Through December, I’d been following the Advent Collects [oratio] in the Book of Common Prayer, and, while not as disciplined to follow the Daily Office as I have been in other recency, I am working unto the sort of rhythm [must we must] it implies and requires of those who follow along the Way.
The Advent Collects have been particularly refreshing to me, as I have, for the first time in many years, begun to experience a gigantic measure of the Renewal for which I’ve actively Hoped – both as an individual, which is inseparable from my loss of self [for the sake of the community] and concurrent [caused] discovery of self [for the sake of the community] and as a constituent reconciled to its Constituency.
This is no small victory, and something especially remarkable to regain after that one little existential fit whose valley sliced deepest, perhaps, in the fall months of 2006. Ellsworth’s early Twilights recalled and restored.
A week ago tomorrow, some brethren and I and a special gal found our way to Church of the Incarnation, a people among & with whom I’ve been sharing space to some extent for upwards of two years [when, of course, suitable & without disagreement to my committment and responsibilities to the church who I served during that span].
Christmastide was in its second week, and as we looked towards Epiphany – the Holyday on the calendar left behind by the Western constituency, [very disappointingly so!], we shared these words as a group, believing them to be true and truer unto Kairos:
O God, who
wonderfully created, and yet
more wonderfully restored,
the dignity of Human nature:
Grant that we may share
the divine life
of him who humbled himself
to share our humanity, your Son
Jesus Christ; who lives
and reigns with you, in the unity
of the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever
and
ever.
[I'm up before the finches, just after Lauds, and during a simple sipping of coffee.]
One thing the first Monday of each month means is that The New Yorker sends forth its publishable Poetry&Fiction into the interwebs for the enjoyment and evaluation of the masses. Excitement over the publication usually sees me staying up late first Sunday evenings to read through the new pieces [they are published at 12 AM ET], unable to wait a dawn later for new quixoticquerying.
The thing I noticed upon reading my very first Billy Collins poem [I guess over a year ago now] is that my written voice is not as gregarious as improvement might make it. Often here, the content of a piece determines its form [and yet most of the time the Form teaches me something of the Substance], but at least, I’ll hope I’ve made some sort of move from the abstract shroudiness my Xanga [that time of my life] embodied.
Anyway, opening the New Yorker RSS feed this morning I stumbled upon a piece by Albert Goldbarth – one from whom I hadn’t read previously – wherein he brings to light what Work’s to be done with Word [or our inability to complete it], while optimistically admitting that sometimes we must push a device invented especially for such a Project.
THE WAY
The sky is random. Even calling it “sky”
is an attempt to make a meaning, say,
a shape, from the humanly visible part
of shapelessness in endlessness. It’s what
we do, in some ways it’s entirely what
we do—and so the devastating roseof a galaxy’s being born, the fatal lamé
of another’s being torn and dying, we frame
in the lenses of our super-duper telescopes the way
we would those other completely incomprehensible
fecund and dying subjects at a family picnic.
Making them “subjects.” “Rose.” “Lamé.” The wayour language scissors the enormity to scales
we can tolerate. The way we gild and rubricate
in memory, or edit out selectively.
An infant’s gentle snoring, even, apportions
the eternal. When they moved to the boonies,
Dorothy Wordsworth measured their walkto Crewkerne—then the nearest town—
by pushing a device invented especially
for such a project, a “perambulator”: seven miles.
Her brother William pottered at his daffodils poem.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance: by which he meant
too many to count, but could only say it in counting.