0:00

You're listening to a podcast by

0:02

the Center for Action and Contemplation.

0:04

To learn more, visit cac.org. Greetings.

0:08

I'm Jim Finley. And

0:11

I'm Kirsten Oates. Welcome

0:14

to Turning to the Mystics. Welcome

0:24

everyone to Season 10 of Turning to

0:26

the Mystics, where we've been

0:28

turning to T.S. Eliot and

0:30

his poetry in four quartets. This

0:34

episode is part two of our conversation

0:36

with Malcolm Guyt. And

0:38

in today's episode, Jim, Malcolm and

0:40

myself reflect on the third

0:42

and fourth poems in four quartets.

0:45

The fourth poem, Little Gidding, is the

0:48

grand finale to all three poems, where

0:50

we find our way to a little chapel

0:53

to kneel where prayer has been valid, and

0:56

where we see the mystical nature of all

0:58

the poems. So with

1:00

that, I'm going to hand over

1:02

to you, Jim, and you're going to just

1:04

take us through a small section of the

1:07

third poem, Dry Salvages, before we move on

1:09

to Little Gidding. And so

1:11

we're going to part five of

1:13

Dry Salvages about halfway through. So

1:17

I'll read it. Men's

1:20

curiosity searches past and future

1:23

and clings to that dimension. But

1:26

to apprehend the point of intersection

1:28

of the timeless with time is

1:31

the occupation of the saint. No

1:34

occupation either, but something

1:36

given and taken in

1:38

a lifetime's death in love. For

1:41

most of us, there is only the

1:44

unattended moment, the moment in and out

1:46

of time, the distraction fit, lost in

1:48

a shaft of sunlight. I'd

1:50

like to reflect on this for a minute with

1:52

you. It's

1:55

really true. We ruminate over the past and

1:57

we worry about the future. these

2:00

moments of the intersection of

2:03

time and eternity under the great

2:05

barber and the drafty church, the

2:07

quiet hour it days in, were

2:09

momentarily in this eternity and were

2:12

at the intersection. But it's

2:14

saying the saint is not content

2:16

to simply know these fleeting moments

2:18

where time and eternity are intermingled

2:20

in an alchemy that they're one.

2:23

But rather the saint seeks to live there.

2:26

See how can I abide in

2:28

the experience of the intersection that

2:31

alone is ultimately real? And

2:33

it's not just an intersection, but

2:35

also it's a death. Let me find the text

2:38

here. In a

2:40

lifetime's death and love, I love

2:42

that phrase, it's a lifetime of

2:45

endlessly dying to everything

2:47

that's endlessly passing away so that that

2:49

which never passes away can shine out

2:51

through everything passing away, you know,

2:54

as holiness. So what do you see in that,

2:56

Malcolm? I love that passage. I

2:59

think he's been setting up for

3:01

us from the very first poem

3:04

this problem or this question, if you

3:06

like, the intersection of time

3:08

and the timeless about the timeless moment,

3:10

about how through time, time is conquered,

3:12

about whether we can redeem the time.

3:15

This is the constant theme. And

3:17

he returns to it here and I think he places

3:19

it right at the

3:22

heart of Christian vocation. So

3:24

to apprehend, and I think he's very clear,

3:27

I think he Shakespearean in his use

3:29

of the word apprehend there, that imagination

3:32

apprehends more than cool reason ever comprehends.

