"In spiritual matters there really is no 'Third World.' It's all Third World."
- Dallas Willard
Thursday, April 9, 2009
I was just looking for Easter Poems for our Easter Bulletin and I found a picture of C.S. Lewis' wife's grave. The engraving has a mini-poem. Here it is:
"Here the whole world (stars, water, air
And field, and forest as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."
How awesome is that! What he's saying, is that Easter makes a difference. For those of us who are in Christ, just as Jesus had his "Easter day", his Resurrection day, so will we.
And the reference to "Lenten lands" (the same as Douglas Greshem's autobiography) is, if I understand it right a reference to the fact that "Lent" is the days of preparation up until Easter. So living here on earth was for Joy, as it is all Christians, the days of preparation for her very own Easter Day...
Because Christ did it first!
Lent means "40" and is a reference to the 40 years Moses spent in the wilderness preparing to lead his people from slavery, and the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness preparing for the Promised Land, and the 40 days Jesus spent preparing for his ministry.
So if this earthly life of ours are our "Lenten Lands" then we are in the wilderness preparing for exodus from slavery, preparing for the Promised Land, preparing for ministry(service) in heaven...and preparing for our own Easter Day!
We are preparing for our Resurrection day. We will each have one, because Christ had one too. That's part of the joy of Easter. Because Jesus walked out of his grave, alive, more alive than ever before, gloriously victorious over death, so will you, because he went first.
The first "Easter" guaranteed that there will be many more...one for every Christian.
I think that's awesome.
Perhaps you Lewis scholars can elaborate on the meaning of this poem more for me....like what does "holy poverty mean? And to whose mind is he referring in the first two lines? Joy's or God's? I love the way he rhymes this whole thing.
AND I'm still looking for a good Easter verse, so please put any suggestions in comments. Who knows, maybe it'll show up in our church bulletin. :)
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Comments on "A Poem For Easter":
2. Andrew
- 04/09/2009 3:45 pm CDT
AND I'm still looking for a good Easter verse, so please put any suggestions in comments. Who knows, maybe it'll show up in our church bulletin. :)
John Updike's Seven Stanzas for Easter comes to mind:
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.
And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.
I really love T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday, but it's probably more appropriate for, you know, Ash Wednesday.
3. Shrode
- 04/09/2009 3:56 pm CDT
Karl, I didn't know that. Interesting stuff.
Andrew, GREAT Poem. Really like it. Wow, he really cuts to the heart of it, huh?
I really, really liked the third stanza.
But I will confess my own low-culturedness. I have a hard time with poetry often. I hate not understanding things.
I mean I guess I could go google it, but that's what bugs me about so much poetry. I feel like I should just be able to read it and understand it.
What does "remonstrance" mean?
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta
Huh? That one's got me baffled. :)
I was about to ask you about this one:
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.
But I just read it for the third time and realized he means "we will all die too one day."
Right?
5. Bill
- 04/09/2009 4:48 pm CDT
But I just read it for the third time and realized he means "we will all die too one day."
Right?
Yes. I think that's a great line. I picture being in a tomb and seeing the rock roll over the entrance, as the light of day slowly shrinks to a thin crescent and then goes out.
Very cool stuff.
6. Roy
- 04/09/2009 7:05 pm CDT
Planck was the first to understood that energy acts like it comes in discrete packets. He called them quanta, and derived their value. This realization contrasts with the intuitive understanding that thinks of energy as continuous, eg, hotter and hotter or colder and colder rather than adding or subtracting chunks of energy. (Something like realizing matter is made up of chunks which we call atoms.) These packages of energy are very, very, very small. That tiny size means that typically one cannot discern them. (Sorta like trying to keep track of individual dollars in the gov't bailout expenditure, except (literally) trillions of trillions times more difficult.) One only sees the big picture.
Thus Updike uses the imagery of quanta to tell us the resurrected Jesus is real down to the smallest detail. He could have used "atom". But he'd already spoken of cells and molecules, concepts talking about stuff. Quanta picks up another aspect, the very energy of being.
****
Planck, etc I know. But that John Updike had written such a poem I never suspected. I can't recall why, but the name Updike does not make connections in my memory to someone who was a Christian and who would have the convictions which led to such a poem. You folks that don't get Planck (and want to know more) go check out Wikipedia "Plancks constant" and I'll go check out John Updike.
7. Manders
- 04/09/2009 10:41 pm CDT
Roy: John Updike was definitely a believer. His work is pretty Christ-haunted, as Flannery O'Connor might say.
Shrode: remonstrance: the act of expressing earnest opposition or protest (thanks, dictionary.com). That help?
8. Roy
- 04/09/2009 10:58 pm CDT
Thanks, Manders.
Since I posted, I Wikied Updike. My vague recall before this checking got confirmed: I had read Updike, namely one of the Rabbit series. I did not find it "Christ-haunted". Maybe I missed something.
At any rate, making the connection between Updike and Rabbit explained to me my vague recall and resulting surprise at the poem.
Makes me wonder what Updike actually believed.
