A friend of mine, who describes herself as an "old Episcopalian reprobate", told me today of a poem by Marge Piercy—To Be of Use. Below is the last stanza from that poem. My friend is hardly old and she prays and loves deeply. I want to comment soon on this piece. Please, offer your comments too, I hope to foster a dialogue about beauty and hope through this blog.
"The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real."
Friday, May 25, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
POTATO EATERS, by Van Gogh
My favorite painting. A half-awakened smile on a half-dead body. Light barely capable of penetrating darkness. But like stars, a beacon, a specter of hope.
EASTER MORNING
My brother introduced me to AR Ammons and this poem about 10 years ago. My favorite poem, one I have meditated on many times and for many, solitary minutes. On the one hand painfully nostalgic, on the other hand magnificently hopeful. Hope is always about the future. Nostalgia is always about the past. We live our lives on the knife edge between these two spaces. Which space will we ultimately occupy?
Easter Morning
by A.R. Ammons
I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on
it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left
when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how he’s shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who
were the rumored fathers of cousins
who whispered of them as of great, if
troubled, presences, and school
teachers, just about everybody older
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not for
me, mother and father there, too, and others
close, close as burrowing
under skin, all in the graveyard
assembled, done for, the world they
used to wield, have trouble and joy
in, gone
the child in me that could not become
was not ready for others to go,
to go on into change, blessings and
horrors, but stands there by the road
where the mishap occurred, crying out for
help, come and fix this or we
can’t get by, but the great ones who
were to return, they could not or did
not hear and went on in a flurry and
now, I say in the graveyard, here
lies the flurry, now it can’t come
back with help or helpful asides, now
we all buy the bitter
incompletions, pick up the knots of
horror, silently raving, and go on
crashing into empty ends not
completions, not rondures the fullness
has come into and spent itself from
I stand on the stump
of a child, whether myself
or my little brother who died, and
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for
for me it is the dearest and the worst,
it is life nearest to life which is
life lost: it is my place where
I must stand and fail,
calling attention with tears
to the branches not lofting
boughs into space, to the barren
air that holds the world that was my world
though the incompletions
(& completions) burn out
standing in the flash high-burn
momentary structure of ash, still it
is a picture-book, letter-perfect
Easter morning: I have been for a
walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook
works without flashing in an abundant
tranquility: the birds are lively with
voice: I saw something I had
never seen before: two great birds,
maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked
and –headed, came from the south oaring
the great wings steadily; they went
directly over me, high up, and kept on
due north: but then one bird,
the one behind, veered a little to the
left and the other bird kept on seeming
not to notice for a minute: the first
began to circle as if looking for
something, coasting, resting its wings
on the down side of some of the circles:
the other bird came back and they both
circled, looking perhaps for a draft;
they turned a few more times, possibly
rising—at least, clearly resting—
then flew on falling into distance till
they broke across the local bush and
trees: it was a sight of bountiful
majesty and integrity: the having
patterns and routes, breaking
from them to explore other patterns or
better ways to routes, and then the
return: a dance sacred as the sap in
the trees, permanent in its descriptions
as the ripples round the brook’s
ripplestone: fresh as this particular
flood of burn breaking across us now
from the sun.
