…We Call This Friday Good

Tags

4 Quartets, art and paradox, Good Friday, rambling, T.S. Eliot

Today is Good Friday. A solemn day, in the Christian tradition, and I do rather feel its weight.

Good Friday always makes me think of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” Particularly the second part, “East Coker,” perhaps because it explicitly mentions Good Friday. But that whole section seems to belong to the solemn slowness of the day.

“In my beginning is my end.”
East Coker starts by declaring. I wish I could write out the whole section for you, there are so many beauties, but that would be a bit long for a blog post. Perhaps I will just encourage you to read it on your own. Read it slowly, letting the words fall without hurrying them along. It won’t all make sense, and it won’t sink in all at once. T.S. Eliot requires many readings, I have found.

Sometimes, though, beautiful things are worth struggling to understand. Sometimes I can dimly comprehend something without completely understanding it. Does that sound crazy? But I do think that some forms of art can sink into a part of your consciousness and you grasp something of their truth and beauty without being able to completely articulate why and without completely understanding. And it is difficult to live with the paradox, but maybe worth it to try.

Now I am just maundering on…forgive my morning ramblings.

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

And finally, after mentioning Adam’s curse, and that the only way out is for it to get worse before it gets better…

“The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood–
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.” 

I do not understand, and it sounds so foreign, and yet…

“In my end is my beginning.”

If These Were Silent, the Very Stones Would Cry Out

Tags

joy, lent, Music, the welcome wagon

I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately. This is a pretty typical occurrence, but music has been on the brain more than usual, even for me.

Monday night I got to sing with a group of wonderful people whose band is called The Welcome Wagon at a lovely place in Charlottesville (the Haven).

I hardly even know what to say about it. Making music with people can be such an indescribably beautiful and joyful thing. When people come together with their instruments and voices and their hearts are in what they’re doing and they bring their experience and hard work to beautiful melodies and harmonies, something happens in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We may have been singing for 20 minutes. We may have been singing for an hour — I don’t really know how long it was. Not everything went perfectly. Maybe that was part of the charm. Not everything clicked the whole time, but enough went right and there was enough true music happening that it felt like I was standing singing and also watching from one of the old wooden pews. I merged for a few moments with the music that bounced around the room, showering the place with loveliness. I don’t know how it appeared to those listening, but to me, it was something special.

Oh, it sounds silly and strange to try to put it in words, but just try to think of a time when you were, however fleetingly, perfectly content and knew that for that moment you were exactly where you were supposed to be. That’s how it felt. Whatever else I was made to do, I was also made to sing.

If you haven’t heard the music of the Welcome Wagon, look them up.

On a slightly related note (no pun intended), I also made a mix for this season of Lent (yes, I’m aware it could possibly be slightly dominated by Sufjan Stevens songs… I’m ok with it).
Sorry, I haven’t figured out how to actually put all the songs up here to listen to, so this is a bit anti-climactic. But this is what I’ve been listening to this month (well, aside from all the time I’ve spent listening to “Welcome to the Welcome Wagon”).

Remember That You Are Dust…
1. Man of Sorrows -Jill Phillips
2. Behold the Lamb of God -Andrew Peterson
3. The Violet Hour -The Civil Wars
4. Nothing But the Blood -Page CXVI
5. Roll Away Your Stone -Mumford & Sons
6. To Be Alone with You -Sufjan Stevens
7. Hosanna -Jill Phillips
8. This Too Shall Be Made Right -Derek Webb
9. Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?) -Sufjan Stevens
10. Up On a Mountain -The Welcome Wagon
11. The Seer’s Tower -Sufjan Stevens
12. What Wondrous Love is This -Jill Phillips
13. He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word -The Welcome Wagon
14. Crucifixus -Erskine College Choir (composed by Antonio Lotti)
15. Jesus Dies (Alas and Did My Savior Bleed) -New York Hymns
16. In Manus Tuas -The Cambridge Singers (composed by John Sheppard)
[If you want more info on these songs, just ask and I'll see what I can do.]

Spring Poetry

Tags

E. E. Cummings, Lord Byron, Poetry, spring, spring poetry

Spring always brings poetry to mind. How could it not? I live in a place that wears Spring so gracefully. Here are two poems the loveliness of today brought to mind.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

-Lord Byron
600. She Walks in Beauty

the little horse is newlY

Born)he knows nothing,and feels
everything;all around whom is

perfectly a strange
ness(Of sun
light and of fragrance and of

Singing)is ev
erywhere(a welcom
ing dream:is amazing)
a worlD.and in

this world lies:smoothbeautifuL
ly folded;a(brea
thing a gro

Wing)silence,who;
is:somE

oNe.

-E. E. Cummings
the little horse is newlY

**NB: In case you care, I cannot take credit for the lovely daffodil photo in this post. But isn’t it beautiful against the purple-ish background? Complementary colors win again. **

Lines Written in Early Spring

Tags

spring poetry, wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sat reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:–
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Rain and Rain

Tags

longfellow, Poetry, rain, rainy day, reflections

Rainy days are often dreary and make one feel as if the world is a sad place; the very weather mirrors the tears of the unhappy. But other rainy days are merely reminders that it cannot always be sunny, that the earth must be watered somehow, and gives one an opportunity to sit inside and enjoy some things that are sometimes overlooked on sunny days.

Today seems like the latter kind of rainy day, at least to me. You may disagree (and rainy days are seen by different people in different ways, largely dependent upon season, mood, and the number of rainy days in succession). Small things are what make the difference. Here I sit in my office, lit only by the soft light of lamps, eating warm broccoli cheddar soup and sourdough bread. They are such a happy combination. The sourdough bread has a tang that is beautifully balanced by the creamy soup and the flavor of cooked broccoli. The only sounds are the steady tick-tock of my wall clock and the click of the keys on the keyboard, and I wish my lunch break was long enough to take a nap, lulled to sleep by the clock’s ticking and the mental image I have of the rain falling quietly (my office, alas, does not have a window, so all images of the outdoors are just that, images).

My lunch break is nearly at an end, and I will have to return to the world of spreadsheets, tallying receipts, and registration forms, but the few precious moments of relaxation in the middle of my day have been sweet.

And although I do not quite feel like this today (though I might tomorrow if the rain keeps coming), here is a poem about rain for your enjoyment. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve read much poetry, and I miss it, which is why I’ve been putting poetry on here today I think. Without further ado, here are a few lines from Mr. Longfellow:

The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Sonnet 116

Tags

Poetry, sonnet, william shakespeare

-William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ nor no man ever loved.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I look at you, and your loneliness is
Suffocating.
I look back, and my loneliness is like
Drowning.
So close, we sit on uncomfortable chairs
Our words bounce off
Unable to sink in –
Together but alone.
So easy to slide away
Lost in our depths;
When will we surface?
Bubbling and pushing past
We are so different, you and I–
Did I tell you?

I don’t really know how to swim.