9. Karl
- 04/10/2009 6:12 am CDT
I feel dumb. I came home last night and double-checked the reference in Alan Jacobs' book and realized I had mis-read it. Here's what Jacobs writes:
"Joy had loved a poem of her husband's called "Epitaph," and at her request he revised it and had it engraved on a plaque, erected in her memory at the Headington Crematorium:"
[quotes poem]
I'm sure "her husband" in the sentence refers to Lewis, not Joy's first husband William Gresham. Not sure why I didn't catch that the first time around, especially when I was so surprised at what I (thought I had) read. But I'm glad I don't have to be bummed about Lewis using one of William Gresham's poems on Joy's grave!
I even found the original version of the poem "Epitaph" using google. The poem is Lewis's. Sorry for the misleading first post!
11. Scott Miller
- 04/11/2009 9:22 am CDT
Great poem.
However, the "Lenten lands" reflects Lewis' theology. He didn't believe that Christians who die go directly to Heaven or sinners go directly to Hell, but that they wait in an in between place where they can change their minds about Christ up until the Resurrection and Judgement Day. See The Great Divorce and also parts of The Last Battle.
12. Bill
- 04/11/2009 10:47 am CDT
Scott,
I'm not entirely sure that's true. He was very clear in the forward to The Great Divorce that it was not to be read as a work of theology. He might say the same about The Last Battle (although I can't recall the parts you're talking about).
Lewis danced a bit around the idea of Purgatory. But in his fiction, though he was trying to convey spiritual truth, it was generally to reflect on the human condition and spiritual battles now, rather than to set out a full-orbed theology. For that you need to read his non-fiction. Screwtape is another example of a book that he cautioned us not to read as a treatise on demons, for instance.
13. Scott Miller
- 04/12/2009 8:53 am CDT
I don't think that it was Purgatory, per se, because in the book you don't see the sinners being tormented except in their darkness. But it does reflect a more Rich Man and Lazarus view of Paradise - that there is still a period of time before the Final Judgement and maybe even a waiting place. True, the ones who go "further up and further in" taste the beauty of the Lord now, but there were degress. Of course it is allegorical rather than purely theological, but it is still a "thought experiment". And he would have had to put that disclaimer in the foreward to keep from riling non-Anglican Christians who don't believe in Purgatory.
The poem is interesting because it shows a waiting and anticipation not to get to Heaven, but for the Resurrection and a glorified body.
14. Bill
- 04/12/2009 2:14 pm CDT
The poem is interesting because it shows a waiting and anticipation not to get to Heaven, but for the Resurrection and a glorified body.
Yes. That's our ultimate hope.
I don't know if I'd call the period of time after death but before Christ's return as waiting, because we are with the Lord. But our ultimate hope is in the resurrection that we shall receive at the end.
I'm not sure what he meant by Lenten lands. But I'd be surprised if he believed that after death there is still a chance to change one's mind. I could be wrong on that, but I don't think this poem illustrates that. And I'm pretty sure the Great Divorce was not intended to teach that, though in the fictional account it contains that is the plot.
15. The Ancient Mariner
- 04/13/2009 11:02 am CDT
Late to the party, and it's not exactly an Easter poem, but Phil, you might be interested in Margaret Avison's poem "The Dumbfounding":
When you walked here,
took skin, muscle, hair,
eyes, larynx, we
withheld all honor: "His house is clay,
how can he tell us of his far country?"
Your not familiar pace
in flesh, across the waves,
woke only our distrust.
Twice-torn we cried "A ghost"
and only on our planks counted you fast.
Dust wet with your spittle
cleared mortal trouble.
We called you a blasphemer,
a devil-tamer.
The evening you spoke of going away
we could not stay.
All legions massed. You had to wash, and rise,
alone, and face
out of the light, for us.
You died.
We said,
"The worst is true, our bliss
has come to this."
When you were seen by men
in holy flesh again
we hoped so despairingly for such report
we closed their windpipes for it.
Now you have sought
and seek, in all our ways, all thoughts,
streets, musics—and we make of these a din
trying to lock you out, or in,
to be intent. And dying.
Yet you are
constant and sure,
the all-lovely, all-men's way
to that far country.
Winning one, you again
all ways would begin
life: to make new
flesh, to empower
the weak in nature
to restore
or stay the sufferer;
lead through the garden to
trash, rubble, hill,
where, the outcast's outcast, you
sound dark's uttermost, strangely light-brimming, until
time be full.
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Pretty sure the first two lines refer to Joy's mind.
I am currently reading The Narnian, Alan Jacobs' excellent biography of Lewis. One surprise in that book was Jacobs' comment that this poem (which I have loved) was written by Joy's first husband, William Lindsay Gresham and was long a favorite of Joy's, but that Lewis somewhat altered it, and used it on her grave as an epitaph. What Jacobs doesn't do is give the text of Gresham's version to compare with the final version as altered by Lewis, so there's no way to know how much of the content of the epitaph poem is Lewis's.
I was bummed to find out the poem wasn't wholly original to Lewis. But I love this post.