From The North Carolina Poems
First published in 1994
Easter Morning
by A.R. Ammons
I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on
it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left
when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how he’s shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who
were the rumored fathers of cousins
who whispered of them as of great, if
troubled, presences, and school
teachers, just about everybody older
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not for
me, mother and father there, too, and others
close, close as burrowing
under skin, all in the graveyard
assembled, done for, the world they
used to wield, have trouble and joy
in, gone
the child in me that could not become
was not ready for others to go,
to go on into change, blessings and
horrors, but stands there by the road
where the mishap occurred, crying out for
help, come and fix this or we
can’t get by, but the great ones who
were to return, they could not or did
not hear and went on in a flurry and
now, I say in the graveyard, here
lies the flurry, now it can’t come
back with help or helpful asides, now
we all buy the bitter
incompletions, pick up the knots of
horror, silently raving, and go on
crashing into empty ends not
completions, not rondures the fullness
has come into and spent itself from
I stand on the stump
of a child, whether myself
or my little brother who died, and
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for
for me it is the dearest and the worst,
it is life nearest to life which is
life lost: it is my place where
I must stand and fail,
calling attention with tears
to the branches not lofting
boughs into space, to the barren
air that holds the world that was my world
though the incompletions
(& completions) burn out
standing in the flash high-burn
momentary structure of ash, still it
is a picture-book, letter-perfect
Easter morning: I have been for a
walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook
works without flashing in an abundant
tranquility: the birds are lively with
voice: I saw something I had
never seen before: two great birds,
maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked
and –headed, came from the south oaring
the great wings steadily; they went
directly over me, high up, and kept on
due north: but then one bird,
the one behind, veered a little to the
left and the other bird kept on seeming
not to notice for a minute: the first
began to circle as if looking for
something, coasting, resting its wings
on the down side of some of the circles:
the other bird came back and they both
circled, looking perhaps for a draft;
they turned a few more times, possibly
rising—at least, clearly resting—
then flew on falling into distance till
they broke across the local bush and
trees: it was a sight of bountiful
majesty and integrity: the having
patterns and routes, breaking
from them to explore other patterns or
better ways to routes, and then the
return: a dance sacred as the sap in
the trees, permanent in its descriptions
as the ripples round the brook’s
ripplestone: fresh as this particular
flood of burn breaking across us now
from the sun.
From The North Carolina Poems
First published in 1994
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
WHERE WE ARE IN MAY (2007)
Below is a letter we have sent recently to many friends and family. It states why we are doing this, articulates the challenges we experience through this, and our hope for the future.
"Most of you to whom we are sending this letter are aware of our hope to spend a few years of our lives in South America as missionaries. This letter is an attempt to share with you where we are in this process of hoping. Although the five of us (Bubba, Angela, Sam, Georgia and Ty) will get on a plane alone at some point to embark on this journey, you will remain very near to us as we remain grounded in our relationships with you while we are away. Simply put, we cannot go without knowing that you are here, without being connected to you in a mystical way.
First, I should say, even now as we are headlong into this pursuit of South America we find ourselves asking, “Bubba, Angela, are you foolish?” We ask this question often, even in response to the most trivial considerations. Like this Spring morning, when I considered having to trade the Virginia landscape for one more noted for its dirt and dust than anything green or teeming with pink and white and yellow. We also ask ourselves this question, of course, in light of the not so trivial considerations: Are you foolish to give up your job, where you have worked for 9 years and have so much security? Our home, where we have lived for 7 years and have created the most comfortable little dwelling we could ever want? Close proximity to good friends and family? Then there is the chief consideration that presents itself to us most often and that we feel most viscerally—the chances are greater in the global South (aren’t they?) that something bad could happen to your young children. Are you prepared, Bubba and Angela, to bear the burden of this risk?
Well, none of this is easy for us. We grapple with these considerations; they weigh heavily on us. But in one profound sense we recognize that we are indeed foolish and so we say yes to South America as an act of concession to God’s will for our lives, which as you know involves a journey that leads undoubtedly to goodness but not necessarily safety and comfort. Our hope lies in the goodness of God’s will for our lives.
Second, I want to tell you that despite the opaque nature of God’s work in the world at times (as I write the Virginia Tech tragedy has recently unfolded around us), we are nevertheless encouraged to pursue God in action in the great hope that He is in fact redeeming and healing creation, restoring beauty to ugliness and bringing freedom to the oppressed. And while there is plenty of good and indispensable work being done here in America (and in Charlottesville for certain), we are compelled to go to South America to engage a culture vastly different from our own and moreover a people who experience brokenness in ways we don’t understand. What message does God have for the people of South America? What articulation of beauty will point them Christ? On the one hand, the message and method are simple, just as it was for the apostle Paul: to resolve to know nothing but Christ Jesus. On the other hand, there are complexities to this in the wake of a human experience that encounters, for example, some of the worst poverty, oppression and corruption as anywhere on earth. We are eager to be with the people of South America, to see how truth and beauty penetrate their world.
