than did this marble grotto.  The ugliness of the blunt and bumpy silver star impressed me.  The bathetic pomp of the heavy, tasseled brocades, the marble, the censers hanging from chains, the embroidered antependium, the aspergillum, the crosiers, the ornate lamps — some human’s idea of elegance — bespoke grand comedy, too, that God put up with it.  And why should he not?  Things here on Earth get a whole lot worse than bad taste.

“Every day,” said Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, “the glory is ready to emerge from its debasement.”

Christmas Day 2024: "The World in a Bowl of Soup"

I used this in lieu of a sermon for my very first Christmas Day Service (in the end I only ever did two Xmas Day services both in that small country church of truly wonderful people).  Nobody really cared about the sermon; they were there for the hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls. which even the "liberal" UCC was afraid I would call "communion."  No matter; a splendid time was had by all.

I'm not doing a sermon this year on Christmas Day either; but I can still offer you this:

The World in a Bowl of Soup

by Annie Dillard

Once there was a great feast held in a banquet hall of such enormous proportions that you could not believe men built such a thing.  Two thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling: lumber cut from all the world’s forests made the walls and parti-color floor.  Great loose areas of the hall were given to various activities: there were dances and many kinds of gaming: a corner was devoted to the sick and injured, and another to the weaving of cloth.  Children chanted rhymes wherever they gathered, and young men sought pretty girls in greenhouses or behind the damask hangings of booths and stalls.

The feast lasted all night long.  Guests sat at a table as long as a river that stretched down the middle of the hall.  No one cloth could cover such a table, nor could one centerpiece suffice.  So the table was decorated in hundreds of different themes, with different combinations of colors and kinds of tableware, with various carved figures and various drinks, and with lively musicians in costume playing to each set of guests a special music.

There was only a single course served to the guests, but that was a soup made of so many ingredients it seemed to contain all other dishes.  The soup was served continuously, all night long, and there were so many guests that all the places at the table were always taken, and the benches always full, when the servants ladled the soup into the endlessly decorated array of metal, glass, wood, and pottery bowls.

***

Now, the host of this feast was a young man of tremendous wealth and power who stood behind a curtain on a balcony above the great hall and watched the guests as they ate and drank at the long table.  He thought: “All night long people have been eating as much soup as they wanted and then coming back to the table for more.  It is good that they enjoy themselves.  But not one person has seen or really understood the excellence of that soup.”

So the host parted the curtain a crack more and let his gaze fall.  It fell directly on an old man who happened to be sitting at the table in his line of vision, looking about and thinking of nothing at all.  At once the old man felt an overwhelming sense of power, an impact as if his spirit had been struck broadside and wakened to a flood of light.  He bowed his head and saw, through charged eyes, his bowl of soup that had come alive and was filled to endless depths with wonderful things.

There were green fields in his soup bowl, with carrots growing one by one, in slender rows.  As he watched, transfixed, men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots, one by one, out of the soil, and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water.  He saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in rivers, with dust on the whorled and curly white hair between their ears.  He saw tomatoes in kitchen gardens set out as seedlings by women in plaid shirts and by strong-handed men; and he watched the tomatoes as, before his eyes, the light from the sun blew each one up like a balloon.  Cells on the root hairs of beans swelled and divided, and squashes grew spotted and striped in the fall.  Wine aged in caves, and the barrel maker went home to his wife through sunlight and shade.

He saw the ocean, and he seemed to be in the ocean himself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school.  Or again he saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks and called, one by one, and flew on.

All these things the old man saw in his soup.  Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail under his eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes, until, with the flight of wild ducks, the worlds resolved into one blue sky, now streaked, now clear, and, at last, into soup again, dark soup, fragrant in its bowl.  The host had let the curtain fall shut.

The man blinked and moved his head from side-to-side.  “I see now,” he said to himself, “that this is truly an excellent soup, praise God.”  And he ate his bowlful and joined the dancers in a daze, a kind of very energetic daze.

May it be unto you according to your faith.  Merry Christmas, and the happiest of holidays, to you and yours.

"Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down" Ash Wednesday 2024

I didn't grow up in a liturgical tradition. In fact, my vague memory is that communion was an infrequent affair. I suspect, though my memory betrays me, that it was only celebrated in my Presbyterian church, in good Reformed tradition, once every three months or so. The "high holy days" I recall were Christmas Eve (ironically, now that I think of it), Maundy Thursday (of course; and appropriately), and maybe Easter Sunday (though I'm not sure about that). I think the other day was supposed to be Pentecost, but I don't recall hearing much about Pentecost, or Lent, or even the Easter season, in my youth in that church. Perhaps, as I say, my memory betrays me, because I have only the vaguest memory of Advent, either, and that usually started with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving (very American, in other words) and meant Christmas carols through Christmas Eve. So I never really learned anything about Ash Wednesday until I came across Eliot's poem. Which is why I always connect it with the day, even now.

I first received ashes in seminary, ironically. I think it's because the seminary was historically Evangelical (not in the sense that word is bandied about today), which meant Lutheran in practice, and besides, St. Louis is such a Roman Catholic city that the Baptists in St. Louis stand out because they don't have a smudge on their heads today. If the Catholics in my hometown (one of the few in East Texas with a Catholic church), or the Episcopalians, got ashes, I either never noticed, or they wiped it off quickly. Again, perhaps it's simply my faulty memory.

So I am still coming slowly to the practice and observance of Lent, and still doing it more through Eliot's words than through habit and custom. I have the former; I don't have the latter. And I will try, again, to keep Lent; and will probably do a poor job of it. I wrote some of  this over 15 years ago now.  I won't be going down to the altar to receive the ashes this year.  It's something I miss, now, every Ash Wednesday, because I am no longer a member of any congregation, any faith community.  That is enough reason to make my confession and take another stab at penitence, as I said I would do, originally, 15 years or more ago. It's a new year, and yet another beginning.  We'll see how I do this time.  For you, I cherish the admonition of the Evangelical tradition that ordained me, the words recited, ironically, at communion, and for reasons to do with the very idea of communion:  "May it be unto you according to your faith."

Amen; which is to say, "May it be so."

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do hot hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

(VI)

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


--T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 60-61, 67)


MEMENTO, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.
Remember, human, that you are dust, and to dust you will return
--Genesis 3:19

HEAR my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call.
My days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
My heart is stricken and withered like grass;
I am too wasted to eat my bread.
Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a little owl of the waste places.
I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
because of your indignation and anger;
for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
your name endures to all generations.
You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to favor it;
the appointed time has come.
For your servants hold its stones dear,
and have pity on its dust.

--Psalm 102:1-14

I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

--Ecclesiastes 3:18-20

THE cross, with which the ashes are traced upon us, is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The words "Remember that thou art dust and that to dust thou shall return" are not to be taken as the quasi-form of a kind of "sacrament of death" (as if such a thing were possible). It might be good stoicism to receive a mere reminder of our condemnation to die, but it is not Christianity.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

The Ghost In The Machine

I'll accept that there is no "ghost in the machine" (nor did Descartes think so.  The line is a critique of his dualism, which dualism was nothing more than an attempt to ground Catholic theology of the soul in what were then contemporary philosophical terms.  The Church still held considerable social and political (and legal) influence in Descartes' day.).  But there is a question I used to ask my students, trying to get them to think critically, and in reference to the use of "sleep" as a metaphor for death in the sonnets of Shakespeare ("Death's second self, which seals up all in rest") and Donne ("From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be").

What is the difference between a sleeping person and a corpse?

It's a question that vexed American minds in the mid-19th century.  Poe cashed in on it (as he did on all matters in the headlines at the time.  He was trying to sell his work just as Shakespeare was trying to sell tickets to his theater in Elizabethan times.) with his story of "The Premature Burial."  People were lapsing into comas in a time when "coma" was not a medically defined term  (now we induce them as a matter of healthcare).  Was the patient dead?  Alive?  Asleep?  If the last, why didn't they wake up?  And if not asleep, weren't they dead?  Today we rely on brain wave activity (except when we didn't, as in several nationally famous cases in the earlier part of this century, 150 years after Poe).  Because the difference between a sleeping person and a corpse is a simple one:

The sleeping person is going to be animate again.  They will wake up; walk; talk, eat.  The dead person is just a corpse.  And the question is:  what's missing?

