Musee des Beaux Arts
Today's poem has more of a story than I posted on facebook. It's always like that, isn't it? After Presbytery last February I stopped on the way home with a friend who had also gone to the meetings. It was one of those things where most of my group was eating the provided lunch that was all kinds of glutenous and so I was going to just go and figure something out on the way home. This friend is probably even more contrary than I am and when the group said, "We're eating this!", he said, "Um, thanks but no." So we wound up at Wegman's eating lunch.
I dearly love this friend. I've seen him at his absolute best and it's better than any of us have any right to expect. He's the guy you call in an emergency and he moves Heaven and Earth to make things safe and right and he does it effortlessly and with zero fanfare. Less than zero. He makes it seem completely normal. It's only later that you realize (if you ever do) how perfect he was.
But he's tortured and self-sabotages and has huge issues with authority and is in general the kind of guy who absolutely has to zig when everyone else is zagging and then tears himself up about it. He's the kind of guy that you learn later has been struggling with some secret horror all his life. I'm 100% not saying that this particular guy is struggling with anything in particular, I'm only pulling up the archetype so you can understand him. God willing he will never see this and neither will anyone who knows him.
So what did we talk about at lunch? Pain. Here's the thing: everyone is hurting. Everyone. No matter how put together they seem, everyone is hurting inside. We can't see it from where we are so we go tramping around, stomping each other and then wondering why we can't connect with other people. Do you remember doing the clay sculptures in 7th grade art? We can only connect in the places where we're scored and roughed up.
People hear the things you say, so say the things.
Anyway, that afternoon I found this poem and it was perfect.
Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)
W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy
life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
I dearly love this friend. I've seen him at his absolute best and it's better than any of us have any right to expect. He's the guy you call in an emergency and he moves Heaven and Earth to make things safe and right and he does it effortlessly and with zero fanfare. Less than zero. He makes it seem completely normal. It's only later that you realize (if you ever do) how perfect he was.
But he's tortured and self-sabotages and has huge issues with authority and is in general the kind of guy who absolutely has to zig when everyone else is zagging and then tears himself up about it. He's the kind of guy that you learn later has been struggling with some secret horror all his life. I'm 100% not saying that this particular guy is struggling with anything in particular, I'm only pulling up the archetype so you can understand him. God willing he will never see this and neither will anyone who knows him.
So what did we talk about at lunch? Pain. Here's the thing: everyone is hurting. Everyone. No matter how put together they seem, everyone is hurting inside. We can't see it from where we are so we go tramping around, stomping each other and then wondering why we can't connect with other people. Do you remember doing the clay sculptures in 7th grade art? We can only connect in the places where we're scored and roughed up.
People hear the things you say, so say the things.
Anyway, that afternoon I found this poem and it was perfect.
Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)
W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy
life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.