(no subject)
Later today I'm flying across the country to attend my friends' wedding. Beyond being the first of my friends to get married, this is also the first wedding where I'll actually know the bride and groom. Every other wedding I've been to has been for relatives that I've either never met or have only met a few times. They asked me to be a reader, and sent me a little selection from The Prophet.
This is the poem I picked out to copy onto the blank side of their card:
nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined,therefore limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give;
as yes is to if,love is to yes
must's a schoolroom in the month of may:
life's the deathboard where all now turns when
(love's a universe beyond obey
or command,reality or un-)
proudly depths above why's first because
(faith's last doubt and humbly heights below)
kneeling,we--true lovers--pray that us
will ourselves continue to outgrow
all whose mosts if you have known and i've
only we our least begin to guess
I searched through a large stack of books to find this. Hopefully it's not too odd a choice. It comes from e.e.cummings' book 1 X 1 [One Times One]. It's amazing, though perhaps not too surprising, how hard it is to find a poem on love that's neither erotic nor bland and conventional. This poem seems very conventional in its meaning, but I find it very forceful. I've always been intrigued by the way cummings uses the word "yes" (seen briefly in the first stanza), and the phrase "love's a universe beyond obey" seems to sum up some of that magic. It also sums up a profoundly Christian (though not necessarily fully orthodox) ideal of love. "If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages,... we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands... we are in the position of children." (St. Basil, quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1828) "Love, in fact, is the vocation which includes all others; it's a universe of its own, comprising all time and space-- it's eternal!" (Terese of Lisieux, CCC 826). Choosing poems to give to people is sometimes a long and difficult process for me. I always end up going back on my decision many times, looking through more books, but I had a good feeling from the moment the complete e.e.cummings caught my eye tonight. His combination of well-ordered verse with incomparable spontaneity and playfullness seems a fitting celebration. However, I fear my friend the groom may be a little poetically dense, and wonder if I should have stuck with something more conventional.
I'm very excited to see some of my friends from college again. I find that when I spend time with academics too long I miss people of simple faith and simple concerns, and when I spend time with simpler people (obviously I don't mean simple in a pejorative sense) I miss academia. May closest friends embody both sides of this, but I've felt somewhat isolated intellectually since I moved. The isolation has been very conducive to prayer, but so is philosophy when rightly understood. I may also attend what I've heard is one of the best traditional latin masses available. It's at a Church in Chicago, but I can't remember the name right now.
This is the poem I picked out to copy onto the blank side of their card:
nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined,therefore limitless)
love's to giving as to keeping's give;
as yes is to if,love is to yes
must's a schoolroom in the month of may:
life's the deathboard where all now turns when
(love's a universe beyond obey
or command,reality or un-)
proudly depths above why's first because
(faith's last doubt and humbly heights below)
kneeling,we--true lovers--pray that us
will ourselves continue to outgrow
all whose mosts if you have known and i've
only we our least begin to guess
I searched through a large stack of books to find this. Hopefully it's not too odd a choice. It comes from e.e.cummings' book 1 X 1 [One Times One]. It's amazing, though perhaps not too surprising, how hard it is to find a poem on love that's neither erotic nor bland and conventional. This poem seems very conventional in its meaning, but I find it very forceful. I've always been intrigued by the way cummings uses the word "yes" (seen briefly in the first stanza), and the phrase "love's a universe beyond obey" seems to sum up some of that magic. It also sums up a profoundly Christian (though not necessarily fully orthodox) ideal of love. "If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages,... we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands... we are in the position of children." (St. Basil, quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1828) "Love, in fact, is the vocation which includes all others; it's a universe of its own, comprising all time and space-- it's eternal!" (Terese of Lisieux, CCC 826). Choosing poems to give to people is sometimes a long and difficult process for me. I always end up going back on my decision many times, looking through more books, but I had a good feeling from the moment the complete e.e.cummings caught my eye tonight. His combination of well-ordered verse with incomparable spontaneity and playfullness seems a fitting celebration. However, I fear my friend the groom may be a little poetically dense, and wonder if I should have stuck with something more conventional.
I'm very excited to see some of my friends from college again. I find that when I spend time with academics too long I miss people of simple faith and simple concerns, and when I spend time with simpler people (obviously I don't mean simple in a pejorative sense) I miss academia. May closest friends embody both sides of this, but I've felt somewhat isolated intellectually since I moved. The isolation has been very conducive to prayer, but so is philosophy when rightly understood. I may also attend what I've heard is one of the best traditional latin masses available. It's at a Church in Chicago, but I can't remember the name right now.