'That vast moth-eaten musical brocade'
There is a special way of being afraid-Philip Larkin, Aubade
No tricks dispel. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says 'No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel', not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound
No touch to taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
Today I finally introduced myself to the priest at the church that I go to. I've been going there for about three months now, but haven't yet officially joined. Last week I tried to join online, the page wasn't working, so it seems I had no choice but to finally walk up to him and introduce myself. I had to wait a few minutes, as he was busy listening to whatever the seedy looking guy in front of me was whispering into his ear. The gentleman in question was wearing a huge gray parka, a day's worth of growth, and less than the standard issue of teeth. I waited my turn.
The entire interview took less than five minutes. I introduced myself, explained that I had been coming to his church for a few months, and now wanted to officially join his parish. I explained that I tried joining online, but that the page wasn't loading. He listened with the slightly abstracted air of someone who had a great deal on his mind but was still trying to be attentive. He told me that I should phone the parish number available on the newsletter, and explain to that I had been trying to join but was having trouble with the page. Then taking another look at me, asked if I was studying or working. I told him working. He looked at me again, shook my hand, said it was a pleasure to meet me, and moved onto the next parishioner that needed his attention. I left the church feeling, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I had accomplished something.
I finally decided that I had to join this church a couple of weeks ago. It was about three weeks before Christmas, and one of the priests - I think he was a guest speaker from another church - read from the gospel of Luke. There had been other times coming here when I felt myself tearing up listening to the songs or something the priest was saying. However, I always managed to hold myself back. I would think:If you start crying in a church, in this church, then you've lost it. Do not lose it here. This would usually bring me around and I'd stay cool during the rest of the sermon. I'm not sure why this time was different, and if you asked me to explain what exactly provoked it I wouldn't be able to tell you. The passage that the priest read was from chapter three, verses 15-16:
A feeling of expectancy had grown among the people, who were beginning to wonder whether John might be the Christ, so John declared before them all, 'I baptise you with water, but some one is coming, who is more powerful than I, and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals; he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
I lost it on "fire". Tears started to stream down my face. Something had cracked open.
Morbidly self-conscious as I am, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Sure enough, one guy at the pew opposite to me had. His expression was a partly concerned, mostly embarrassed What the fuck? When he noticed me looking at him, he quickly looked away, and pointedly stopped looking at me. I don't blame him. I would've done the same in his position.
I quoted from Larkin about religion because until very recently, that's how I used to feel about religion, and I'm sure that at least a few of you reading this - Hi Jen! - still feel that that's the proper attitude toward it. I have to admit, there is a great deal to admire abut that point of view. There's a bravery, or toughness about it that's hard not to think highly of. In fact, I do think highly of it. I just don't think it's right. Larkin's description of death, of non-being is terrifying. How could you not shudder at a line like 'Nothing to love or link with'? The only problem with it that I see, is that Larkin is overstating his case. I think in this instance he over plays his hand, because he's trying to get us to imagine what Non-Being would feel like. 'This is what we fear - no sight, no sound / No touch to taste or smell, nothing to think with'. The problem with this is that he is trying to get us to imagine what it would be like not to exist. The problem with that is that it is literally impossible. The mind cannot conceive of it.
I no longer believe what Larkin believed. I used to. There wasn't single argument that convinced me otherwise, nor was it a single incident that made me change my mind. If at this point you're looking for concrete argument, look elsewhere. it was a series of arguments and events that made me start to think otherwise. I doubt that arguments in favor of religion usually convince any one. I'm not saying that I don't still have certain reservations either. There are certain hot-button issues that I'm sure that someone a little more conservative in their faith might disagree with me on. That's neither here nor there though. I'm starting to learn that there can be disagreement over certain topics as long as we can agree on the broader issues. There are many mansions, after all.
I suppose I could make an attempt to explain why I do believe, but that would be another posting, or three to explain. I might attempt it. To put it as simply as I can, I just do. I can't help it. They could subdivide the Trinity into seventeen different parts and I still would. I can't do otherwise.
Labels: Aubade, church -going, Larkin, religion
posted by Sam at
12:32 PM
7 Comments:
As long as it's not just me. I spent my first six months at St. Tom's pretending to be chilly and wearing a very large scarf around my neck that I could duck my face into when I got teary. A veil would have been nice, or for preference a bag over my head. I don't know how people manage to be casual about these things; they wring my heart.
A passage from Muriel Rukeyser comes to mind. It deals with poetry, not faith, but the phenomenon -- terror of enthusiasm, of the warmth of one's own response -- is the same:
Poetry is foreign to us; we do not let it enter our daily lives.
