A Spot of Poetry

Want to guess who's posting? I do believe this is my most prolific blogging stint since the inception of this blog, but I'm not going back in the archives to figure that out for sure. Fortunately, or otherwise, it's none of it (hardly) original material. 'Specially in this case as my poetry to date deserves one terse adjective. Trite. But I'm working on that. Theoretically, that is. I want to work on it, I have an instructional book, I have a blank notebook. NOW, I must scrounge up some time to sit and chew on the end of a pencil and feel artistically distraught with three uncooperative words on my page. (But I shan't pull out my hair because there isn't enough for me to spare.) Until I brave up and decide to post anything of that sort, I'm going to give you a few lines from a poet I've come to greatly enjoy. Never would I recommend his poetry wholesale. A few members of my family wouldn't even call it poetry (it doesn't rhyme--horrors). So, hopefully that's warning enough if you aren't in the mood for un-rhyming poetry.

I have, over the past few days, read several of T.S. Eliot's poems in their entirety. One of which was Choruses from "The Rock." Difficult to follow in some places, and there are others where I disagree with his theology, but these sections were ones that had more resonance with me this time through, particularly from subjects brought up in sermons I've heard recently.

But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that
was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble
repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as
devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying
within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while
there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.

This section more directly relate to the importance and difficulty of building a Christian community. Astute observations and even more proven in our current culture.

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD...
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

And a last few lines, bespeaking the more than willing nature of people to dish out all their opinions and advice but certainly not willing to listen to anyone else.

And they write innumberable books; being too vain and distracted for silence:
seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they
are not in the home, they are not in the City.