Ten Thousand Places

I am here to kneel. August 21, 2008

Filed under: holy writings,Literature,Wrestling the tigers — tenthousandplaces @ 11:39 pm

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel.

This is an exerpt from Eliot’s The Four Quartets, and it is a vivid description of the experience I have been having this past year, which I can also find described in books like The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross.

The Latin for “dark” is obsura — obscure. We don’t understand why the removal of our joy, our peace, our dearly loved connection with our Lord is necessary, but we trust that it is. We have prayed to give Him everything, and it turns out that the taking away of everything includes the things we depended on for our faith. These things are not He. As a character in a Charles Williams novel says, “Neither is this Thou.”

We wanted to live for Him. We find we can barely live at all. We wanted to conquer the world for His Kingdom. We find we can not even conquer ourselves.

Even this is too much explanation. It is obscure. I am not here to instruct myself, nor to carry report. I am here to kneel.

*Thanks to Sleight of Hand for sending me to this passage.

 

The last turn of the page May 18, 2008

Filed under: Literature — tenthousandplaces @ 3:15 am

There is something wonderful, even sacred, about finishing a book.  My preference is that it be late at night, later, perhaps, than I should be awake, and that everyone else in the house be asleep.  I should be in bed, the book and bed illuminated by a single lamp.  It should be silent, but I had not noticed the silence, as absorbed in the pages as I had been.  Then, I turn the last page, I slow my pace, lingering, savoring the last paragraph as the last bite of an ice cream cone.  Close the book, lay it on my chest and…

Well, if you don’t know what I mean, my explanation isn’t going to make any sense, and if you do understand I don’t have to tell you.  But there is a shock of coming to the end of something that has totally absorbed you, a realization of reality, but a new perspective on that reality.  You return to the world, but you return to it changed.  Even a bad book can have this effect, but, Oh, Lord, the good ones.

Last night I finished The Brothers Karamazov.

In my bed, lit by a single lamp, the rest of the house long asleep.

The house was silent.  I closed the book, laid it on my chest.

And was suddenly in the deepest, truest prayer I had been in in months.

You see how I can’t write about “how” or “why,” or even  explain what it means to be met, to meet yourself, at the end of a book.  But if you know, you know.

And about The Brothers K.

Read it.  That’s all.

Go.

Now.

Read.

 

The Brothers Karamazov April 27, 2008

Filed under: Literature — tenthousandplaces @ 11:10 pm

Is absolutely destroying me once again.  It’s like being hit in the head with a slab of concrete wrapped in a lemon wedge, as Zaphod Beeblebrox once described a certain beverage.  I am absolutely smitten with Alyosha.  More than smitten.  I desperately want to channel his amazing ability to take his own ego out of a situation and be there wholly and unconditionally for God and for others.  Of course I realize that he is a fictional character.  I’m sure Dostoevsky himself was not so winsome.

 

What I will be doing in twelve days… March 2, 2008

Filed under: Community,Literature,Ministry,Peripatetics,Photography — tenthousandplaces @ 5:59 am

bagshot-row-2.jpg

Sans the attic, Tyler and David… :( But avec Graeme, Ashlee, Riley, Jacquie, Jordon and Aaron. Hopefully Aaron. I’m not sure whether R2D2 will be there.

“Bagshot Row is an artistic community which seeks to apply the values and lessons of true, good, and beautiful art to both the spiritual and practical elements of life. Originating in Dubuque, IA and founded by Graeme Pitman, David Kern, Tyler Smith, Justin Phelan, and Riley Miller, Bagshot Row is a mixture of faith, literature, word (both in essay/blog/musing and poetry), photography, prayer, design, music all bound up in the belief that our very lives can be worship. We meet infrequently on Thursday nights at 9pm to discuss things we have written or read or sometimes just to hang out in an attic.”

 

 
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