chinese boxes

Warning to Children


Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness,
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still unopened on his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
He lives - he then unties the string.


(Robert Graves)
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incarnation

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

- John 1:14


i love this poem by, surprise surprise, Marie Howe, which captures a bit of what it must have meant for God to be dwelling among us, the Word made flesh. Not only to be constrained by time and space, not only to have to put up with all the indignities and inconveniences of bodily life, but also, to be living with us - clamouring, grasping, contentious, self-seeking people that we are.

'The people Jesus loved' - surely Howe included herself among the number? And surely, this poem is more symbol than story, though of course, it is story as well?



The Star Market

The people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-coloured man standing next to me at the checkout
breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:
shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if The Star Market

had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in
with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat:
looking for cereal and spring water.

Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car
in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have
been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept

out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands
and knees begging for mercy.

If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought, I will be healed.
Could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?


(from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, by Marie Howe)
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fearful symmetry

"It has made me grasp as never before that God has an inner strategic (as distinct from tactical) purpose for His creation, thereby enabling me to see through the Theater of the Absurd, which is what life seems to be, and into the Theater of Fearful Symmetry, which is what it is. Thus reality sorts itself out, like film coming into sync, and everything that exists, from the tiniest atom to the illimitable universe in which our tiny earth revolves, everything that happens, from the most trivial event to the most seemingly momentous, makes one pattern, tells one story, is comprehended in one prayer: Thy will be done."

(Malcolm Muggeridge, 'Afterword' to A Third Testament)



Being much too inclined to finding pattern where others might see none, I find the thought of the universe as a Theatre of Fearful Symmetry designed to fulfil the will of God perhaps a little too comfortable, too convenient, for me not to distrust. But an unquestioned rejection of what is most congenial to us is possibly just as foolish as its unquestioned acceptance - so just because I personally find the idea of a Grand Narrative that encompasses the whole of history very attractive indeed, is no good reason to reject the idea without prior examination.
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