the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn’t
one.
Poem: “about competition” by Charles Bukowski from the Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line the Way. © Ecco.
It’s great that our “post-modern” questions regarding truth began far before “modern-ism”. It would appear that the scholars of Augustine’s day (1600+ years ago) were afraid to affirm anything for fear of error:
Disputed Questions about the Limits
of Knowledge and Certainty in Various Matters
20. I do not rightly know whether [misperceptions] should be called sins–when one thinks well of a wicked man, not knowing what his character really is, or when, instead of our physical perception, similar perceptions occur which we experience in the spirit (such as the illusion of the apostle Peter when he thought he was seeing a vision but was actually being liberated from fetters and chains by the angel) Or in perceptual illusions when we think something is smooth which is actually rough, or something sweet which is bitter, something fragrant which is putrid, that a noise is thunder when it is actually a wagon passing by, when one takes this man for that, or when two men look alike, as happens in the case of twins–whence our poet speaks of “a pleasant error for parents”–I say I do not know whether these and other such errors should be called sins.
Nor am I at the moment trying to deal with that knottiest of questions which baffled the most acute men of the Academy, whether a wise man ought ever to affirm anything positively lest he be involved in the error of affirming as true what may be false, since all questions, as they assert, are either mysterious [occulta] or uncertain. On these points I wrote three books in the early stages of my conversion because my further progress was being blocked by objections like this which stood at the very threshold of my understanding. It was necessary to overcome the despair of being unable to attain to truth, which is what their arguments seemed to lead one to. Among them every error is deemed a sin, and this can be warded off only by a systematic suspension of positive assent. Indeed they say it is an error if someone believes in what is uncertain. For them, however, nothing is certain in human experience, because of the deceitful likeness of falsehood to the truth, so that even if what appears to be true turns out to be true indeed, they will still dispute it with the most acute and even shameless arguments.
Among us, on the other hand, “the righteous man lives by faith.” Now, if you take away positive affirmation, you take away faith, for without positive affirmation nothing is believed. And there are truths about things unseen, and unless they are believed, we cannot attain to the happy life, which is nothing less than life eternal. It is a question whether we ought to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence, for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what they cannot help knowing. For no one can “not know” that he himself is alive. If he is not alive, he cannot “not know” about it or anything else at all, because either to know or to “not know” implies a living subject. But, in such a case, by not positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do make errors simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not alive. That we live is therefore not only true, but it is altogether certain as well. And there are many things that are thus true and certain concerning which, if we withhold positive assent, this ought not to be regarded as a higher wisdom but actually a sort of dementia…
Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love
Saint Augustine
Translated by Albert C. Outler
For many years I tried to get a glimpse of God by looking carefully at the varieties of human experience: loneliness and love, sorrow and joy, resentment and gratitude, war and peace. I sought to understand the ups and downs of the human soul, to discern there a hunger and thirst that only a God whose name is Love could satisfy. I tried to discover the lasting beyond the passing, the eternal beyond the temporal, the perfect love beyond all paralyzing fears, and the divine consolation beyond the desolation of human anguish and agony. I tried constantly to point beyond the mortal quality of our existence to a presence larger, deeper, wider, and more beautiful than we can imagine, and to speak about that presence as a presence that can already now be seen, heard, and touched by those who are willing to believe.
However, during my time [as pastor at “Daybreak?], I have been led to an inner place where I had not been before. It is the place within me where God has chosen to dwell. It is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, ??You are my beloved son, on you my favor rests.? It is the place where I can taste the joy and the peace that are not of this world.
Henri Nouwen
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Compiled in Seeds of Hope
I wish it were not so…
The Wildest Word The Benedictines had it, they knew the joys of silence, the illuminating of manuscripts, the careful diffusion of esoteria. The pleasures of abstinence. Get to a point where you can deny yourself anything and then you are halfway there, some say. And poems are made of love not made. Emily Dickinson refused the offered touch and reveled in her own self abnegation. “The wildest word consigned to man is No,” she wrote. “You love me best when I refuse.” “Imagined love is better than the real, and occupies the highest branch of Eden’s tree,” wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay. “Like fallen fruit, lived love is cheap.”