3:35

We must apprehend some joy before we

3:37

comprehend the bringer of that joy. But

3:40

to apprehend the point of

3:42

intersection of the timeless with

3:44

time is an

3:46

occupation for the saint. And that means all of

3:48

us. There's

3:50

no occupation either, but

3:52

something given and taken that's

3:54

brilliant. You know, he's no sooner said it than he's to think,

3:56

I don't want to turn this into a work. It's

3:59

a moment of relief. It's a moment of openness

4:01

to what's given. And he

4:04

goes on, something given and taken in a lifetime's

4:06

death in love. Yes, that's one of the great

4:08

phrases. Arder and selflessness

4:10

and self surrender. And

4:12

then he brings the rest of us

4:14

in that aren't, you know, John of

4:16

the cross or anybody else. And I

4:18

feel really grateful for his welcoming charity

4:20

and the fact that he includes himself

4:23

in the others, in the rest of us. So he

4:25

says, for most of us, there

4:27

is only the unattended moment, the

4:30

moment in and out of time, the distract. And

4:32

you know, we're right back with those three moments

4:35

that he was telling us about in the earlier poem. He's gathering it all up. He's

4:39

telling all of us we have these moments. And he's

4:41

saying, pay attention. Pay attention

4:43

when that happens. Lost

4:45

in a shaft of sunlight, the wild time unseen,

4:48

or the winter lightning, or the waterfall, or

4:51

music heard so deeply that it is not heard

4:53

at all, but you are the music while the

4:55

music lasts. I think he's saying

4:57

in these poems, I

4:59

may not any more than you be able to

5:02

express a lifetime self surrender in the way that

5:04

perhaps John of the cross does. But

5:07

I share with you the unattended

5:09

moments. And what I'm

5:11

trying to do to offer you in my

5:13

poem is the gift of attention, that

5:16

it is by the poetry that we attend

5:19

to the unattended moments. And

5:22

I think of the four quartets, not as

5:24

a kind of lofty thing, I wish

5:26

I could have mystical experiences like that. I

5:29

see it much more as a series of worked examples

5:32

with a kind of go and do thou likewise. You

5:35

apprehend these moments with him in

5:37

order to be able to better apprehend them. When

5:40

you suddenly see something lost in a shaft

5:42

of sunlight, you know, when you are in

5:44

whatever your equivalent is of

5:47

the arbor where the rain beat. And

5:49

I then, the humility of it, he follows you, you are the

5:51

music while the music lasts. One

5:54

of the greatest lines of phrases of English poetry. And

5:56

then he goes, oh, these are only hints

5:59

followed by guesses. and the

6:01

rest is prayer, observance, discipline, thought

6:03

and action. And then I think

6:06

one of the great moments of affirmation

6:09

in the poem, the hint half-guessed,

6:12

the gift half-understood, is

6:15

incarnation. Lewis

6:18

said that every poem is a little incarnation,

6:21

and I think that's what he's doing. He's kind

6:23

of bodying forth for us these

6:26

things. But he can only do it, and

6:28

we can only receive it, because ultimately the

6:30

word himself bodied

6:32

forth. It was incarnate, you know, that in

6:35

Christ there genuinely is a meeting of the

6:37

eternal and time. I

6:39

have one more thing I want to add on here before

6:41

we move into a little bit. On the same passage, I

6:44

get a sense of something being implied here, and

6:46

tell me how this strikes you, is that

6:49

it's really true we're aware

6:52

we're momentarily at the intersection. And

6:55

we spend most of our life in the unattended moments.

6:58

But there's an insight to this. Although

7:00

the attentiveness from our end breaks,

7:02

you know, just occasionally lights up

7:05

again, it never breaks from

7:07

God's end. So even

7:09

the unattended moments are eternally attended

7:12

by God in the

7:14

holiness of the incidental holiness of simple

7:16

things. And he's trying

7:18

to breathe that atmospheric divinity

7:20

of the rhythms of ordinariness.

7:23

So how does that strike you? Is that also, does

7:25

that strike you? I agree with

7:27

that. I think the theologians

7:29

can take nice Latin eight words

7:31

like omniscience and

7:34

bandy them around. But

7:36

a poet helps us to attend, well, if God

7:38

knows everything, let's consider some

7:40

of the everythings he knows, including

7:43

the unattended moment when you're washing the dishes,

7:45

you know, and the

7:47

moment a leaf falls somewhere in a forest.

7:49

He knows its pattern and its beauty. And

7:52

I think more. I think he looks at

7:54

it and sees that it is good. I

7:58

think the American poet Wendell Berry is good at this. in

8:00

his Secrets of Poems called

8:02

Sabbath. But one of the

8:04

things that a certain kind of inspired poetry can

8:06

do is to allow you

8:08

for a moment to watch things with God, with

8:12

God's concentration in time, rather than just

8:14

with your own fleeting distractions. When

8:17

the poem resonates with that experience, it

8:19

can open your mind to it. I

8:21

love what you both said and that

8:24

line, hear the impossible union. So what

8:26

I'm hearing is it's impossible from our

8:28

side to create, but it's always there

8:30

from God's side. I

8:32

mean, hear the impossible union. When he

8:34

says hear the impossible union,

8:37

you know, is actual, is a direct reply

8:39

to the despairing moment of

8:41

all time is unredeemable. Oh

8:44

yes, it is redeemable. This is where

8:46

it's redeemable in this union, which is

8:48

incarnation. Well,

9:00

on to the finale, Little Getting.

