T.S. Tuesday: Antsy for Creation
In his own poem, Eliot finds that often poetry can fall short of explaining the mystery and awe and wonder and heartbreak of life. In the middle of the poem, he writes,
"That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings."
And that intolerable wrestle with words and meanings is what brought me back to God. I found that when I couldn't pray--couldn't even consider praying--I could wrestle with words. I could write questions and question meanings. I could create meaning and delight in my creation. I could wrestle with poetry and in a way wrestle with God.
I started a journal I titled, "Antsy for Creation." Because I was. But as I started to write and create and wordplay, I found I was even more antsy for God. For the Creator who stamped his own desire to create on my soul from the very start.
God spoke to me through poetry long before he spoke to me through prayer. And why wouldn't he? The Bible is filled with poetry, with testaments of ancient, anxious wrestling with words and God and meaning. And God speaking into chaos. God filling and comforting and redeeming with
his words and his meanings.So whenever I read this poem and these words by Eliot, I am grateful for a God who created me to create and who brings forth his presence into my own "intolerable wrestle with words and meanings"--and makes it a little more tolerable.
T.S. Tuesday: The Spiral Staircase
So for this T.S. Tuesday I’m going to steal not only from T.S. Eliot, but one of the authors who originally introduced me to Eliot’s poetry: Karen Armstrong.
I read Karen Armstrong’s memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, my senior year in college. The year I spent writing a memoir trying to make sense of the poverty and injustice I saw and the anger and questions that surfaced with it. Her eloquent memoir is a story of climbing out of the depths of depression and self-hatred into contentment, empathy, and love. At that point, I resonated only with the depression and self-hatred, and had yet to experience sustained love or self-acceptance. Hers was the first memoir I read where a spiral into darkness didn’t end in the dark. And it gave me hope.
In the Preface of her memoir, Armstrong explains how her title, The Spiral Staircase, was inspired by the image of winding staircase evoked in T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash-Wednesday.
She explains that “This image is reflected in the twisting sentences of words and phrases, apparently making little headway, but pushing steadily forward nonetheless."
She compares this slow, circular journey to her own climb out of darkness, saying, “the strange and seemingly arbitrary revolutions of my life led me to the kind of transformation that –I now believe—was what I was seeking all those years ago.”
I loved it then and I love it now.
And now for some actual excerpts from the poem, Ash-Wednesday, I.
“Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things”
Contentment.
“Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice”
Gratitude.
“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.”
Rest.
If you’d like to read the whole poem, click here.
T.S. Tuesday
Another favorite stanza from "East Coker:"
"You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not."
Again, I love the paradox. The contrasts. The upside down culture and kingdom mentality.
The line that changed things for me: "In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not." This line speaks to me when I'm stuck. When I can't imagine an alternative ending. When I can't see past what I currently am and all of the assets and limitations I possess. But God is so much bigger. His endings are so much better. And they require me becoming what I am not, through a way in which I am not, by dying to myself and to what I know.