ts eliot poems

i've been told my blog post with the pictures is confusing and weird...sometimes i forget that not everyone is a huge fan of "the waste land." sorry about that...

so there is this poem by ts eliot called "the waste land" and it is really long and super confusing and full of famous lines like april is the cruellest month and that corpse you planted last year in the garden/has it begun to sprout? and I will show you fear in a handfull of dust. My favorite lines are

My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, have we existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries...

---
the other quote from that post is by Samuel Beckett, who wrote Waiting for Godot, a play in the absurdist style that is basically about the hopelessness and futility of life. Thia and I have been obsessed recently by this idea of being MAD FOR LIFE and I thought the quote about being born mad and *REMAINING* so was an excellent fit. i forgot that not everyone - anyone, really - is privy to our late night discussions about how we can live out our passion for life.

so. pretty much that post was about a late night walk in the mist that Meg, Clare, Thia and I took. we went and walked and soaked in beauty and lived in the present like ... good zen buddhists? like good Christians, really. but this is a discussion for a different day. hah.

we walked and talked and thought about how life is beautiful and vibrant and a gift and meditated on how we want to REMAIN MAD. and i thought about how the awful daring of a moment's surrender (to God, to life, to glorious aliveness) is the thing that matters and it is not what is going to show up in my obituary. when i die, someone will write of me my college and career and accomplishments, and they will in doing this miss the most important parts of my life. most important is those beautiful moments when i realize how lovely life is, how sharply sweet is the smell of fall, how piercingly wonderful is an hour with a friend, how deep joy can run if i just pay attention to what is going on around me.

most people go through life half asleep, yeah? i'm not going to be one of them.

Thanksgiving

I'm going to be home tomorrow!!!!!! AH!

Tonight I got to go to the most interesting coffeehouse...it was about US involvement in Iraq. And I don't even know how to explain it. Except to say that "God made all people. And the best way to honor him is by paying attention." I think it is quite possible that I might end up taking Elementary Arabic with Louis Yako this spring...

haha - you know it is worth it when I consider messing up my perfectly arranged schedule. :P



then I went to the Thanksgiving hymn sing. beautiful. that reminds me. we sang a hymn at the early church on sunday that i really liked and i don't remember its name. i think it was 610? in the blue Menno hymnal they all use down here. 600-something. eh, i'll look it up on the 6th i guess.

I CAN'T WAIT TO BE HOME. :) :) :)

by this, and this only, have we existed/which is not to be found in our obituaries

"We are all born mad. Some remain so." -Samuel Beckett

my life is beautiful

i had the best weekend. i feel sometimes like it cannot be possible for my life to be any better than it is right now. although i guess when i finally get to OChem and Developmental Biology and Ways of Knowing and [oh, i hope] the Dante class...

anyway, i just have a beautiful life.

i wish all my PA readers could come visit the early church with me. i love it SOOO much. i feel this huge sense of love and belonging and grace when i am there. yesterday i was at church and - i love how they pray. at the end of a service they have "the prayers of the faithful," where it is open for anyone to pray out loud, and when they are finished, they say "We pray to the Lord," upon which everyone else says [loudly] "Lord, hear our prayer!" Ron says - pray with excitement! You know what an exclamation point means! This is how God asks us to pray!

after church was over, we went to a house affiliated with Our Community Place to eat lunch. a man who is somehow involved with OCP [I think...i'm a little sketchy on details here] got an award from MMA. there are a few houses near each other and they have garden space around them. apparently people can come and help work the gardens and in return get some of the produce. and the one house has rooms inside for people to stay in and a little chapel...

there were so many people there. people from the early church and people from other churches who knew the guy getting an award. it was beautiful because it was so - odd. like - there was a girl there with bright pink hair. there were beautiful little kids. there were older people. i was listening to conversations and i heard these two old-ish men talking about the misconceptions they have held in their heads and hearts about the homeless. oh, it was so beautiful.

there was so much food! all of a sudden i felt like concepts from my confusing Ethics class sprang to life before my eyes. by this i mean: we all had enough. there was abundance brought out of scarcity. and the man who was sort of in charge of setting out the meal was speaking of the gardens and "putting them to sleep for the winter" - this reminded me of all of the times we have spoken of land care in Ethics.

so we gathered, sang a Jewish folk song that someone had learned in one of the New England states at a Passover Seder, and ate. Thia, Rebekah, and I ended up sitting with an older couple. You will NEVER guess who they were.

