Listen - lively colors best proclaim her!

Listen - lively colors best proclaim her!
The deathly darkening of grays and black
do not defy light but exist as lack.
All shadows recede. They cannot tame her!
So sweetly she calls all creation back
that the blind hear visions of radiance
as she paints deaf ears with yellows and blues,
deep greens and purples and countless kind hues,
passionate reds in bright blazing cadence!
In love we exclaim how good her good news:
clement and loving, the source of sweet bliss!
Singing, shining, souls stir still at calm call
to come find her here where truth and love kiss,
to dance and to play where love conquers all!

The Two Paths of Time in T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton"

Eliot's "Burnt Norton" is a work which masterfully handles the problem of time. Many are the avenues through which Eliot leads this query: memory, poetry, art, liturgy, Eucharist. And yet the fundamental question concerns our own response: what are we to do about time? What happens if we do nothing? Does Christianity have anything to offer this problem, and if so, what is it? Eliot, in effect, presents us with two paths, in the style of Matthew 7:13-14: there is a narrow way which leads to life and happiness, and a broad way which leads to destruction and despair. In this article, I would like to address the response of those on the narrow way and those on the broad to the problem of time, the final destination of each, and the means to arrive at that destination.

Before examining each path in particular, we need to understand the problem as Eliot has framed it. The human person finds himself a halfling of sorts, being conscious of time (the cosmic flow of events outside of man, and his own interior sense of it), and so in some way outside it: "to be conscious is not to be in time."** And yet man is bound by the limitations of time, expressed through the memory of the past, the endless flow of the present, and the uncertainty of the future, none of which can be escaped. Time, it seems, is a "ridiculous sad waste," stretching ever forward and back, and yet a queer necessity for us as humans. The quest then for Eliot is not so much to define time as to pinpoint its existential meaning.

And this is the problem those in the world (on the broad path)  cannot address. Those in the world find themselves "in a dim light...[in] neither plenitude nor vacancy," which is to say they neither feel the brilliance of eternal (timeless) beauty, nor the joyful fire of hopeful darkness. Time, for those in the world, has no meaning, no end. Rather, it is is the endless stretch, a consuming horizon sprawling ever before them and ever behind them. This endless flow robs the past of meaning, making memory a mere mausoleum, a "bowl of rose leaves" covered in dust.  There is neither meaning in the future, the present, or the past, in the same way that a sailor sees little meaning in each wave that bobbles his skiff. The problem of time is solved by decrying the problem absurd.

In what state does this leave the world, then? As "men and bits of paper, whirled about by the cold wind that blows before and after time" with "strained, time-ridden faces/distracted from distraction by distraction." In other words, Time chews men up and spits them out. Without meaning, time causes men to live lives of "quiet despair" in sensual pleasure ("appetency") and distraction, "filled with fancies and empty of meaning," because the truth of nihilism is itself too gruesome to view head-on. While for the Christian, time itself points to the meaning, for those "in the dim light" of the world, time points to nothing but the grave: "time and the bell have buried the day." And the only logical response to this is to give oneself over to appetites and sense pleasure, seeing no hope for the future and no significance in the past. Indeed, St. Paul's words ring true: "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" (1 Cor. 15:32).

The Christian imbues time with hope and significance in Christ and His New Creation, and Eliot being a devout Anglican is quite aware of this. For the Christian, time is teleological: "the end precedes the beginning, and the end and the beginning were always there, before the beginning and after the end." According to Eliot, the Christian sees time, not as a Euclidean line extending infinitely in both directions, but more as an arrow, shot with an intended purpose contained within it from the moment the bow was taut. Time is moving somewhere, it is flowering, it is unfolding: "time past and time present are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.". The echoes of St. Augustine's City of God are unmistakable here: time has an end, and as we shall see, that end is firmly stamped with the mark of the cross.

To what end are we drawn, then, according to Eliot? Simply put, it is "the still point": "At the still point of the turning world...there the dance is, and there is only the dance." In this point, all creation (both new and old), including time, is "made explicit, understood." At this still point, we are freed from the "practical desire," from "action and suffering," from the "enchainment" of the fleshly distractions experienced by those "filled with fancies." And yet, what is this point? And how is it a dance? It is my contention that this point is nothing else -- could be nothing else -- other than the Holy Trinity itself. What other "dance" can we imagine at the center of "the turning world," if not the "formal pattern" of exchange between the Son and the Father, whose infinite self-gift is the meaning and end of it all. Eliot himself points to this at the end of "Burnt Norton," citing Love as the "the cause and end of movement" and end of all desire. The "still point," is the entrance of the soul into love, into eternity. That is our end, much in contrast to that of the world: not death, but "into the silence" of Love.

But we are not there yet. It's well and good that we will arrive in the heart of the Blessed Trinity, the Inner Life of God, but what are we to do now? If the world responds to their philosophy of meaningless time through sensual pleasure, then Christians respond by asceticism: "Descend lower, descend only/Into the world of perpetual solitude...Internal darkness, deprivation/And destitution of all property, dessication of the world of sense,/Evacuation of the world of fancy,/Inoperancy of the world of spirit" (179). Asceticism is often relegated to either the romantic or geriatric categories -- something for pious St. Francis's and old women. And yet, in Eliot's work, the only solution to the problem of time for the Christian is to purify himself of all earthly desires, to act as if time, "woven in the weakness of the changing body," really were leading him into the greatest of all joys, and not merely to decay. Man must be a credible theist, as Fr. Dubay wrote in The Fire Within, preferring nothing to God. The "darkness" of human life, the apparent victory of death, is not cause for despair. Rather, the "darkness [purifies] the soul,/emptying the sensual with deprivation,/cleansing affection from the temporal." We can only conquer time by, in a sense, being liberated from the desires and fancies it engenders, while still in time in the body.