9:03

The grand finale, yeah. Little Getting. Jim,

9:05

do you want to

9:07

get us started?

9:10

Yes. I'll

9:13

start with my sense of this. He

9:16

kind of begins again with these strange kind

9:18

of fleetiness of time, spring and summer and

9:20

winter. He starts, he goes on like before.

9:24

And then he says, if

9:27

you came this way, and the way means this way

9:29

to Little Getting. And

9:33

then he says, taking the route you'd likely take on your way home

9:35

from work, whatever it is. Well,

9:37

I say taking the route you'd like to take from the

9:39

place you'd be likely to come from is a very oblique

9:41

way of talking about Cambridge because Little Getting's not that far

9:43

off. And

9:45

he visited Little Getting from Cambridge and

9:48

was taken there in, I think 1936,

9:50

you know, by a guy called Maycock.

9:53

And the truth is that most people do come to Little

9:55

Getting by one particular route. From

9:57

Cambridge. because

10:00

it tends to be people in Cambridge you've heard

10:02

of little Giddin, because it's a tiny, tiny little

10:04

place in the middle of

10:06

nowhere. It's on the smallest of

10:08

back roads. You would go by it and

10:11

not even know it was there unless you

10:13

were really looking for it. I

10:15

want to say something here in kind

10:18

of theological language in parentheses that

10:20

he's going to poetically give witness to. Is

10:23

that in his faith in Christ through

10:26

Jesus, which is when we kneel, we're

10:28

prayers are invalid. We don't

10:30

have to find our way out

10:32

of time. We don't

10:34

have to wait for these little timeless moments in

10:36

the midst of time. For in Jesus, the

10:39

infinite love of God, the word became flesh

10:41

and dwelt among us. And God

10:43

enters in to the very time of the

10:45

times of our life. So

10:47

for me to live is Christ.

10:50

So God, Jesus lives our life.

10:52

Jesus suffers our suffering. Jesus dies

10:54

our death. And the resurrection of

10:57

Jesus bears witness to our resurrection,

11:00

not just when we die into glory, because

11:02

witness to the resurrection that is born

11:04

out of these awakening moments, that

11:07

God's already unexplainably present in

11:09

the ordinariness of everything. And

11:11

when we come to this realization, no matter

11:14

how you come, you didn't expect to come

11:16

there. No matter how you come,

11:18

you might fall off the cliff, you're just dropped

11:20

into this serendipitous place. And what

11:22

do you make of this way of setting this up?

11:24

How does that strike you? What would you say? I

11:27

like that. I think this is very much

11:29

a poem about having

11:32

the humility to receive what God has to

11:34

give you in Christ. And there's

11:36

a bit where he says, he

11:38

has this list of reasons that you might have given

11:41

yourself on your English itinerary, like

11:43

he did in 1936, of

11:46

why you might wanna make a visit to this place. And

11:48

he ticks them all off and says, forget it. Just

11:50

jettison all of those things. So he says,

11:53

you are not here. If

11:55

you came this day, take any route, starting anyway, it

11:57

would always be the same. You would have to put.

12:00

off sense and notion.

12:03

Any notion you had of what this was about, let it

12:05

go, leave it outside. It's like God

12:07

saying to Moses, take off those shoes from off

12:09

their feet. Just unbuckle it, leave

12:11

it behind. So you're not here to

12:13

verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity, or

12:16

carry report. That's about five or six

12:18

reasons why most people go to places.

12:21

Says, forget it. And then he

12:23

says, really simple language, you are

12:25

here to kneel where

12:27

prayer has been valid. And

12:30

then comes that beautiful thing that prayer

12:32

is more than an order of words and so on.