Do you remember the poems of your early childhood, the far rhymes and games of the beginning to which you called the rhythms, the little songs to which you woke and went to sleep?
Yes, we remember them.
But since childhood, to many of us poetry has become a matter of distaste... What is the nature of this distaste?
If you ask your friends about it, you will find that there are a few answers, repeated by everyone. One is that the friend has not the time for poetry. ... Or your friends may speak of their boredom with poetry. If you hear this, ask further. You will find that "boredom" is a masking answer, concealing different meanings. One person will confess that he has been frightened off forever by the dry dissection of lines in school, and that now he thinks with disappointment of a poem as simply a set of constructions. ... One will say that he returned from the scenes of war to a high-school classroom reading "Bobolink, bobolink / Spink, spank, spink." A first-rate scientist will search for the formal framework of the older poetry in despair, and finally stop. One will confess that, try as he will, he cannot understand poetry, and more particularly, modern writing. It is intellectual, confused, unmusical. One will say it is willfully obscure. One that it is inapplicable to the situation in which he finds himself. And almost any man will say that it is effeminate: it is true that poetry as an art is sexually suspect.
In all of these answers, we meet a slipping-away which is the clue to the responses, and which is strong enough to be called more than direct resistance.
This resistance has the quality of fear; it expresses the fear of poetry.
I have found in working with people and with poems that this fear presents the symptoms of a psychic problem. A poem does invite, it does require. What does it invite? A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response.
This response is total, but it is reached through the emotions. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually -- that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too -- but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.
By
Susannah, At
3:45 PM
In my case a long scarf would be conspicuous, I would've settled just for that guy not noticing, or looking away a second earlier.
Sometimes, if the sermon is done well, or a song lyric or line of poetry is resonant, I feel that I'm entering into a dialogic relationship with the speaker, singer or - as the case may be - poet.When it's effective, I feel less like I'm listening to or reading of, it becomes more that I'm speaking with them. To switch metaphors a little, they become like building surveyors tapping against a wall looking for weak spots. Sometimes they manage to find one.
By
Sam, At
5:17 PM
Perhaps I should've said, "To switch similes".
I've never heard of Rukeyser, but she sounds interesting.
By
Sam, At
5:25 PM
Sam,
You inspire me. Plus, thanks for getting over Larkin. He's an excellent poet, if very bleak at times.
By
dre, At
1:37 PM
Andrea,
I dint do nuttin, G! Only what you've been doing your entire life. I still like Larkin, but I think that's partly because I lost my poetry cherry to T.S Eliot, and have always fallen for grumpy, morbid old poets ever since. Speaking of which, have you read Nick Armitage? I think you'd like him.
Susannah:
I'm starting to feel a little self-conscious about my 'dialogic relationship' response. It seems suspiciously like pretentious wankery.
I'll admit to being at a loss by what she means by a 'total response'. It seems that she means when the poem is apprehended intellectually as well as emotionally. That's fine, I just don't understand what it would mean to apprehend a poem only on an emotional level. Wouldn't you have to at least apprehend the meaning intellectually before an emotional response could be provoked? Do you have any insight?
By
Sam, At
5:30 PM
When I read "total response", I thought of a sort of surrender, the rare surrender you get when you let down your intellectual and emotional guard and let a poem say to you what it has to say, as opposed to what you've read before and/or are willing to read again, and let yourself respond to that. To match your "pretentious wankery" with a bit of my own, I believe it was Roland Barthes who said that those who do not re-read are compelled to read the same story everywhere. Those who do not re-read can only recognize the familiar instead of coming to know the strange.
A poem demands that you stop projecting yourself onto it and open yourself to the possibility that it might say something you're not ready for, or that you might find difficult or strange or shocking or incomprehensible. I feel the same danger lurks in faith and that's why the practice of religion makes me anxious: it doesn't promise moderation. He's not a tame lion; prayer is all very well, but what if one day God says something I don't want to hear, like "Take Isaac up the mountain"?
That's what I mean by total response, anyway.
By
Susannah, At
3:51 PM
As the resident cranky gaythiest, I'm going to toss my two cents in.
I think it's cool that you get such an emotional response out of the service. We all have to approach these questions with our full intellect - emotions and intelligence - so I can understand why you'd react that way, and I don't think you should be embarrassed.
That being said, I don't think being an athiest is particularly "tough-minded." When I was a Catholic I was probably more of a wreck than I am now, mainly because I was always worrying about God's angry telepathy.
I think neither route is more difficult. It pretty much sucks to think about anything bigger or more different than our little minds can handle. So, like I said, it's cool that you've found your own navigational route.
By
Matthew, At
6:45 PM
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