Hi Sister, I have been meditating on the e e cummings' poem you recently posted. This is the first time I have tried to do this. I wondered how you understand the line "forever was never until now"? If you understood it in terms of God and knowing or being known by God, would this change the meaning? Would you mind sharing that?
Thanks for the question. What I can do is to outline what meanings this line suggests to me. I hope that is sufficient. The first thing I will say is that as I focus on it, it seems to have several different but interrelated meanings or layers of meanings. So, the basic situation is that cummings (or someone he is writing about) has fallen in love and his entire world has been turned upside down while his life makes an entirely new kind of sense. This causes him to write:
. . .so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now. . .
The first impression the last line gives me is that cummings has a sense of eternity that was not possible before. Maybe that's because he only had access to "book learning" up until now, and maybe it's because love gives him access to eternity. What cummings seems to be saying to begin with is that nothing was lasting for him until this new experience and relationship. everything was finite and limited. Being was temporary at best, meaning was provisional or partial, while in the present, even the smallest thing in creation explodes with larger and cosmic meaning or import (so world is a leaf, so tree is a bough). This meaning is potential within each and every part of creation. It is realized in love.
The second impression this line gives me comes when I look at the word never a little more closely: "forever was never. . .". It could mean cummings believed there was no such thing as forever, or it could mean that his life had been marked by constant negativity: "not possible", "it''ll never happen", "not for me", and these would especially apply to the eternal, to love, to meaningful relationships, to belonging or being free, etc. If I read this theologically, I hear: "A God of love? Nonsense!" or "A God who loves me in and beyond even sin and death? Absurd!" Whichever of these is the case (if either), what does seem clear to me is that Cummings is saying that before this experience of loving and being loved, life held no real possibilities, no future, no meaning. It was limited and closed off from transcendence, much less the Transcendent.
And then there is the word now. Now is a place where cummings stands in light of loving and being loved. It is a place where time and space open up into eternity. It seems to mean being at home in space and time. Book learning, as the source of ultimate answers and wisdom, be damned; love turns even the laws of physics on their head. He explains,
now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we
At the center of the universe there's a we calling, a we that symbolizes the fulfillment of one's greatest capacities as a human being --- the capacity for truth and love and compassion, for transcendence and intimacy, for personal growth and wholeness. A while back, I posted a piece using the quote, "What only I can do, I cannot do alone!" and I hear that quote in all of this. It is here that God assumes (his) most important place in our lives. St Catherine of Genoa once said that "the deepest ME is God". I have written here before about each human person being a dialogical event, and it is in that dialogue that human beings participate in the eternity of God's own life. Most commentators I have read on this poem reflect on the fact that cummings fell in love with a woman, but I don't think there is any reason we couldn't read this poem as speaking about what happens when one discovers God (Love itself) at the center of one's life!
Doesn't cummings capture the joy and new orientation of a life given over to God and, therefore, to Love-in-act? What God does with our lives when (he) is allowed to grasp us is unimaginable and indescribable. We are freed to be our true selves, freed to live our lives for God's sake and the sake of others, freed to make significant commitments for the sake of the Kingdom of God in this world, and freed to write poetry like e e cummings does! My own experience is that this Love-in-Act frees one to live in the present moment, and thus, too, to "know forever" (or eternity, which is the fullness of being and meaning) in a way one had not and could never have truly known it before this.
I hope this is helpful.
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