12:34

You're here to be in this moment. And

12:37

I take great pleasure from this. And

12:39

I particularly used to take pleasure bringing

12:41

groups of students from

12:43

Cambridge and reading this to them in

12:45

the chapel, because like

12:47

it's an uber-competitive place. Everybody's trying to do

12:49

better than everybody else. Everybody cares about their

12:51

marks, you know, and then later on when

12:53

we're in social media, everybody wants more like,

12:55

you know, it's a very burdened,

12:58

work-driven. You've got to do stuff

13:01

and prove yourself. And

13:03

Elliot just says, just take all

13:05

that off. Put

13:07

it off, take it away. You're not going to

13:10

do any of that. Just kneel and receive. And that

13:12

when people get that, it's

13:15

so beautiful and refreshing when it happens, you

13:17

know. When

13:20

we had our talks together, Kirsten pointed this

13:22

out. We could take this stanza as guidelines

13:25

for contemplative prayer. Totally.

13:27

So we could walk through each one

13:30

and see how in contemplative prayer, contemplative

13:33

prayer embodies this very thing. So you'd

13:35

have to put off sense and notion.

13:37

So when you kneel in contemplative prayer,

13:39

you'd have to put off any previous

13:42

sense. One, what the senses are

13:44

able to touch and see and feel, but

13:46

also your sense, all your assumptions about what

13:48

it was about. Being finite

13:50

are completely inadequate here. And

13:53

you're not here for a report to kind of

13:55

go back, what are you going to say? What

13:58

are you going to explain? You're not here to... prove

14:00

anything because it's God. And

14:03

so because we don't need to do anything

14:05

because it's already achieved and dying words of

14:07

Jesus on the cross, it is consummated. But

14:10

we need to do something. We need

14:12

to kneel and be receptively open because

14:14

love's never imposed, it's always offered. And

14:17

so this is the devotional sincerity of

14:19

prayer in which comes

14:21

all into the open here. Does

14:24

that, how does that strike you too, Malcolm? That

14:26

I absolutely agree with all of that. And

14:28

I think, I mean, there's a paradox here,

14:30

isn't there? On the

14:33

one hand, we're so used

14:35

to sense and nation and we're so used to

14:37

all our busy verifying and instructing

14:39

ourselves and informing and all that, you know

14:41

what I mean? It's kind of been part

14:43

of our routine of self

14:46

justification. So in one way, it's

14:48

quite hard to undo all that, it's quite scary to leave

14:50

it behind. So it's a hard thing.

14:52

But on the other hand, it's kind of the

14:54

easiest thing in the world to do because that

14:56

stuff has been screwing us up and weighing us

14:58

down for years. So to

15:01

have an invitation to just totally let it go,

15:05

it's kind of wonderful, you know?

15:08

The whole first part of this poem is about

15:10

how we approach this moment where

15:12

we can kneel. But he

15:14

prepares us for it in the earlier bit where he appears

15:16

to be only describing the heat and the light and the

15:18

roads and the ditches and the hedges. But

15:21

he's already given you this idea of something that's frozen

15:23

up, finally being unfrozen.

15:26

And he gives you the idea, this beautiful image

15:28

of the soul sap quivering. There's

15:30

something in you that's been waiting for this moment, waiting

15:32

for this to be allowed. You

15:35

know, and the soul sap I think is really

15:37

important because I think it obliquely refers to

15:39

Jesus saying, I am the vine and you are

15:42

the branches, abide in me. Without

15:44

me, you can do nothing. So

15:46

finally at last be rooted into this

15:49

branch, let the soul sap come up,

15:52

you know, from the root of Christ and not from

15:54

some dumb thing you think you have to do. I

15:57

mean, we actually are going to look at this passage later. You

16:00

know, in burnt Norton, we had, as

16:02

it were, the ghost of a fire. The place has

16:04

burnt down, you know. People have lost

16:06

their lives. And

16:08

we have the roses. We have the image of the

16:10

fire and the image of the rose, but they're sort

16:12

of separate. We've turned from the burnt place to

16:15

look at the roses. A

16:17

rose, of course, is sometimes a symbol

16:20

of the fleetingness of time. You

16:22

know, gather ye rosebuds while ye may all time.

16:25

Here's a flying, and sure the flower that smiles

16:27

today tomorrow will be dying. There's

16:30

something eternal about the rose. And as he comes towards

16:32

Dante in this, we suddenly get the rose. And

16:35

I don't think you probably know that, although

16:37

it's set in little Gidding, he was

16:39

writing it in London during the Blitz. And

16:43

the bombs were falling everywhere. And

16:46

he was a fire watcher. So he actually went

16:48

out, you know, onto the streets in the early

16:50

morning after the dawn raids and

16:53

reported back where fires were so

16:55

that the ambulances could get there.