Do the names Joe and Hannah Lapp mean anything to any of you?
let me explain: FORMER PRESIDENT OF EMU. we had an entire conversation without finding out who they were. and then, casual as anything, he says, "Do any of you have a class in the President's room? You might see me there." And i was just like NO WAY. Ah! because i DO have a class in the President's room and I know that the portrait of every EMU president is hanging there. so i sort of did a very quiet freak-out and then i told him that i have a mug with his name on it. rinn gave me that mug; i told them that, too, and they remembered her! It was so awesome.

In other news: I'm sick. blech.
And sometime I need to write about "Morally Responsible Investment in Palestine" and Honors from last week: chirality

I can't wait for Thanksgiving.

shakespeare

thia and i got invited to go to a shakespeare play by lucas. this is probably going to be the best thing ever! at least of this week. :) what a beautiful life.


............edit.....

AH THIS WAS THE BEST THING EVER! AT LEAST THIS WEEK! :) deserving of CAPS LOCK awesome.
you will not believe this. ok. so it was me, thia, meg, lucas, nathan, and stewart [which by the way...these five people are some of the most interesting i've ever met in my life. ok]. we got there a little later than we planned and asked if we could get student price tickets and the person behind the counter was like, "Sorry, standing room only. you'll have to wait and see if there are any seats left." so we hung out for a few minutes and then lucas went up to ask again. And a different guy was there, and he said - well, how many are there? six? um...i think there are six seats left on stage...

I got to sit ON STAGE. and interact with the actors. and we had $11 tickets. and the theater was gorgeous -

ah. i can't even explain how awesome it was.

we were reading on the way there and back; we ran through the parking garage; i gave one of the villains a high five during the performance; thia told me that my new favorite song A beautiful world is the soundtrack to my life...

its so true. this is a beautiful life/and this is a beautiful world.

when it is rainy and cold outside

...the most unappealing thing in the world is to bike to your workstudy. ugh.

but thia made me some peppermint hot chocolate...i have the best roommate ever.

New Favorite Song

My new favorite song is [gasp, NOT by Jars of Clay] a song by my mom's cousin Keith. Its called A Beautiful World.

After the 8 or 9th time listening to it tonight I sort of lost track...
If you have a copy of his cd Permanance and Motion you should definitely listen to this song right now. For the rest of my readers I have carefully listened to the song many times and transcribed it below. :) All mistakes are mine. All awesome lyrics belong to Keith Hershberger. [particularly awesome is: Don't get me wrong, I'm not falling for you - I'm just falling in love with my life.] :) :) :)

Driving into Pittsburgh
From the country at night
Watching the stars disappear into city lights
And I'm sitting shotgun
Priscilla's at the wheel
Tell me now what you're thinking
Tell me now can you feel

Can you feel...
Feel the magic in moments like this
The glow of a good conversation,
The pause before a kiss
The hour after sunset when the sun still lights up the sky
A car and a road and a full tank of gas
And a good friend by your side

Its a beautiful moment
I'm watching you drive
Don't get me wrong, I'm not falling for you -
I'm just falling in love with my life.
And you're here in it
And you're a beautiful girl
And this a beautiful life
And this is a beautiful world

And I know there's magic in moments like this
The taste of a good cup of coffee
The pause before a kiss
The hour after sunset when the sun still lights up the sky
A car and a road and a full tank of gas
And a good friend by your side

[guitar...]

I feel the magic in moments like this
The glow of a good conversation
The pause before a kiss
The hour after sunset when the sun still lights up the sky
A car and a road and full tank of gas
And a good friend by your side

Driving into Pittsburgh
North on 79
Watching stars and passing cars
And falling in love with my life
It's a beautiful feeling
And you're a beautiful girl
And this a beautiful life
And this is a beautiful world.