There were stories in the '60's of dying people on scales (? How did that happen?) so sensitive a slight shift in weight could be detected at the moment of death.  This led to much speculation about a "soul" which apparently had weight and mass even as it invisibly escaped the body.  Most likely it was just gas, to be honest.  At death, or shortly after, muscles relax, gases held back escape; sometimes shit even leaks out.  So it goes.

But what is the difference between not just a corpse and someone asleep, but between a fetus and a dead body.  Why can we transmit life in one case (the fetus, which is a "living" group of cells if not a living "self," and will certainly remain alive if conditions allow (they don't; often.  Nature is her own abortionist.)?  We can reproduce, in other words:  create a new being that is alive.  But we cannot "give life" to a corpse.  Why not?  What goes missing that we cannot replace?

Making babies is the easiest thing on earth.  That's the problem, of course; both social and environmental.  And killing people is remarkably easy, too; sadly.  We can make it impossible to life functions to continue with an AK-47, shredding bodies into particles.  Nature, as I say, can cancel the birth of a child in utero, because (as one doctor explained it to me), the conditions for viability don't exist.  The child can't develop, won't "make it." Nature steps in to clean up the failure so a new try can be assayed.  (Nature is not very considerate of human feelings but, as Annie Dillard put it, it wastes nothing.)  So we can make babies easily, and we can easily identify the conditions that make life unsustainable any longer.

We aren't that careful about those conditions, either.  I don't mean the mass shootings we "can't do anything about," I mean people dying in old age.  My father died of what the coronor called a brain tumor.  Maybe that actually killed him; maybe it was something else.  Who cares, really?  My mother was in stage four kidney failure (I was always surprised she never got put on dialysis); her diabetes was so advanced she had to take insulin four times a day and stick rigidly to an eating schedule; she also had congestive heart failure, controlled by a pacemaker.  The death certificate said she died of pneumonia.  I'm not sure she wasn't just exhausted.  I saw her the day before she died in the night.  I could tell something about her temperament had changed.  I wasn't that shocked by the call in the night.

How did they really die?  Who really knows?  But more interestingly:  why are they dead?  Why are they inanimate?  Because "life functions could no longer be supported"?  What does that mean?  It's kind of like saying my car won't run anymore because...my car won't run anymore.

There is a mystery there our language cannot cleave and open and reveal.  And I don't mean because it is ultimately "mystical" or "spiritual."  This is not a dodge; it's a critique.  Because materialism teaches there is a material answer, but the "material" is the corpse.  The non-material is whatever animated that corpse.

In early 20th century European intellectual circles the popular explanation was the "elan vital."  Virginia Woolf wrote an incisive essay on the topic, an essay in which she observes a moth in the window of her study, dying.  The "life force" she attributes to the moth is the "elan vital," but she cannot say where it goes, or why it leaves.  In the end, the only material thing is the corpse of the moth.  Isn't that the whole moth, though?  It's just now a dead moth (as Virginia Woolf is a drowned body).  Isn't it?  Is it even right to speak of a "moth corpse"?  Doesn't "corpse" convey something almost significant, a space recently vacated and never to be occupied again?

Whether it should, or shouldn't, have that connotation is another issue for another day.  Maybe from here on in we should talk of a "dead body," but that's an odd qualifier, too.  It just means the body is no longer animate.  But if it isn't, why not?  Why can't we animate it again?  We've never been able to, but why not?  What is missing from the dead body that isn't missing from the sleeping one?  Something material?

Yeah, that's a good joke.

We can, now, revive someone in a coma; especially if we induced it.  But the coma patient is not dead.  Life functions have not ceased.  And what are "life functions," anyway?  They are materially sustained; we know that because we can materially destroy what sustains them.  But where are they?  What are they?  Matter, I was taught in school, is neither created nor destroyed.  But life is.  Living things reproduce new living things all the time.  But nothing can revive once-living things.  Nothing can restor their "life force."  Why not?  What's gone missing?

If there's not a ghost in the machine, what is there?

🍻

We get comments!

 I of course started to respond to this until I realized that, despite various attempts, and occasional skims, I haven't read The Sickness unto Death.