16:57

He was an American who stayed with us in the

16:59

war rather than leaving, you know. I

17:01

think the extraordinary thing where, in a terrible

17:03

destructive way, fire and

17:06

rose come together. When he sees this house,

17:08

it's like one whole story. It's

17:10

just dust in the air suspended, marks

17:13

the place where a story ended. Ash

17:15

on an old man's sleeve as

17:18

all the ash-burnt roses leave. For

17:20

a moment, rose and fire come

17:22

together destructively. And he shows

17:24

you the bleakness of our kind of the wars of

17:26

our all that

17:28

happens because we don't reside in Christ. And

17:31

then, you know, he takes those

17:33

two images at the end, the very same image

17:35

of the rose and the fire. And

17:37

he brings them together at the end of the poem in

17:39

the eternal fire of God's love. It's just almost

17:43

too wonderful to give words to what he does in

17:45

this poem. What do

17:47

you make of this staying on the same theme for a

17:49

moment? You know what this also, I

17:52

think, there's so many moments in Scripture that embodied

17:54

this. When Moses,

17:56

when they're in exile, and Moses

17:59

is out walking, alone in the wilderness,

18:02

and he sees the bush burning, but

18:04

it's not burning up. That

18:07

is, he's beyond cause-effect relationship.

18:10

That's obviously one of the kind of great

18:12

turning points, great moments of Scripture. And

18:14

I mean, lots of biblical commentators from the

18:16

early fathers onwards saw this

18:18

bush, which is still a bush, it's

18:20

still rooted, it's never lost any of its

18:23

bushiness, and yet it's a flame with the

18:25

divine presence. They saw that

18:27

as a foreshadowing of the coming of

18:29

Christ. The impossible union that he

18:32

has fully human nature and fully divine

18:34

nature. And his divine

18:36

nature doesn't burn up or destroy

18:38

or override his human nature any

18:41

more than the bush is consumed. So

18:44

it seems to me that the bush is

18:46

not only symbolic of those moments of illumination

18:48

that we've been talking about throughout, but

18:50

it is also a biblical foreshadowing of the coming

18:52

of Jesus, I think. What do you think

18:55

of this idea too? We think

18:57

of the birth of Jesus, the life of

18:59

Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, the death of

19:01

Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus. But

19:04

what if actually they're all collapsed as

19:06

the true nature of the present moment?

19:09

That is the burning bush, you

19:12

know, of the divinity of what it immediately

19:14

is. It's like non-sequential

19:17

holiness, concretely manifested

19:19

in very concrete images

19:22

of burning bush, and

19:24

he's trying to sensitize us to this. How

19:27

does that strike you? What do you make of it? Well,

19:30

I think, of course, we experience things in

19:32

time because we're in time. But

19:34

if God is eternal, then every moment of

19:36

time is equally and eternally present to him.

19:40

So he sees the crucifixion and the resurrection, and

19:42

he is, and he's in the crucifixion and the

19:44

resurrection in some sense at the same

19:46

moment, although they're sequenced out for us. So

19:49

I think there's a lot in that. Towards

19:52

the end of this poem, he's kind of channeling

19:55

a lot of Dante, and Dante,

19:57

you may remember, gets finally up into the

19:59

imperial. He thinks he's

20:01

been traveling out, you know, from the center,

20:03

the earth, up through all these different spheres

20:05

of heaven and then the sphere of fire

20:08

and everything, the prima mobili. So he thinks

20:10

he's going to find God on this, you

20:12

know, final height, outer edge. But

20:14

when he gets there, he experiences

20:16

a complete paradigm

20:19

and perspective shift. And he realizes he's

20:21

been traveling into a center, and

20:23

it's the center of the rose. And

20:26

that all the things of time and the

20:28

beings are folding out like petals and the

20:30

angels are going back and forth like bees.