Cultural mishaps

i am discovering more and more weird cultural things about PA...
yesterday i said something about 'macadam' and everyone was like "what? what word is that? Is that a word?' i explained that it is pavement and everyone laughed at me!

today at lunch i brought it up again. so far, out of about 10 people that I asked, only two had heard that word before. one guy actually said, "macadam? is that latin or something?"

being very confused, i naturally turned to wikipedia. here is what I found:

Tar-bound macadam
With the advent of motor vehicles, dust became a serious problem on macadam roads. The area of low air pressure created under fast-moving vehicles sucks dust from the road surface, creating dust clouds and a gradual raveling (pulling apart) of the road material. This problem was later rectified by spraying tar on the surface to create tar-bound macadam, more commonly known as tarmac or blacktop. While macadam roads have now been resurfaced in most developed countries, some are preserved along stretches of roads such as the United States' National Road. Due to uses of macadam as a road surface in former times, roads in some parts of the United States (as parts of Pennsylvania) are often referred to as macadam, even though they might be made of asphalt or concrete. Similarly, the term "tarmac" is sometimes colloquially misapplied to asphalt roads or aircraft runways.


I found my answer! It is amazing where an inquiring mind will take you. And I'm glad to know that macadam is a Pennsylvania thing...I'm not going crazy. :)

Life is good :)

i was at the Early Church today. i love that place. :) :) :)

yesterday night i slept in a blanket fort in Kathryn and Mariah's room.
and my violet is still blooming!
and life is just ... good. sometimes hard, but very good.

Solitude is difficult

I decided that one line of this poem from my last post was simply not enough. Here you are:

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shapes of flesh, everchanging
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of body for body,
unending light.
You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.


I also decided that one Rilke quote was not enough. So...

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.


_________

Yesterday I practiced solitude; I got lunch at the Den and took it outside. The best way I have found to make myself remember my smallness is to watch the clouds over the Blue Ridge mountains. It is good, I think, to be silent and still every now and then. It gives me the chance to hear myself.

Writing

From now on I think I will always have to say that the best compliment I've ever recieved is my brother saying I'm a super penny.

But I was just thinking about AP English and the 2nd or 3rd writing we did when we were all failing [quite epically I might add] and Mr. Marsh assigned us to read Living Like Weasels.

I wrote.
I worked *really* hard. I planned and edited and rewrote and I really put some effort in. Looking back I think I can safely say that the paper I ended up with was the best writing I had done in my life.

Mr. Marsh used my paper as an example.

!!! Do you know how exciting that was? That meant a LOT coming from him. And although my lil bro has usurped the #1 compliment giver position as of last week, it is still true to say that one of the very best compliments I have ever received came out of that class. He was reading my paper to the class and stumbled across this line - "Living Like Weasels," an essay by Annie Dillard, is also a lesson in perspective; life is looked at from the shallowness of suburbia and the depth of lung and brain and bone.

I remember very clearly that he said this sentance is grammatically incorrect. but - ah, I can't even touch it!

I don't know why, exactly, that I remembered this so clearly right now at 12:32 AM when clearly I should be sleeping because obviously there is way too much to do on weekends here.

I guess it is because the grammar on this blog is sometimes - not awesome. And often I use words that I know Mr. Marsh would scribble out with a red pen. I use linking verbs. I write in conflicting tenses; I worship passive voice. I use the word THING.

Sometimes late at night I get on my blog to check if anyone has commented about anything I wrote. Tonight I wondered - what would Mr. Marsh think? What would he say about these words? What would he say about the depth *behind* the words?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When I read the quote that I have titled my blog after by Rainer Maria Rilke, I feel like my entire soul is nodding. The sense of ... agreement? or rightness? is so strong that I can feel it. His words bring out in me a visceral response.

I think my goal is to move you. To force you to engage with me. To cause you to change.

I am not a great writer yet. Perhaps I never will be. Reading Wendell Berry on a regular basis is a surefire way to make you realize how little control you have over your own language.

In any case - look beyond the words. Rilke's quote has a sentance that begins with "And." It is still powerful.

Find my purpose - life is large. It is beautiful and bold. It is gift and inheritance and we are living NOW. Take this moment and Be. Oh, just be.



To end this post, let me write for you the line of a Sabbath Poem that I have memorized:

You will remember, watching the clouds, the future of love.

My cup is full-

The wonder is...that there is beauty at all, grace gratuitous, pennies found...

This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz, given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

------------

Those sentances are from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the book I got from Gift and Thrift for $0.95.
I've developed another theory of wealth. It is not new, but it has new pertinence for me right now.

