A friend passed this on to me, knowing I had studied Auden in college and worked on his archives at the Humanities Research Center at UT Austin when I was a graduate student there (I spent some time working at starting a catalogue of the Auden holdings, but got a job and got busy and....).
I am resolutely not writing anything about Holy Week this year. Probably I should, but for reasons sound and good I'm not going to, and I'm certainly not going to jump into it at this late hour. I stand aside for what Auden imparts to Jay Parini, only adding one two-part (or so) observation.
Auden is right in both things he says; and he sounds very much like an old man (because wisdom truly comes with age, not with understanding alone) who has come to realize just how simple God truly is (Parini's parenthetical that "one can define "God" in so many different ways" jars a bit because it reveals Parini doesn't understand this truth yet. Maybe he wants to be sure his audience doesn't think he's left them behind. The elderly Auden would know better; but that's one of the benefits of age.), and how truly simple life is. His observation on time is, I think, perfectly sound; and perfectly, simply wise.
I would offer it to you as a Holy Week-Easter meditation. Do with it what you will. Define "God" in so many different ways, if you like. Define time as illusion or implacable reality, if you must. My money is with Auden. Still, as the E&R church I came to love (maybe because it was gone before I got there?) would say: "May it be unto you according to your faith."
That's another bit of wisdom. I offer it for free. Not such a bad Easter present, I hope.
It's been the weirdest Lent I ever remember.
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