20:32

And he was always traveling in towards this

20:34

center. And what he sees in the

20:36

center is love. I mean, the last line of the

20:38

poem is the love that moves the sun and the

20:40

other stars. And I think

20:42

there's something like this going on at the end of

20:44

this poem, particularly when he

20:46

says, and the fire and the

20:49

rose are one. When he quotes Julian and says,

20:52

he takes all those moments that we had

20:54

and got left, and it goes, quick, now,

20:56

here, now, always a condition

20:59

of complete simplicity costing

21:01

not less than everything. And

21:04

then Julian, all shall be well and all

21:06

manner of things shall be well. But this,

21:08

when the tongues of flame are enfolded into

21:10

the crown and not of fire and

21:13

the fire and the rose are one. It seems

21:15

to me to be, again, one of the supreme

21:18

lines of mystical poetry. Turning

21:25

to the mystics will continue in a moment.

21:46

So what I'm hearing is the fire of suffering

21:48

and the fire of transformation are

21:51

one. And that's the pattern that

21:53

this poem has been pointing to. And Jim,

21:56

you brought up Pentecost, too, as one of these points of

21:58

love. for

22:00

fire? Yes. Do we burn

22:02

by pyre or pyre? So

22:04

this, the poem's going to end this way too.

22:06

There is the fire of the burning of

22:09

the falling away of all things in time. And

22:11

the burning when we're caught in that is

22:14

if it's claustrophobic, it's one dimensional, you

22:16

know, or nothing but the self that

22:18

things happen to. But then there's

22:20

a fire of Pentecost, as fire

22:22

by fire. And the fire of Pentecost,

22:24

I love this phrase in John of the Cross, to have

22:26

no light to guide you except the one that burns in

22:28

your heart. There

22:30

is this timeless divine fire

22:32

that's actually burning in

22:35

the midst of our suffering, in the midst of

22:37

our daily life. And that's another seminal

22:39

thing that starts emerging out of little

22:41

getting. Malcolm, what do you make

22:43

of that? How do you... Well, I agree with you. This is the

22:45

Pentecost. You know that the four

22:47

quartets were also, you know, I talked about

22:49

how patterned they are, the music. So

22:52

one of the patterns is they took the ancient four

22:55

elements out of which everything is made. And

22:57

each quartet reflects one. Burnt

23:00

Norton is air. There's a lot about the air in

23:02

the air and echoes in music. East

23:04

Coker is earth and Dry Selve edges is

23:06

water. But the fourth element, of course, is

23:09

fire. So this is the fire quartet. He

23:12

gets you straight there. He's looking

23:14

at this light reflected. It's

23:16

midwinter spring. There's a kind of spring in the middle

23:18

of winter. And then he says, a

23:21

glow more intense than

23:23

blaze of branch. I

23:26

think there's a burning bush. A

23:28

glow more intense than blaze of

23:30

branch or burning brazier. Stirs

23:33

the dumb spirit. No

23:36

wind, but Pentecostal

23:38

fire in the dark

23:40

time of the year. He's getting us ready.

23:43

And when he's in the bit about the Blitz,

23:46

he talks about the terrible thing of the kind

23:48

of anti-Pentecost, if you like, of fire from

23:50

heaven in the sense of these bombs being dropped.

23:54

And he calls the liftwaffe planes as they're going back. He

23:56

says, after the dark dove with the

23:58

flickering tongue and pulse, below the horizon

24:00

of his homing. And then he

24:03

says, which fire do we want to have here? You

24:05

know? Then he gives you

24:07

the great lyric, the dove, this is the

24:09

real dove, the dove descending breaks

24:11

the air, but again it's not sentimental.

24:13

The dove descending breaks the air with

24:15

flame of incandescent terror, of

24:18

which the tongues declare that one

24:20

release from sin or error, the only

24:22

hope or else despair, lies

24:24

in the choice of fire or fire to

24:27

be redeemed from fire by fire. And

24:29

it's the fire of, if you like,

24:31

time burning everything up, you know, the

24:33

cauldron of our lusts, all that

24:36

stuff. It's another fire. That fire has

24:38

to be answered by fire, and it's the other fire, the

24:40

fire of the dove descending, which

24:43

is the one that redeems us. We are redeemed

24:45

from fire by fire. I

24:47

mean, it's astonishing writing. And then, you

24:50

know, he's, oh, Julian, who then devises

24:52

the torment? Love.

24:56

Love is the

24:59

unfamiliar name behind the hands that

25:01

wove the intolerable shed of flame, which

25:04

human power cannot remove. We

25:06

only live, only suspect, consumed

25:09

by either fire or

25:11

fire. That's absolutely astonishing.