And so, our asceticism, our waiting in darkness, does not free us from time in any gnostic sense. We do not hope for a disembodied existence in a non-spatial realm. Rather Christ, who has brought time into heaven in his ascension, will create a new heavens and a new earth, a new body for each of us and a new perfected time to dwell in. In this sense, it is "only through time [that] time is conquered," by living, in a sense, as a sacrament of perfect time to come. Only by the narrow path of asceticism and darkness can we arrive in time perfected, at the "still point" in the Heart of the Trinity in the New Creation. That is our hope and our liberation: not to be conquered by time and death, but to answer the question of time with the hope of the cross.

R. Carruth

**All quotes, unless otherwise specified, are from Collected Poems by T.S. Eliot.

T.S. Eliot and Community: Part I of III

In the midst of the English literary tradition comes a prophetic figure, T.S. Eliot, warning against the destruction of language and community. T.S. Eliot pushes language to new horizons in his attempt to critique and expand the cultural consciousness and conscience of his generation. This awareness comes through his exploration of man’s folly and failure in bringing about a better world through feeble attempts at education and so called “objective” accounts of the world through reductive science. Rather than informing and deepening man’s understanding of himself and the cosmos, these attempts wedded to intellectual pride create a wasteland that engulfs society and undermines the mystical bonds of community. Through his poetic and mystical writings, Eliot can be understood as attempting a literary and cultural renewal by warning against the dangers of his society and its direction towards destruction and human isolation.

At the heart of any community lies a framework in which people share common experiences such as historical events, desires, insights, and goals. All these things are mediated among individuals within the community through language. As experience and thoughts are translated into symbols and communicated through verbal, oral, and physical gestures, language develops into the heart of a community. Because of the intimate connection between language and community, the destruction of one may lead to the destruction of the other. Likewise the renewal of one may lead to the renewal of the other.

T.S. Eliot realized that the present situation of a society in ruins must be understood and assessed for what it is in order to understand the fullness of the calamity that the community faces. However, because this process involves coming to terms with the problem and naming man’s folly, the difficulty of the prophet’s task increases when the means to express this calamity, namely language, has been intimately affected by the very destructiveness that T.S. Eliot hopes to identify. This may account for Eliot’s reliance on poetic verse and powerful images as primary tools of relating his insights in the context of symbolic narratives. When the very language system to be used to express meaning is fragmented, then expression within this system must be done with fragmented language. Thus, even Eliot’s style of poetry resonates with the fragmentation and alienation he identifies within his society.

Eliot’s dramatic monologue, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, gives an illuminating account of an isolated mind separated from the community. Alfred Prufrock tries to apply his rational knowledge of scientific relationships to the area of human relationships. At some sort of evening party he spends his time calculating possible interactions with women. He begins with his own inadequacies, such as thinning hair and undesirable physical traits, and concludes the inevitable failure of any possible interaction with the opposite sex. The logical end of his reasoning is to resist entering into a dialogue at all.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? [5]

Prufrock’s consciousness of being judged prevents him from action. He falls into the problem that he cannot calculate how to begin. There can be no calculation of a beginning, therefore he stagnates into non-action. His ‘scientific’ need for certainty undermines his human need for community. Thus he pins himself to a wall and fulfills his own fears. Prufrock becomes trapped in the hell of the isolated mind with no hope of escape.

Education embodied in reason alone has rebelled against its master. Prufrock embodies the impotence of the educated by living in his head rather than in everyday human interaction. His intellectual musings become a hindrance to community rather than an aide. His mind has predetermined his end to be lonely. Limiting the scientific inquiry to the positivistic sciences has in turn divorced the academic mind from the community and human relations. Prufrock becomes unable to interact in community and has exiled himself.

Thinking of Christmas, Compline, and a poem by T.S. Eliot

I stumbled across a lovely poem by T.S. Eliot this morning called “A Song for Simeon” that meditates on the Canticle of Simeon found in Luke 2:29-32. This canticle is prayed at Compline (Night Prayer) in the Liturgy of the Hours and is also called “Nunc dimittis” after its opening words in the Latin text. It reads as follows:

Lord, now you let your servant go in peace; your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people: a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.

Eliot’s poem expresses Simeon’s desperate hope and longing for salvation so poignantly that, as I read, I wished it were Advent already. Then I was struck with the realization that, as of today, Christmas is exactly two months away! The beautiful cool weather we’ve had lately has many of us looking forward to Christmas with anticipation. Ordinary time grows long, and much of our Easter-season fervor has faded.

As Catholics, we are asked to prepare ourselves to celebrate Christ’s birth with the same reverence, penitence and contemplation we practice during Lent. With great hope, let us look ahead to Advent (which begins on Sunday, December 2) and make Simeon’s prayer our own.

“A Song for Simeon” by T.S. Eliot

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was an Anglican poet, playwright, and literary critic. He is most famous for his poems “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ” and “The Waste Land,” as well as his play Murder in the Cathedral about the death of St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.