You will recall I last tackled Kierkegaard a few years ago (The Concept of Anxiety) and did a blog post and you had a few comments. I'm not sure that Kierkegaard is quite as (Protestantly) orthodox on soteriology--there he seemed to conclude that Adam brought sin in the world, not uniquely, but as each of us does. In my skims of TSUD I haven't seen so much of atonement as another excruciatingly painful bout of self-examination.

I can't fault your overall read of the gospels. If I had to put a label on it I would call it Christian humanism, and I share it. But for all my enthusiasm for what might also be called Erasmian Christianity I have also a growing appreciation of what, in modern times, has been a mostly Protestant venture in juxtaposing human beings with God--ala Kierkegaard or Barth or even Tillich. We come up radically short. And of course the result of that isn't, for the vast majority, a depth of Kierkegaardian anxiety and despair, or Barth's sense of the fearful otherness of God. But for those of us nuts enough to think theology valuable, these kinds of deep dives help keep us from the complacency that sometimes passes for Christian comfort.

Give me a year or two and I'll give you a response that's actually informative!

First, a confession:  I still have to read COA (I think I have the Lowrie translation, The Concept of Dread.  I do prefer the Hong translations, they're much more readable.)  SK probably isn't terribly orthodox on soteriology. I just find myself wholly unorthodox these days.

Let's have a beer and talk about it!

I resonate with Annie Dillard's idea of the complete Otherness of God, one she roots in Judiasm (though she is Christian).  I have vague recollections of her description of it from one of her essays: something about if God actually paid attention to worshippers they might all be blasted to bits by the gaze.  Very in keeping with depictions of encounters with the Almighty in the Hebrew scriptures, you understand (Moses glowing from the reflected glory of God on Sinai; Elijah meeting God in an earthquake and a whirlwind, but God is not in either; Ezekiel seeing only the glory of God (the light shining off the Presence) atop the throne chariot; even Paul on the road to Damascus, struck down by a blinding light (the glory, again).  That kind of thing.)  To me that's the basis and reason for worship (to wander off task a bit):  it's for us, not for God (the usual modern critique of worship:  why does God need it?).  I (wandering further) tried to lead worship in a way that the encounter with God (however it came) was enough to change your view of the world for the rest of the week.  It was meant to be the inverse of "recharging your spiritual batteries" so you could "face the world again."  Rather than God being a battery charger, the living presence of God was so fundamentally Other that the world, by contrast, was a piece of cake.

There's also the root there for Christian humility, which I place more in the "first shall be last, last first" teachings, and in the Matthean parable of the sheep and goats:  "Lord, when did we see you?"  Take that seriously, along with the absolute Otherness of God, and you've got good grounds to be humble.

And so we come back to "How should we then live?", Tolstoy's question which has become so important to me, especially as I am as out of touch with other people as I have ever been (I don't lead a church, I don't teach a class, I don't practice law and have clients; not anymore).  No, that's not self-pity or a sad thing.  But I'm well aware I'm effectively on a desert island, and my interactions with other humans are in crowded stores and noisy restaurants (excepting the people who work in these places whom I encounter for mercantile reasons).  So I'm a bit less interested in "The Individual," and much less enamored of what I see as SK's emphasis (in SUD) on Augustine's "God-shaped hole" (which is not what Augustine meant any more than SK meant a "leap of faith" is a leap in the dark, but anyway....).  I don't think our hearts are restless until they rest in God.  But I do think the value of Christianity, and the salvation of Christianity. lies in how we live, not in how we confess ("confess" here not carrying the meaning of "confession of sins," which is a practice of Christian humility and not to be idly gainsaid or even ever set aside.  Indeed, I read somewhere that that Catholic practice of the confessional came out of the practice of the Irish monks as a spiritual discipline among them.  I wish there were a Protestant counterpart. I could have used a confessor when I was in parish ministry.  I'm not sure it would have changed any outcomes (most of the ministers I knew and trusted were as helpless as me), but it would have made life a bit easier.).

I think the root of my objection is the fundamentalist/evangelical culture we both grew up in.  I've seen true charitable work done by the large Southern Baptist church here in town, but too much of the theology is about soteriology is about having the right ideas, or at least claiming to.  As Jeremiah said, speaking for God:  "The heart is devious; who can fathom it? I, God, test the heart..."  We are known by what we do, in other words.

