"Read poems as prayers," he said
On Seamus Heaney, good priests, Ash Wednesday and love
I grew up in the church, or churches, to be more exact. I inaugurated the Kindergarten class of a small Presbyterian church school where we hailed Aslan as our mascot and prayed before the pledge of allegiance. Later, we bounced around to some Baptist churches, non-denominational mega boxes, bible churches that met in school gymnasiums or auditoriums and what have you.
All along I was taught that devotional life is a three-ingredient recipe for lifelong … what was it exactly? Bliss? Contentment? Protection from pain? Righteousness (or maybe, self-righteousness)? A ticket punch to eternity? I was a little fuzzy on the details, but I had the recipe down cold: Bible, prayer, fellowship. Rinse, repeat.
In a million ways I am hugely grateful for this foundation. It is a gift to have scripture baked into my memory, to have the Lord’s prayer hardwired, to know the experience of being well-loved by people and communities I did not deserve and often did not love back.
But, I’ve also had to de-program a good bit. Or maybe “re-program” is more accurate.
Several years ago I was meeting with a wise and trusted friend bemoaning what a bad job I was doing of “being a Christian”. She blinked, nonplussed. Concerned that she was not catching the gravity, the severity, of this confession, I repeated it again, this time with feeling, “I just feel like such a bad Christian! “ I stressed. Same stoic gaze, a calm exhale.
As she probed this heart-rending declaration it became clear that my hang-up was mostly around Bible reading or, kind of the whole Bible-whatevering I felt like I should be doing more of, or better or, like ever, at all: memorizing, meditating, studying, parsing, transcribing, note-scribbling with color-coded markers in the margins, etc.
“Okay,” she paused. “So the Bible seems like it’s not the place where you are hearing from God at the moment. It’s too noisy and complicated right now, yes?” Yes, I agreed. “But we know God is with you.” Yes, I nod again. “So…where is God speaking?”
Immediately, I hear the steady drumbeat of Christian Wiman’s “Every Riven Thing” pound through my brain like a liturgy, like scripture, like a prayer that I have devoted to memory, marked up, transcribed, the poem that rests in my soul as familiarly as John 3:16. “I think it’s poems,” I said, wet-eyed. “Yes,” she said, now beaming, a little clap of her hands, “Yes, that fits so well.”
Over the years, one of the great guides who has helped me learn how to engage with poetry as a spiritual practice is the wonderful, one-of-a-kind living little Hobbit-of-a-man Malcolm Guite. Seriously guys, GOD BLESS MALCOLM. This guy is gonna be leading some parades up in heaven, I have no doubt. Scepters and trumpets and glitzy robes and ribbon dancers and thuribles, the whole bit.
This Lent I am again taking up his lovely book Word in the Wildnerness; A poem a day for Lent and Easter which is exactly as advertised: one poem each day with insightful commentary from Guite that provides rich and helpful context and (light) analysis. It is a gem (as is its companion book Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent Christmas and Epiphany)
It begins on Shrove Tuesday, so yesterday I had my first dip back into it and re-read a poem I’ve obviously read before (but have no recollection of reading) by Seamus Heaney titled Station Island XI. It comes from his longer series in a book collection titled Station Island, which is a sequence of poems about an Irish pilgrim who journeys through a series of dream encounters that remind him of the world that formed him and guide him forward to face his present crises.
The poem itself requires some work. Its byline notes that it is written by both Seamus Heaney, an Irishman living in the 20th century AND St. John of the Cross, a Spanish priest who died in 1591, which is curious. Yet as the poem begins to unfold, we learn how this can be:
Station Island XI by Seamus Heaney/St. John of the Cross As if the prisms of the kaleidoscope I plunged once in a butt of muddied water Surfaced like a marvelous lightship And out of its silted crystals a monk’s face That had spoken years ago from behind a grille Spoke again about the need and chance To salvage everything, to re-envisage The zenith and glimpsed jewels of any gift Mistakenly abased …. What came to nothing could always be replenished. “Read poems as prayers,” he said, “and for your penance Translate me something by Juan de la Cruz.” Returned from Spain to our chapped wilderness, His consonants aspirate, his forehead shining, He had made me feel there was nothing to confess. Now his sandaled passage stirred me on to this: ... (Listen to Malcolm Guite read the full poem here)
So here we have Heaney recalling a childhood gift, a kaleidoscope, and he is remembering how he misused this instrument of beauty and light by plunging it into a mud puddle. As a mother who has witnessed many a shimmering new toy misused or muddied, I am tracking.
But then, something mystical occurs. He imagines that out of those many muddied lenses a face appears, a monk’s face (very like old Padre John-of-the-Cross himself) who speaks “again about the need and chance/ to salvage everything, to re-envisage… any gift mistakenly abased”. They are words of comfort and hope to the proverbial young boy/everyman who is realizing the mud may cling forever to that once-glimmering gift of light despite the inner wail of “Oh, but I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know!” Father John offers reassurance: “What came to nothing could always be replenished.”
And then this good priest from out of time, much like my friend who served as a good priest to me, offers this clear instruction:
‘Read poems as prayers,’ he said. ‘and for your penance/ Translate me something by Juan de la Cruz".
And isn’t that such a wise and gentle priestly word? Go, he says, read poems as prayers and for your penance, your alleged “punishment” for this foolish abasement of all that was intended for your good, translate something by St. John of the Cross.
And so the penitent does, and that is the second half of the poem. A translation of “El cantar del alma que se huelga de conocer a Dios por Fe, or The Song of the Soul” by St. John of the Cross. Hence the double byline.
But just before Heaney shifts gears to translate a poem-within-a-poem he alludes to the gift this mystical encounter has brought to him:
Returned from Spain to our chapped wilderness,
His consonants aspirate, his forehead shining,
He had made me feel there was nothing to confess.
What he is saying, poetically, is exactly the feeling I had sitting with my friend who gave me permission to be where I was, to trust that God could and would meet me there, already was there, actually. This friend who allowed me to let go of the contortions and gymnastics of spiritual performance and to see that, while important, they were not the point at all. But rather the listening, the hearing, the doing: that was the point. It is Heaney’s words of relief, ‘He had made me feel there was nothing to confess.”
What a wonderful gift on this Ash Wednesday/Valentine’s Day when we strive to hold together the truth that all has come to nothing, all has been abased, we ourselves have cheapened the gift and plunged it into mud puddles of every kind, but we can still read poetry as prayers, translate wisdom from past ages, remind ourselves through words and beauty and music and kind souls that “What came to nothing can always be replenished.” Because, of course, we are loved.