This is my wealth:
A really good book. Inviting friends to my dorm room. Listening to Jon play guitar. My african violet. Learning how to see. Learning how to be. Laughing. Talking to Meg on a Thursday afternoon. Listening to the Hershbergers singing on the cd Edna burned for me. Folding paper cranes. Writing in my journal. Playing Catch Phrase. Learning new words: Theophany! Teleological! Ex nihilo! Eschatology! Planning pancake breakfasts with my roommate. Sleeping in late on Wednesday mornings. Finding out that life is a gift.

This is my wealth:
Knowing that my life is a gift. Given, given with pizzazz, given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

For really:
Can I ask for anything more than this?

Turn your face to the sun.

Recently I have been musing on the fact that I am wealthy. It is interesting to think that I have had more opportunity, more education, more material things, more food, more house, more everything than about ... 80, 90% of the world.
We (my hall) went hiking on Sunday and we drove for about half an hour through the country around Harrisonburg. People on the whole here are poor, I thought. Tiny houses like trailors and junk in the yard; stereotypes sprang up in my mind like mushrooms.

We drove past one development of new houses.

New, big houses. And on all sides of the new development were little tiny trailor-houses.

What a clear demarcation of class. What a statement of how we value people. What a cut to my conscience as I keep continually stumbling across the parable of the Rich Young Ruler.

You know what really stung my heart? I have been talking recently of possibly practicing medicine in a rural area. Of serving people like those I drove past in Sarah's car.

Am I able to live in a tiny house, a house the size of a trailor? Am I ok with that? And if I am not, what barriers will that build between me and the people whom I want to serve?

So I've been thinking about equality and suffering and pain...
Let me share with you the chorus of The Cure for Pain by Jon Foreman.

Heaven knows,
Heaven knows
I've tried to find a cure for the pain.
Oh my Lord,
To suffer like you do.
It would be a lie to turn away.

I am mustering up the courage to be a witness to the suffering of the world. I told that to Molly and she sent me this poem:

Beloved,
There are days when nothing seems right. When every shell you pick up on the winding shore is broken. When the silken treasure slips through your fingers too quickly. When comforts are empty. And the world is noise.

On those jagged edged days, when the wind is screaming for a reason only she understands. And you find yourself all alone.

Turn your face to the sun.

There is goodness in the world that even the river of tears cannot erase.

There is love in the world that the numbed armies of fear cannot distroy.

Sometimes that goodness is everywhere apparent. It pours from the heart of every moment. From the light of every smile.

On those soft days, love hides in the eaves to drop like sweet honey on your forehead and sings her lilting lullabies in the arms of the winds.

But on some days, Beloved. On days like today...

We need to look, to see.

So turn your face to the sun.

Even when she is nowhere to be seen.

Go inside yourself. Find a speck, a splinter of beauty to be grateful for. "Yes," the day has worn you. And "Yes" our mistakes have been so many.

But say "Thank you" anyway.

Take account of all that is in your possession.

A mind. A heart. A body.

A life that breathes, even if for just one more day.

Now count the eyes that have smiled
at you on your wild journey,
the hands that have held you tenderly,
the ears that have listened,
the prayers that have been made on your behalf.

And whisper your "Thank you" again.

Count the sky that has watched you grow
with His painted eyes,
The heaving waves that find their echo
in the tides of your breathing,
The little birds that have sung
you their songs,
The stars which have been a lamp
to your path,
and are your
rightful inheritance.

Count unexpected laughter,
Count undeserved grace,
Count Passion and Love making and Dreams yet to be born,
And bow your head and say "Thank you."

Now count the lives who still need your light,

The hungry, the sick, the helpless,
Count the children who will die today
and imagine if with the breath of your body
you could help just
one.

Turn your face to the sun,
And know yourself as a child of the light.

You are the goodness that cannot be extinguished,
The love that burns through the darkest night.

And perhaps,
In turning
You will see what I have seen,

that this day where everything seemed wrong,
was not your curse,

It was your gift,

Your chance...
To find inside yourself a forgotten "Thank you,"

To smile in the face of the grim suppressors,

To stand in the heart of the glowering darkness
and turn your face to the sun.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I find that very comforting. To stand in the heart of the glowering darkness and turn your face to the sun.

I challenge you all to do the same.

public declaration:

i love my brother. time apart truly does make you realize what matters in life...

:)