"Lord, when did we see you?"  "What you did for the least of these, you did for me."

So I don't think I'm tossing out the baby with the bathwater (nor did you say I am!).  It's the Romanticism of SK I can't hold onto anymore. I admire the Romantic movement, we are all living in its utter transformation of how we understand ourselves in the world.  But the emphasis on the personal, rather than the communal, is a bit more than I can give credit to, anymore.

Let's have a beer and talk about it!* 🍻

(*Something I understand Luther liked to do.  You can't too much dislike a man like that!)

The Consolations Of Writing

I like Joan Didion's writing (she's sort of the anti-Annie Dillard to me.  Dillard, like a good mystic, can get lost in her own internal experience and writing about it.  Didion, even in writing about the death of her husband and her daughter, almost doesn't seem to have an "internal experience).  The person?  Eh, I never knew her.

Don't know Annie Dillard either, so we're square.

Was watching the documentary on Didion on Netflix, and honestly it was so much Didion it was almost exhausting.  Still, admiration.  Except when they got to the point where she wrote about El Salvador (I think I still have my hardback copy of "Salvador".  Really great stuff.), and they quoted her on politics, how politics seemed like something done by other people in another realm, with no connection to "real life."

About that time, per the documentary, she was living in Malibu and working in movies, and was friends with Harrison Ford (from his carpentry days), and houseguests included Scorsese and Spielberg and other "glitterati" and notables.  And when she and John Gregory Dunne weren't living in California, they were living in NYC.  She started out writing for Vogue and never really got down to the ground level where Molly Ivins wrote from (and why Molly didn't get along with the NYT), or just herself alone in the countryside, where Annie Dillard trumped Thoreau (and thumped him) in every way possible (she really runs rings 'round him).

And, in an Annie Dillardism, I'm left wondering:  whose life is "real life"?

"Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down"

You can't conceive, my child, nor I nor anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.--Graham Greene

Been working on this for some time, but it was going in circles until now. So I take my opening text from Thought Criminal:

In regard to the incapacity of secular philosophy to do that, I've pointed out before, I. F. Stone observed when commenting on Socrates in Plato's set-up job ran circles around a shoe-maker, that the shoe maker could make a pair of shoes while the entire 2400 year tradition of Socratic philosophy had never come up with even one universal truth. Adding scientific method to that has not seemed to improve their odds of getting to one. And morals are hardly the easiest aspect of philosophical inquiry to find them in. 

I will also point out that the various modern attempts to replace revealed religion with formal philosophy, the various and uniformly idiotic schemes of utilitarianism, the modern field of ethics which seems to have turned back to the eugenicist and Nazi projects of drawing up lists of those it is desirable to kill, something which you can do and not only keep but flourish in a modern, university based philosophy department almost eighty years after the largest of the modern scientifically conducted genocides was revealed to the world, only one of a myriad of the 20th centuries modern genocides that outdo past ones.

Socrates didn’t offer himself as a sacrifice, he always offered his companion in dialogue as a sacrifice. In just (!) one example, he tosses Euthyphro on the funeral pyre of the latter’s ethics, a pyre Socrates has built during the dialogue, then happily watches him burn. He goes on to mock the city of Athens in the next dialogue, and then accept their judgment as a matter of ethics that polishes his apple quite nicely. It’s a rare feat to be a relentless critic of both ethics and morality in life (at least the life portrayed in Plato’s dialogues) and yet die a moral and ethical exemplar, to be even considered for millennia a pre-cursor Christ figure.

One admires Socrates his ethics while it’s easier to consider Thomas More a sanctimonious prig (and I think he was). But More is moral; Socrates is self-satisfied. More reminds us of our selfishness. Socrates makes us wish we could be as admired because ultimately:”My death; is it possible?” As long as we can’t really conceive our own death, our own personal extinction, we can imagine ourselves in the company of the admiring as we make the “ultimate sacrifice” without really making it, because we want to prolong being the center of that admiration, and because we can’t really imagine our own death. Especially since death, as Wittgenstein observed, is the only experience of life that is not lived through. It’s a fine thing, to be admired; but when you’re dead, how do you experience that admiration?

