Dear Sister Laurel, many thanks for putting up e e cummings i am a little church!! I have been thinking about the imagery and how well it fits a hermit. I don't live out in the country or near mountains but as a hermit, I think I understand what e e cummings was saying --- even if he was not writing about hermits himself. For example, I love the line about the perfect patience of mountains or "winter by spring i lift my diminutive spire to/ merciful him Whose only now is forever!! They are images of eremitical life!! Does that make sense?? What are your favorite lines?
Oh yes! It makes wonderful sense! Thanks for sharing. I agree with you completely and love the entire poem. All of the lines have struck me profoundly at one time or another. Right now, because of work I am doing in direction it is, perhaps, the last line that has resonated within me most this past week ---(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness). What I am coming to know deeply is that there is a profound rhythm to human growth and while I love God's light I am coming more and more to trust the darkness as well, because (as Bonhoeffer says) while not everything is the will of God, nothing is outside the will of God, and God does indeed bring light out of darkness and even evil can become the source of grace. And sometimes, of course, the darkness is our own, for many different reasons. We cannot know the whole plan of God in our lives, and sometimes we see light whereas other times we only see darkness. The ability to stand tall in both is surely a grace of genuine humility; for me this line encapsulates the very goal, not only of spiritual direction, but of spiritual life as a whole.
The other piece of this poem, that I think fits eremitical life very well is the following verse:
around me surges a miracle of unceasing/birth and glory and death and resurrection:/over my sleeping self float flaming symbols/of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains. Because of Peter Damian's cosmology I am reminded that contemporary theologians and spiritual writers remind us we are made of "star stuff". Each hermit carries within herself that miracle of unceasing birth and death and find echoed within us the flaming symbols, the stars, that cummings envisions floating above us as we sleep (or pray). And each day is a new opportunity to share in the amazing life and dynamism of life with and in God who creates, sustains, and recreates us every single day by minute by second by nanosecond. I do not have the perfect patience of mountains, but they certainly speak to me of this call. Especially, I recognize that the rhythm of monastic and eremitical life helps situate us with the deeper rhythms of the cosmos and helps us hope in God despite the "smaller rhythms" that make us fear change. That, it seems to me, is the source of perfect patience.Anyway, I love this poem and and the way it reflects on the mysteries of life. Almost any line speaks to me of God and eremitical life, of finding ourselves witnessing to the larger perspective of eternity and the ultimate security we share because of life in God. The verse I therefore come back to often is this one: i am a little church(far from the frantic/ world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature/ -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;/i am not sorry when silence becomes singing. I found it spoke to me when I was younger and it speaks to me now in a different way when I am older. I always found silence culminating in singing, whether that was the way Office was chanted well because it grew out of silence, because of the way the rests in a line of sound create music (remember, I am a violinist), or, much more personally, because I as a person moved from a kind of muteness to becoming the very different "language event" I associate with Mary's Magnificat.
And finally, there is the verse that captures the profound way eremitical life is a life of deep compassion and bonds to every part of God's creation in and through God!!
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;/my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving/(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children/whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness. For me, one of the greatest gifts of eremitical life has been growth in compassion -- in the ability to feel and share in the suffering of the world so that I might also be able to convey the hope of God in ways that convince with its authenticity. And like cummings, I have come to this clumsily. receiving, giving, harvesting sometimes, experiencing drought at others, in both joy and discouragement or other suffering. Cummings was always concerned with the truly human person, and when I apply what he said to hermits, it is because we are striving for the same thing cummings so esteemed! One way to define Jesus is as the compassionate One, the truly human being who suffers for and with others. I think this verse of cumming's i am a little church captures this really well!So much more could be said about this poem and the gift it is to the person of faith!! So much more could be said about the way it echoes of the hermit life!!! But I will leave this here for now. I offered this poem as an incentive to contemplation. Thank you for taking it in that direction and for leading me back to it as well!!!
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