25:15

It's amazing how, without

25:17

saying the name of Jesus, without saying the name

25:20

of God, without saying the name of Christ, that

25:22

there's so much of that underlying with

25:25

poem. Yeah. So

25:27

it's beautiful to hear that drawn out. Yeah. And

25:30

this is doing a great thing with this, because there's huge numbers

25:32

of people who aren't Christian and who might not like whatever

25:35

brand of Christianity they happen to have seen in

25:38

their neighborhood, who will read this

25:40

poem and love it. But the more they love

25:42

it and then read it, the more they're going to be drawn to Christ. You know, I,

25:45

Eliot's faith is a very real thing, and I was born real fruit

25:47

in the world, I think. What I love about it, too, it's

25:51

got a deep respect for all mystical

25:53

traditions, the way he brings in

25:55

the Bhagavad Gita, the lotus

25:57

flower, you know, Buddhism. That's

26:00

the kind of Christianity I'm interested in, that

26:02

stands in respect of all mystical

26:04

traditions, the impossible union. Yeah,

26:08

and in fact he starts with, in the

26:10

little preface, before the poem starts at all,

26:12

he has these quotations from

26:15

Heraclitus, you know,

26:17

he's a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He

26:20

says, and it's Heraclitus on, if you read

26:22

it, you'll notice that the second

26:24

word in the Greek is logus, the logos.

26:27

The Heraclitus means, although the word logos,

26:30

and he's not letting that word fall,

26:32

although the word is common to all,

26:35

most men live as if they had

26:37

a private wisdom of their own. I'm

26:41

reading from the little epigraphs at the

26:43

beginning of the poem, to Logo Deontos,

26:46

Suno Tsun, Apole,

26:49

I'm translating the Greek, but

26:51

it means, although the word is common to

26:53

all, men live

26:55

as if they had a private wisdom of their

26:58

own. That's a really

27:00

interesting thing to have said, because it

27:02

is personal part, you know, he's got lots of his

27:04

own stuff in it, but actually, I think what he's

27:06

trying to restore to us is the logos, which

27:09

is common to all. You

27:11

know, I want to move on to where he meets the

27:13

master at the dead man. And

27:15

I could draw it, it will kind of be ending

27:17

on this too, because it leads into the rose and

27:20

so on. So I'd like to share a few thoughts so you

27:23

could pick up on it and share it. And

27:25

of course, it's the patrols that he would make going out

27:27

to check with the fire, you know, he's out walking

27:30

the street, and he meets

27:32

a dead master, and he refers to

27:34

the master as a compound ghost. And

27:37

I think the compound ghost are the masters

27:39

he's been quoting throughout the whole poem. So

27:42

it's St. John of the Cross, it's

27:44

the Bhagavad Gita, it's Krishna talking to

27:46

argument, you know, that no one ever

27:48

dies. As it references

27:50

to the Buddha, the lotus rose slowly

27:52

from the stream, the middle way of

27:55

the Buddha. And then

27:57

primarily though, it's really this Christian

27:59

imagery. We

34:01

shall not cease from exploration, and

34:04

the end of all our exploring will be

34:06

to arrive where we started and

34:08

know the place for the first time." That's

34:11

beautiful. Yes, it's lovely. To

34:14

the unknown, unremembered gate, when

34:17

the last of earth left to

34:19

discover is that which was the

34:21

beginning, at the source of the

34:23

longest river, the voice of the

34:25

hidden waterfall, and the children in the apple

34:28

tree, referring back to Bert Norton, echoing

34:30

all this again. Not

34:33

known because not looked for, but

34:35

heard, half heard, in the stillness

34:38

between two waves of the sea,

34:40

quick now, here now, always,

34:44

a condition of complete simplicity. I

34:46

love that. Costing

34:48

nothing less than everything. My

34:50

Sir Eckhart says, it steals the soul

34:53

from itself. That is, it

34:55

steals from the soul the ability to

34:57

live by its own

34:59

resources, anything less than the infinite love

35:01

of God, or just

35:03

unraveled. It's the view from

35:05

the cross, too, I think, for

35:07

Jesus. And all shall be well,

35:10

and all matter think shall be all, Julian.