When does Socrates ever guide someone out of a moral dilemma, or ever offer an ethical solution, even useful ethical guidance? More argues against the ruling power for the sake of morality; Socrates argues for a personal reward for teaching people how unethical he’s shown them to be, without teaching them what moral (the opposition to ethical, implicitly, in the Euthyphro dialogue) would be. Socrates (as Kierkegaard pointed out) is purely negative, and the telos of that is purely self-satisfaction. Who wouldn’t prefer that to the sacrifice required of being moral?

Dilbert cartoonist says he got canceled even though 'everyone agreed' with his racist tiradehttps://t.co/hpBFq8UFhD

— Raw Story (@RawStory) February 27, 2023

Scott Adams is satisfied that he is “ethical,” because “everyone agrees with him.” What he means is, the people who agree with him are the only ones that matter. The rest are presumably a hate group who should get as far away from him and the “right people” as possible. Who wouldn’t prefer that to the sacrifice required of being moral? Far easier to sacrifice others than to make a meaningful sacrifice yourself.

There is, to use the metaphor, the Church of Meaning and Belonging, and there is the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging.  We don't have to use the word "church" here as only an ecclesial institution.  We can apply it to any grouping of people, such as the people who believe Donald Trump was the greatest President in U.S. history, or Scott Adams is right and "everyone agrees" with MTG about a "national divorce."  It's a way of identifying a grouping of similarly minded persons, in other words, which is pretty much what Protestant churches in America have always been (one reason they use to split and fission so freely.  My last church had a history of people going literally down the street to start a new church because the congregation voted to carpet the sanctuary.  I was never sure if it was the fact of the carpet, or the color, that was the breaking point.  That church was a Baptist church when I was the pastor of the "parent" church; it's now a Korean one.  My old church is still in the same denomination, but is a "gay" church, something that was anathema to the people when I was there.  Things continually change.).  So "church" in this discussion means a loose collection of people gathered by ideology, not necessarily religious commitment or even belief.

"Church" as a metaphor, then.  "Meaning and belonging" provided a source of identity; even if that identity is white and the belonging comes from thinking there is such a thing extant in America as "anti-white racism."  Contrast this free floating association of those who simply agree with sentiments expressed by someone somewhere on the internet, with the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging.  "Sacrifice" is the key, and that's a tough nut.

It's so frustrating to be alive in an era of extreme irrationality, in which accuracy, science and truth simply have limited influence.https://t.co/fcXsdpGTf1

— Mark Pitcavage (@egavactip) February 27, 2023

The framing of that tweet intrigues me.  When, pray tell, was the era of extreme rationality where "accuracy, science, and truth" had unlimited influence?  The year of Buck v. Bell?  The years of Nazi genocide, based on genetics from England (Darwin, et al.) and laws from America (back to Buck v. Bell).  The years of the Tuskegee experiments?  The years of slavery when it was established by phrenology (then a science) that blacks were inferior to whites because of brain capacity in skulls, or just the shape of skulls?  (Stephen Gould wrote a fascinating book on the subject; I wish I still had it.) I could go on, but you get the idea.  Sacrifice, as I say, is the key, and one sacrifice that must be made is that my pet ideas, like "accuracy, science, and truth" all walk hand in hand, never err, and are "objectively sound," are perhaps indeed subject to scrutiny, criticism, and even rejection.  "Sacrifice" is a very personal term here, and it exacts a very high cost.

So it is in the arena of morality (which I distinguish from ethics, but take it as read for now).  Thought Criminal is right, "morals are hardly the easiest aspect of philosophical inquiry to find" a universal truth in.  Which is why I started with Socrates, a man so lauded by Western philosophy (and theology, to be fair) that he was considered a pre-Christian (see., e.g., Dante) and a moral exemplar second only to Christ (a laughable assertion, to be honest).  Socrates entire effort (again, per Kierkegaard) was to undermine the very concept of a universal truth.  One might say, indeed, that per Socrates the only universal truth was that there was no universal truth (I know this runs up against his seeming sentiments in the Crito, but as I say, Socrates was burnishing his apple there, as he prepared to leave the stage).  Why is morality such a difficult subject to find a universal truth in, in philosophy at least?  Because it requires sacrifice and Socrates is the philosophical exemplar of a man who always expected sacrifice of someone else, but never of himself.  Even his death was a noble offering, versus the screaming anquish of a man nailed to a cross crying out "Eli, eli, lama sabachtani?" There is sacrifice, and then there is accepting the cup of hemlock because you really don't want to live in exile from Athens.