Poem:”The Wildest Word” by June Robertson Beisch from Fatherless Woman.© Cape Cod Literary Press.
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
Poem: “The Best of It” by Kay Ryan, from The Niagara River. © Grove Press, New York.
At the Children’s Violin Concert
Firmly bowed strands of horse hair tightened or gathered up by a small hand to play a piece by J.S. Bach who drank 36 cups of coffee every day. I like him because he was inspired by his belief in God & he played the organ in a church in Leipzig & he walked on cobblestone streets to his home every evening where he fathered many children & wrote music for his wife to clean house by. He worked hard all his life & when he died, he left us all the little notes he made for himself while he was alone.
Poem: “At the Children’s Violin Concert” by Susan Cataldo, from drenched: Selected Poems of Susan Cataldo 1979??1999. © Telephone Books.
I heard this poem (see below) on the way to work this morning. It reminds me of a book by John Eldridge, The Journey of Desire, which says, ??absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without [desire].? The point being we must rise above disappointment and desire to live again.
“the cynical survive with,
their world so safely small.”
Despite what we may believe about it, sarcasm is rarely endearing. Most often it is used to keep people at bay or to hurt them. When we embrace cynicism we isolate ourselves from the joys found in sharing life with other people, what Eldridge called ??human greatness.?
Desire
I remember how it used to be
at noon, springtime, the city streets
full of office workers like myself
let loose from the cold
glass buildings on Park and Lex,
the dull swaddling of winter cast off,
almost everyone wanting
everyone else. It was amazing
how most of us contained ourselves,
bringing desire back up
to the office where it existed anyway,
quiet, like a good engine.
I’d linger a bit
with the receptionist,
knock on someone else’s open door,
ease myself, by increments,
into the seriousness they paid me for.
Desire was everywhere those years,
so enormous it couldn’t be reduced
one person at a time.
I don’t remember when it was,
though closer to now than then,
I walked the streets desireless,
my eyes fixed on destination alone.
The beautiful person across from me
on the bus or train
looked like effort, work.
I translated her into pain.
For months I had the clarity
the cynical survive with,
their world so safely small.
Today, walking 57th toward 3rd,
it’s all come back,
the interesting, the various,
the conjured life suggested by a glance.
I praise how the body heals itself.
I praise how, finally, it never learns.
Poem: “Desire” by Stephen Dunn from. New and Selected Poems 1974??1994. © W.W. Norton, 1994.
While I’m at it, here’s one more by Yeats, courtesy The Writer’s Almanac (one of my daily sites) .
A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh
by W. B. Yeats from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. © Macmillan.
How honored am I! After posting “The Perfect Day” last month, the author read it and thanked me…
Thanks for posting my poem ! There is a typo in the next to the last line, which should read AN old piece of sadness?
check our our website at www.moonpiepress.com.
Thank you ??
Alice Persons, Moon Pie Press
The Perfect Day
You wake with
no aches
in the arms
of your beloved
to the smell of fresh coffee
you eat a giant breakfast
with no thought
of carbs
there is time to read
with a purring cat on your lap
later you walk by the ocean
with your dog
on this cut crystal day
your favorite music and the sun
fill the house
a short delicious nap
under a fleece throw
comes later
and the phone doesn’t ring
at dusk you roast a chicken,
bake bread, make an exquisite
chocolate cake
for some friends
you’ve been missing
someone brings you an
unexpected present
and the wine is just right with the food
after a wonderful party
you sink into sleep
in a clean nightgown
in fresh sheets
your sweetheart doesn’t snore
and in your dreams
an old piece of sadness
lifts away
Poem: “The Perfect Day” by Alice N. Persons from Never Say Never © Moon Pie Press.