35:12

When the tongues of flame are enfolded, and

35:14

the crown not of fire, and the fire

35:17

and the rose are one. And my sense

35:19

is this, it gives echoing Dante the rose.

35:22

Another thing I think in this, what do you see this? The

35:25

fire and the rose are one, is

35:27

that the fire of our suffering, and

35:30

the fire of Pentecost, the deliverance from

35:32

suffering, are one. There's

35:35

a mysterious alchemy of

35:37

the suffering, and the deliverance from

35:39

suffering. It's kind of

35:42

a mystical quickening, or a

35:44

realization of the oneness of

35:46

birth and death, and gain and loss and

35:48

suffering and joy. And

35:51

he's inviting us to hope. How

35:53

does that strike you, what I'm saying here? Well,

35:55

I think if we just speak

35:57

of redeeming time, or if we speak of redeeming time,

35:59

we at all, then everything

36:01

has to be redeemed, including

36:04

suffering. So it's not enough to say, oh, thank

36:06

God my suffering's over. No, I'm in heaven. You

36:08

know, I think, you know, it'd be reasonable to

36:10

say, well, why did I suffer in the first

36:12

place? But if I can

36:15

discover that in my suffering is this extraordinary

36:17

fire of God's love, is this deepening of

36:19

the soul, then it's given the

36:21

one thing it really needs, which is meaning.

36:24

I mean, it's very interesting. If you

36:26

look at medieval doom paintings,

36:28

you know, paintings of the judgment, you

36:31

see God up in the heavens and you see the divine

36:35

worship in the angels, the seraphs and the

36:37

cherubim. And the seraphs are, of

36:39

course, traditionally, they're fiery. They're ablaze with the

36:41

fire of God's love and the very fire

36:43

of God's loving presence. And it

36:46

flows down the sides of the pictures. And

36:48

then there's Christ in the middle there. And insofar

36:50

as there's a scene of hell at the bottom,

36:53

it's the same fire experienced

36:55

differently. There's

36:57

no place that isn't the divine love. But

37:01

we can either let that, we

37:03

can kneel where prayer is, we can

37:05

let that be the utterly transformative thing

37:07

and become the rose. One

37:09

final note. Tell me how this strikes you, picking up

37:11

on what you're saying. Is there a way

37:14

that Christ rose with this wound? Absolutely. Yeah,

37:16

that's essential. But the wound is transformed

37:18

by glory. And that's another big

37:20

theme in the... Well, that's a very big theme in...

37:23

Obviously, when Eliot quotes somebody, he usually wants you to remember

37:25

all of it, as it were. The quote is just like

37:27

the little thread, you pull the rest of it out. So

37:30

in Julian's revelation of divine love, of

37:32

course, you get this parable or story

37:34

of the servant who falls

37:36

into the pit and is wounded with many thorns.

37:39

But in the vision, the servant comes out

37:41

and every one of the wounds has become

37:44

a jewel. So I think

37:46

it's really vital that we see the wounds

37:48

of Christ, as the hymn says, in beauty

37:50

glorified. And I think that's

37:52

all in the redeemed from fire by fire.

37:55

I want to end with this. This has been

37:58

such a grace, Malcolm, that you joined us. Really,

38:00

it's blessed me. And I know

38:02

it'll bless the listeners. I

38:04

think they'll so resonate with this. I

38:07

feel such an affinity with you. I

38:09

feel a strong affinity with you. I will love

38:11

the same poem for the same reasons here. And

38:13

that's very good. It's been a joy to

38:15

meet you and a joy to be part of this podcast. And

38:18

to be honest, you know, I'll enthuse about

38:20

this poem anytime with anyone, you know? I

38:23

just love it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank

38:25

you for being with us, Malcolm, today. And thank

38:27

you, Jim. And what

38:29

a beautiful way to close this season

38:32

of turning to the mystic. So thank

38:34

you. Do

38:52

you feel called to walk a more

38:54

contemplative path? The Center

38:56

for Action and Contemplation is

38:59

an educational nonprofit supporting the

39:01

journey of inner transformation. Our

39:04

programs and resources will help

39:06

grow your consciousness, deepen your

39:08

prayer practice, and strengthen your

39:10

compassionate engagement with the world.

39:14

Learn more about our

39:16

resources, such as publications,

39:18

podcasts, email series, and

39:20

events at www.cac.org.