Which is why philosophers are not so big on sacrifice except when they can make the other person make it.  But then, how is that different from most of us?

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration 

And then we return to where I'd meant to have started, until I found the right way to start.  I wanted to meditate further on these two passages.  One by the Discalced Cistercian monk praising the shoelessness of his monastery, a place I visited once and found to be one of the truly remarkable places on earth.  The other a poetic exultation by a writer who elsewhere reminds us that all places on earth are truly remarkable, and no one of them "out of the way" unless you privilege your place, and who gives you the privilege to do that?  Which is appropriate, since the monk is preaching humility, too.

But what does it mean to arc "to the realm of spirit bare"?  Or to be "stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, ...a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting."  Do wires long and grieve?  Is longing and grieving like the electricity sparking off and through a live wire?  We think it is, and at the same time we think it isn't.  But holding "one end of a love" is like holding a live wire.  You are still sending the energy down it even though "your father drops, and your mother."  Even when "a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead and you dying."  Some of this I remember as a pastor, standing by the coffins of babies, of adolescents, or husbands and wives and fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and trying to say words of comfort, trying to understand what it was like to hear what I was expected to say, what needed to be said.  You are surely a live wire then, and if it isn't love you are sparking, what are you doing there?

Which is to say it isn't just about you; it is, and always is, about them.  Language is that.  Language is not what you tell yourself; it's what you tell others.  You may think in words and hear your thoughts in your voice, but do you need language for yourself?  You only need it for others; and it's no coincidence our memories don't really begin until we being to speak, to share with others through words.  Perhaps you have pre-verbal, pre-literate (speaking), memories; but it's rare.  Memory is preserved mostly by telling them to yourself, over and over again.  As you get older it gets harder to keep them all, because you can't tell yourself memories of 60 years of 365 days each.  Even eidetic memory is stored in words, not just sensations.  We know because we speak; and we only speak to each other.  Like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting."

But grief is not everlasting.  That, surely, is the good news.  And I don't mean because time heals all wounds because, more accurately, time wounds all heals.

Memento mori. I do think at least once on the liturgical calendar we should publicly acknowledge that we are mortals and bound to die. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return” is an ancient funeral formulary. It is not a condemnation so much as a reminder that our humility has a physical basis, and that is in our common humanity. Rather more difficult to think you have conquered life or found the secret to existence or deserve what you have while others don’t, if you are asked to remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.  It is not, I think, a lesson Joel Osteen ever ponders, especially since his charity is limited to what’s convenient for him, or what he can be publicly shamed into.

Ashes, ashes, all fall down. Into these senselit and noisome days. Into a world where we are not in control. Where we are caught holding one end of a live wire, stripped to spirit bare, and grief seems to be everlasting. Grief is isolating. We endure it alone, for ourselves, for what we have lost.  In grief, we become most fully human, and most fully connected to the dead, and the living.

The difference between the philosopher and the poet is evident here.  The philosopher makes us examine what it means to be human, by challenging us to examine our own ideas on any given subject.  The poet makes us feel what it is to be human: to be one end of a live wire loosed to the sky, loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.  And in that image to know this is a constant of the human condition; this is something in which you are not alone.  This is something we all, in the cell of ourselves, understand.

To understand what I mean we need to divorce grief from depression.  Depression is a natural consequence of loss, especially great personal loss, especially depression that is simply sadness, not something so clinical it requires careful treatment.  Depression as sadness is an indication that we are alive, and that we did know love, and that we will not soon forget those who are gone.  Grief is the public acknowledgement of our loss.  It joins us together with others:  with family, with friends, with those who share our grief and our need for comforting.  When my mother died my cousins and surviving aunts and uncles (her siblings and in-laws and neices and nephews) were gathered around one table in a restaurant after the graveside service, and it was a memory from my childhood when my mother's two brothers and two sisters and their spouses and children were all gathered at her parent's house for one winter holiday or another.  And in our grief we actually rejoiced, and felt our common humanity, our common connection forged over years of being, however briefly, all together for one purpose.  Yes, it was like holding a wire loosing electricity to the clouds, but it was an affirmation of being human.  If you do not grieve your family, your friends, when it is time for grieving, what is the point of being human?