Third, to give you an idea of a timeframe and what’s coming up for us, this summer we will attend South America Mission’s candidate orientation course. Upon completion of this course on July 6, we will officially begin raising support and looking forward to a concrete departure date for language school (we need to learn Spanish first; we have begun teaching ourselves using Rosetta Stone). We hope to have language school completed by May of 2008. While our assignment that begins after language school is not yet thoroughly defined, we will most likely join an effort already underway to plant a middle-class church in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We may also spend half of our time working with an indigenous group in Bolivia—the Ayoré, formally nomadic and fierce, they are now among the poorest and most ostracized peoples in Bolivian society. We will share more details regarding all of this as things develop in the next few months.
And finally, we will be sent to South America under the care of our home church, Trinity Presbyterian in Charlottesville, VA. Many of you are members or attendees of this church. Last summer Trinity sponsored a short-term mission trip to Bolivia. The next Trinity-sponsored trip will take place in the summer of 2008. We hope all of you will consider coming to see us and work with us in Bolivia as a part of this trip that Trinity will support."
"Most of you to whom we are sending this letter are aware of our hope to spend a few years of our lives in South America as missionaries. This letter is an attempt to share with you where we are in this process of hoping. Although the five of us (Bubba, Angela, Sam, Georgia and Ty) will get on a plane alone at some point to embark on this journey, you will remain very near to us as we remain grounded in our relationships with you while we are away. Simply put, we cannot go without knowing that you are here, without being connected to you in a mystical way.
First, I should say, even now as we are headlong into this pursuit of South America we find ourselves asking, “Bubba, Angela, are you foolish?” We ask this question often, even in response to the most trivial considerations. Like this Spring morning, when I considered having to trade the Virginia landscape for one more noted for its dirt and dust than anything green or teeming with pink and white and yellow. We also ask ourselves this question, of course, in light of the not so trivial considerations: Are you foolish to give up your job, where you have worked for 9 years and have so much security? Our home, where we have lived for 7 years and have created the most comfortable little dwelling we could ever want? Close proximity to good friends and family? Then there is the chief consideration that presents itself to us most often and that we feel most viscerally—the chances are greater in the global South (aren’t they?) that something bad could happen to your young children. Are you prepared, Bubba and Angela, to bear the burden of this risk?
Well, none of this is easy for us. We grapple with these considerations; they weigh heavily on us. But in one profound sense we recognize that we are indeed foolish and so we say yes to South America as an act of concession to God’s will for our lives, which as you know involves a journey that leads undoubtedly to goodness but not necessarily safety and comfort. Our hope lies in the goodness of God’s will for our lives.
Second, I want to tell you that despite the opaque nature of God’s work in the world at times (as I write the Virginia Tech tragedy has recently unfolded around us), we are nevertheless encouraged to pursue God in action in the great hope that He is in fact redeeming and healing creation, restoring beauty to ugliness and bringing freedom to the oppressed. And while there is plenty of good and indispensable work being done here in America (and in Charlottesville for certain), we are compelled to go to South America to engage a culture vastly different from our own and moreover a people who experience brokenness in ways we don’t understand. What message does God have for the people of South America? What articulation of beauty will point them Christ? On the one hand, the message and method are simple, just as it was for the apostle Paul: to resolve to know nothing but Christ Jesus. On the other hand, there are complexities to this in the wake of a human experience that encounters, for example, some of the worst poverty, oppression and corruption as anywhere on earth. We are eager to be with the people of South America, to see how truth and beauty penetrate their world.
Third, to give you an idea of a timeframe and what’s coming up for us, this summer we will attend South America Mission’s candidate orientation course. Upon completion of this course on July 6, we will officially begin raising support and looking forward to a concrete departure date for language school (we need to learn Spanish first; we have begun teaching ourselves using Rosetta Stone). We hope to have language school completed by May of 2008. While our assignment that begins after language school is not yet thoroughly defined, we will most likely join an effort already underway to plant a middle-class church in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We may also spend half of our time working with an indigenous group in Bolivia—the Ayoré, formally nomadic and fierce, they are now among the poorest and most ostracized peoples in Bolivian society. We will share more details regarding all of this as things develop in the next few months.
And finally, we will be sent to South America under the care of our home church, Trinity Presbyterian in Charlottesville, VA. Many of you are members or attendees of this church. Last summer Trinity sponsored a short-term mission trip to Bolivia. The next Trinity-sponsored trip will take place in the summer of 2008. We hope all of you will consider coming to see us and work with us in Bolivia as a part of this trip that Trinity will support."
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