It is as much about our commonality and our shared lives as praying barefoot in the chapel, and going barefoot down the aisle to receive the ashes and a gentle reminded of your mortality. "My death, is it possible?"  It's not the worst thing to meditate on, once in a while.  And if that's what scares you, what truly upsets you, then perhaps experiencing the question among so many others, in such a peaceful condition, in a ritual, might not be such a bad thing.  We all need to grieve.  We all need to face our mortality.  It is a part of the human condition.  We join in our common humanity when we open ourselves, even a little bit, to such things.

The sacrifices are not easy, and sometimes the smallest ones are the hardest to bear.  No one can make them for you, no one should force them on you.  It is up to you to choose them.  But you should choose the sacrifices for meaning and belonging; those are the ones that are the hardest, but also the most worthwhile.  "Meaning" of what?  "Belonging" to what?  Aye, there's the rub.  Something more than just a city you finally acknowledge you owe a debt to.  Call it a common humanity; not just a common locality.

Ash Wednesday 2023

I didn't grow up in a liturgical tradition. In fact, my vague memory is that communion was an infrequent affair. I suspect, though my memory betrays me, that it was only celebrated in my Presbyterian church, in good Reformed tradition, once every three months or so. The "high holy days" I recall were Christmas Eve (ironically, now that I think of it), Maundy Thursday (of course; and appropriately), and maybe Easter Sunday (though I'm not sure about that). I think the other day was supposed to be Pentecost, but I don't recall hearing much about Pentecost, or Lent, or even the Easter season, in my youth in that church. Perhaps, as I say, my memory betrays me, because I have only the vaguest memory of Advent, either, and that usually started with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving (very American, in other words) and meant Christmas carols through Christmas Eve. So I never really learned anything about Ash Wednesday until I came across Eliot's poem. Which is why I always connect it with the day, even now.

I first received ashes in seminary, ironically. I think it's because the seminary was historically Evangelical (not in the sense that word is bandied about today), which meant Lutheran in practice, and besides, St. Louis is such a Roman Catholic city that the Baptists in St. Louis stand out because they don't have a smudge on their heads today. If the Catholics in my hometown (one of the few in East Texas with a Catholic church), or the Episcopalians, got ashes, I either never noticed, or they wiped it off quickly. Again, perhaps it's simply my faulty memory.

So I am still coming slowly to the practice and observance of Lent, and still doing it more through Eliot's words than through habit and custom. I have the former; I don't have the latter. And I will try, again, to keep Lent; and will probably do a poor job of it. I wrote some of  this over 15 years ago now.  I won't be going down to the altar to receive the ashes this year.  It's something I miss, now, every Ash Wednesday, because I am no longer a member of any congregation, any faith community.  That is enough reason to make my confession and take another stab at penitence, as I said I would do, originally, 15 years or more ago. It's a new year, and yet another beginning.  We'll see how I do this time.  For you, I cherish the admonition of the Evangelical tradition that ordained me, the words recited, ironically, at communion, and for reasons to do with the very idea of communion:  "May it be unto you according to your faith."

Amen; which is to say, "May it be so."

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do hot hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

(VI)

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


--T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 60-61, 67)


MEMENTO, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.
Remember, human, that you are dust, and to dust you will return
--Genesis 3:19

HEAR my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call.
My days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
My heart is stricken and withered like grass;
I am too wasted to eat my bread.
Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a little owl of the waste places.
I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
because of your indignation and anger;
for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
your name endures to all generations.
You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to favor it;
the appointed time has come.
For your servants hold its stones dear,
and have pity on its dust.

--Psalm 102:1-14

I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

--Ecclesiastes 3:18-20

THE cross, with which the ashes are traced upon us, is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The words "Remember that thou art dust and that to dust thou shall return" are not to be taken as the quasi-form of a kind of "sacrament of death" (as if such a thing were possible). It might be good stoicism to receive a mere reminder of our condemnation to die, but it is not Christianity.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration