00:00:01.840 - 00:00:23.140

Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. As I said the title of this presentation is metaphor meaning and making belief and to do that. I want to look at several poems hopefully at least three and possibly

00:00:23.140 - 00:00:35.950

four over the course of the hour. But before we do that I want to define some terms, metaphor is one of those terms we use a lot but often don't actually think about when we use it

00:00:36.740 - 00:00:51.110

. It derives from a greek phrase or actually a greek word, metaphor rain, which is a verb that means to carry over to pick up from one place and move to another. A metaphor is most

00:00:51.110 - 00:01:07.530

often at least in poetic form, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or perhaps an action to which it is not otherwise normally literally applicable. It can also be

00:01:07.530 - 00:01:22.110

used. And we frequently use the term metaphor to speak about something regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, particularly when that something else is an abstract idea, something that might be a bit hard to

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grasp. Now if you go dig up poetry books or books about writing poetry and ask what a metaphor is, you will discover quickly that it carries two parts A metaphors. First part is called the ground

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and the ground is the reality being described in the metaphor. So for instance, here's a metaphorical statement . The Lord is my shepherd. In that metaphorical statement. The word Lord is the ground. It's

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the thing being described. Sometimes you will hear the word ground, you hear the word tenor used for ground, but it's the same idea. It's the larger reality behind the metaphor that's being described by what

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you see in the foreground of the metaphor. So that brings us to the other term figure. Sometimes you will hear it call the vehicle, but whichever term is used. It's the image that attributes characteristics

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to the ground. So for instance, in the metaphor, the Lord is my shepherd shepherd is the figure and attributes of a shepherd care for the sheep , protectiveness, attentiveness to their welfare, providing places

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for them to water and feed and so forth. All of those attributes are carried over into the description of the Lord so that we understand the Lord as protective and caring and providential. So the metaphor has

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two parts a ground, the thing being described and the figure, the thing that does the describing. Sure, yes. I want to just say a word about the term meaning here yet again is another

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one of these words we use all the time without really thinking about how it works, especially in poetry when we think about the meaning of a poem. Well, I mean at least in part the aggregate

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of the akron described to the ground by the various metaphors and the poet. So all of the things that gather together around the metaphor attribute or contribute rather to the meaning of the poet. So I think

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for a moment about the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul the aggregate of those metaphorical actions

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and images begins to assemble a sense of identity and therefore meaning around the concept of the Lord. That might not otherwise be clear if those meetings were assembled in that way. But the thing about meaning is

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that it's more than just the sum of its parts and meaning emerges from the experience of the totality of a poem and not merely from adam izing its various parts into a sort of uh mechanical assemblage. So

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the meaning of a poem is not just what a poem says, but how a poem says it. But let me get you a better description of meaning and poetry than anything. I've just said. It

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comes from poet Billy Collins. You may have seen this poem before, but it's well worth spending. Just a minute with Collins speaks of his students in his poem entitled Introduction to poetry. I asked them

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to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out. Or

00:05:09.670 - 00:05:24.060

walk inside the poems room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water ski across the surface of a poem, waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want

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to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They began beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. I don't know how you

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say it better than college has said it. You give a sense of you get a sense of a poem by experiencing it, not by forcing it to divulge some putative secret that it actually may or may

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not have. So with Collins words in mind. Think about how we approach the meaning of poems. Now, one final definition before we move into looking at poems in particular and that's the phrase making belief

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. Obviously this is a play on words. Making believe. Um, but I do want to take that seriously. And the first thing I want to say about belief or believing is that it's not assenting

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to a series of theological propositions, believing is not an assemblage of ideas or thoughts that I put down in order to create some sort of coherent theological system . That's good theology. But it's not belief at

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least as I understand it, belief is more like trust and trust is not a choice I made so much as an involuntary reality. I discovered trust in a bedrock certainty deeper than the ability of language or

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thought to express. And so one doesn't so much make a belief as perhaps to discover it. But I do think that one of the functions of poetry is to reveal maybe even to construct a sense of

00:07:15.350 - 00:07:28.970

that realities presence, particularly within the confines of the poem, but also as you carry with you the ideas, feelings, thoughts that are generated by that poem. And thus, it may be fairly said

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that poems make belief. Okay, having laid that out, maybe it might be a good moment to ask. Are there questions? So let me give you just a moment to uh phrase whatever questions you

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might like or let Erica know that you have them . Any chance we can receive copies of those definitions ? Prince, the printed page. I can give you the printed page. Not the billy Collins poem

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. That's copyrighted material. I could put it on screen but I can't distribute it. Um But I will talk with Erica about how we might make that available to you. I am sure there must be

00:08:07.610 - 00:08:20.360

a way because those those definitions are so rich. I just need time to to be with him to sit with him. Okay, thank you. I will do what I can to make them available to

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anything else. Well let's move on then and tackle the first of our poems. Mhm. The first poem I want to expose you to may possibly be one you know already. It's entitled descending theology,

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the Resurrection by mary Karr. So let me just invite you to read or hear this poem along with me. And then we'll talk a little bit about who mary Karr is and what's going on here?

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From the far star points of his pinned extremities. Cold, inched in black ice and squid ink until the hung flesh was empty. Lonely in that void , even for pain. He missed his splintered feet

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. The human stare buried in his face. He asked for two hands made of meat. He could reach to the end of in the corpses core. The stone fist of his heart began to bang on

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the stiff chests door and breath spilled back into that battered shape. Now it's your limbs, he longs to flow into from the sunflower center of your chest outward as warm water shatters at birth, recovering every

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way I don't know about you. But I find that a stunning poet. Let me say just a word about who mary karr is, mary karr is professor of, I believe creative writing, but certainly

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in the english department at Syracuse University in new york . She is most famous for her memoirs um that uh have been that explore her east texas childhood and early adolescence, the most famous of which is liarsclub

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, but you might also have seen lit or cherry . Those are both. All three actually are sort of a trilogy of memoirs of hers. But she is also a brilliant poet. Car as I mentioned

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, grew up in a small east texas oil town with a mother who was profoundly artistic and also bipolar and a father who was a texas oilman, mostly sort of roustabout on rigs and was not home a

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lot. She had a rough childhood and adolescence um and a pretty rugged early introduction to adulthood but found her way ultimately into creative writing and in graduate programs . Uh and found herself earning both an M.

00:11:20.440 - 00:11:33.340

F. A. And a ph D. And is now, as I've said on the faculty at Syracuse, she is a brilliant poet. She has made a public statement of her recovery from alcoholism and

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a key element in that recovery was her conversion to roman Catholicism. So mary Karr is what she calls an active cafeteria, catholic, um picking and choosing the things she likes out of the catholic church and

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leaving behind the things she would prefer not to deal with. I know how she feels mary Karr's poetry um is a blend of both, um non religious and deeply religious thinking, but this is certainly an

00:12:05.480 - 00:12:20.780

example of the latter category. It is if you've noticed a sonnet or at least it's in sonnet form . There are the initial eight lines that set up the initial statement of the nature of this poem.

00:12:20.790 - 00:12:37.570

This is a moment after the death, the crucifixion and during the the burial of jesus. And the final six lines, often referred to as the Volta in technical language about poetry, turn and began to

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change the reality of that initial octave um and move the poem in a new direction. Now, the overall thing that Car is doing here is playing with the notion of the body of jesus. It's a

00:12:52.970 - 00:13:11.480

body that begins with his extremities, his hands and feet described by the metaphor of the Star points. Car is careful about language, and Star Points is an evocative metaphor because it brings to mind not just

00:13:11.480 - 00:13:28.490

the spread eagled body of jesus on the cross, but also the star of his birth. There's a kind of powerful statement about the collective experience of jesus life. The cold that inches in is described in

00:13:28.490 - 00:13:45.060

vivid terms that every one of us is in some way or another familiar with black ice squid ink, one has the sense of both blackness and cold, overwhelming one in a very visceral way and he's lonely

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in that void, even for pain, He misses his splintered feet, the human stare in his face , he asked for two hands made of meat. And yet again, there's a word here that Car

00:13:58.700 - 00:14:18.060

uses with enormous care. The term meat is not accidental, what she's using is a term that has its latin roots in the word Karna meat and of course Carney is the in is the root of incarnation

00:14:18.440 - 00:14:31.490

from which we of course are talking about the bodily form of jesus. So again, we're rooted in body language here uh to use a bit of language . You see a great deal. This is very

00:14:31.490 - 00:14:41.280

much an embodied metaphor. To read this poem is to have a sense of physical sense of what it is like to be dead, what it is like to be in the tomb, what it is like

00:14:41.280 - 00:14:58.320

to lose one's physicality. But the poem makes its turn at the point where the octave ends and the volta begins that stone fist of a heart. Yet again, a wonderful metaphor that sort of knotted in

00:14:58.320 - 00:15:13.050

his chest. A dark, cold hard thing begins to bang on here again. Yet another metaphor, The door of the chest evoking, of course, as you would expect, the door of the tune

00:15:13.040 - 00:15:24.860

breath spills back into the battered shapes and now and notice that she hangs the now out at the end of the line, You know, something else is coming. But until your eye moves to the next

00:15:24.860 - 00:15:39.520

line, you don't know what that's called, N jam Mint. And it's a very significant poetic tool for holding out half meanings and creating suspense. But when you move to the next line, what you

00:15:39.520 - 00:15:54.140

get is the surprise of the poet. We're all expecting the resurrection of jesus, but in cars treatment here, that resurrection is not just into the physical body of jesus but into our bodies as well.

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It's your limbs, she says to us, he longs to flow into the from the sunflower center of your chest. Yet another powerful metaphor this time in distinction to the stone fist of his heart and the

00:16:11.910 - 00:16:30.600

emptiness and void of his lifeless body. The sunflower center is an image of warmth, of color, of brightness and of some sense of life and vitality from that central center outward as warm water, and

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then the best line of all as warm water shatters at birth, and immediately what she has evoked is the water of amniotic fluid, but also the waters of baptism and the waters ultimately of the great rivers

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of the biblical and theological traditions. The River of Eden and the river in the that flows through the heart of the city of God. And as if to make that more obvious, she uses what is

00:16:57.570 - 00:17:17.230

my favorite word in this poem, recovering every way . I love the repeating sound of the are in that phrase, recovering every way she gives us this sense that the water that has burst in this resurrected

00:17:17.240 - 00:17:36.370

moment is now flowing in every direction and one of those directions is into us, mary Karr's descending theology , The Resurrection. It's a powerful poem about embodied theology. It's I think, has the capacity to

00:17:36.370 - 00:17:52.210

turn the image of the body of christ lower case B into the image of the body of christ uppercase B. To make through the experience of the resurrection , a new community of those for whom and within

00:17:52.210 - 00:18:14.010

whom and through whom the water of life flows as though it were our life. Blood Mary's poem is a lovely example of embodied metaphor. So mary Karr's descending theology, I'm going to move on now to

00:18:14.010 - 00:18:26.130

a second poem by the way, I suppose, I should say that all four if we get to them and three if we don't. Of these poems gather around the moment of the death of jesus or

00:18:26.130 - 00:18:40.050

holy saturday, the day between the death and the resurrect direction. I think it's a day that christian tradition and especially protestant tradition doesn't do much with. For the most part we simply skip over it.

00:18:40.540 - 00:18:52.630

I think it deserves a lot more contemplation than we give it. And perhaps one of the things you might take away from this experience is some meditation about what that day might mean. This poem is entitled

00:18:52.630 - 00:19:04.240

Woodwork and as you can see, it's one of mine, let me say just a word about where it came from. Poem began as a request from a colleague of mine to reflect for a presentation he

00:19:04.240 - 00:19:21.050

was doing for reformation day on the tendency of Protestants to splinter and that was his word splinter into ever smaller factions and churches. And it was that word splinter that got me started thinking about a poet.

00:19:21.740 - 00:19:34.730

It got me thinking about how wood splinters and would got me thinking about woodworking, and all of the ways in which when I work with wood, my hands get nicked and cut or get little splinters in

00:19:34.730 - 00:19:48.000

my palms and all of a sudden I was thinking about blood and bleeding and would work. And then I am thinking of course, about the crucifixion and I was often running to a poem before you knew

00:19:48.000 - 00:20:08.660

it. So would work. And this will take three slides because it's a bit longer uh than mary Karr's poet. It's about the blood joining boards at angles, edges are negotiations prone to pinch and nails

00:20:08.660 - 00:20:32.120

pierced like talking points. Splinters burn like lightning beneath the skin, red stains in the palms of hands , it's about the blood. A lifetime of little cuts. Saw blade nick's chisel slips on turning lathes

00:20:32.130 - 00:20:56.670

scrapes from roughened surfaces in rapid motion currency to pay for chalices and tables for chair legs in church parlors and for crosses always crosses. It's about the blood smeared on every lentil door post, pulpit, pew

00:20:57.440 - 00:21:18.340

, forensic faithfulness. A wounded for every wonder, impassive as a judge's smile, the paschal lamb has nothing more to say. After the planers blade has smoothed the ragged faces of the cross and with every

00:21:18.340 - 00:21:38.670

hammer blow, the blood sinks deeper in the heartwood , unseen and silent, until all that's left is argument quid pro quo. Leave the dead behind in the night when angels pass and head for parted water

00:21:41.840 - 00:22:02.350

. But it's about the blood crying out from every field and from every brother without a keeper. Every lamb laid on referee, alter every cup on every covenant tal table. That's where the wounded body lies

00:22:02.840 - 00:22:27.510

awaiting autopsy while survivors lurk in hallways fighting over the personal effects. Again, this is a bit of an extended metaphor and once again, it's about bodies in a somewhat different way than mary Karr's poem functions

00:22:27.520 - 00:22:41.460

. This one is specifically about the blood that makes up our body. I'll move back to the beginning of the poem. Yeah. At first it's this is a kind of a layered metaphor, I think

00:22:41.940 - 00:22:56.090

. Um And there are several places at which it seems to be an operation. First blood is the result of working with wood. If you've ever tried to drill a mortise or tenant, if you've ever

00:22:56.090 - 00:23:11.410

tried to cut a dovetail joint, if you've ever tried to do anything that involves working with wood, planing, sawing, sanding, what you discover is there are a million places where well, where would

00:23:11.410 - 00:23:26.030

can get you where it pinches or cuts or pearce's ? And so it is also the case that the negotiations that take place when we are in disagreement in the life of the church, pinch and pierce and

00:23:26.030 - 00:23:40.550

talking points always the sort of thing intended not to generate conversation but to shut it down. These are the sorts of things that cut us and bleed us as we seek to figure out how we are going

00:23:40.550 - 00:23:52.770

to live together or not. As a body of christ. We end up with those red stains in the palms of our hands evocative I hope of another set of red stains and another set of hands,

00:23:53.340 - 00:24:08.760

one that was nailed to the cross. The metaphor is extended in that second stanza, where it gets a little more specific about things that get cut when we make things in the life of the church.

00:24:10.440 - 00:24:26.710

Saw blade nick's chisel slipped scrapes, turning lathes as we make the furniture that makes the church, especially the crosses. Always the crosses, it's costing us something. It's costing us a little bit of our

00:24:26.710 - 00:24:44.600

blood. We keep bleeding as we make the church poem moves to a second metaphor or perhaps more expanded metaphor in the third stands. It's about the blood , but it's now about the blood smeared on lentils

00:24:44.600 - 00:25:00.060

and door posts. And if you're thinking about Passover and about the imagery of the lamb of the paschal lamb who once slaughtered, blood is smeared on the lentils and door posts of the houses of the slaves

00:25:00.060 - 00:25:14.110

in Egypt before the Passover takes place. Then you've got the right image, the one I intended to evoke. But I wanted also to suggest that that same blood, the blood that marks the house where

00:25:14.110 - 00:25:33.840

the Passover passes over is also the blood that smears on pulpit and pew. There's something about the church that is sheltered even as it bleeds. Um, I can't exactly tell you where the line forensic faithfulness

00:25:33.850 - 00:25:48.990

a wound for every wonder came from. It sort of leapt into my consciousness at this point and refused not to be written. But I put it here because it seems to say what I'm thinking that somehow

00:25:48.990 - 00:26:06.900

or another faithfulness wonder though it may be costs us something. There's a wound that lies behind all of the hard one. Things we hold to when we say, I believe the poem delves back into this

00:26:06.910 - 00:26:23.130

image of the paschal lamb who goes to the slaughter without so much as a smile. Um I had for some reason or other been watching one of those uh tv judge programs, you know, judge judy

00:26:23.130 - 00:26:37.240

or one of them. Um and I was struck by how utterly impassive, how immovable, emotionless the judge's face was in a few minutes that I saw it. Um It's funny what you see when you're

00:26:37.240 - 00:26:51.200

writing a poem and what leads to mine, the paschal lamb simply makes no more statement. And of course, the paschal lamb is not just the lamb slain at at Passover, it's also the figure for

00:26:51.200 - 00:27:04.100

jesus slain and nailed to the cross. So the planers blade smooths the ragged faces of the cross, and then there are the hammer blows that nail the jesus to that cross, and the blood from the

00:27:04.110 - 00:27:17.270

, from the wounds in the hands sinks deeper and deeper into the heart. Would it never makes a sound? And finally, all that's left, after all of the cuts and all of the furniture,

00:27:17.270 - 00:27:27.860

and all of the negotiations and all of the talking points? Well, there's just nothing left except I get this, you get that, I get the pulpit, you get the pews, I get the

00:27:27.860 - 00:27:40.400

painting, you get this under schoolbooks, quid pro quo. I give you this, you give me that at the end of the time. Together. At the end of our when we part company in

00:27:40.400 - 00:27:52.980

the life of the church, we part company. And as we often do, we leave behind us what we think is dead and head for the place where the water is parted. And we get over

00:27:52.980 - 00:28:10.000

to the other hopeful promised promised land side. There's a darkness in this for me, a sadness. Um, and it's not something I can completely define or explain, but this this particular stands, I

00:28:10.000 - 00:28:26.260

intended both to begin with and end with references to the Passover to the departure from Egypt on the part of the slaves. And finally, the third stands yet again about the blood this time a different image

00:28:26.640 - 00:28:40.260

. Blood crying out from the field and from a brother without a keeper. And if you've read genesis for you know that I'm I'm referring to the CAIN and Abel narrative here, where one brother kills another

00:28:40.740 - 00:28:55.730

and with the brother of the slain, cries out to God from the ground, there's a kind of a sacrifice there, and of course, the one who slaughters his brother is thus cast out, separated

00:28:55.740 - 00:29:11.360

alienated from family and kin and forced to figure out how to live in a land of wandering. But that land of wandering is a place of sacrifice. And so every lamb is laid on an altar and

00:29:11.360 - 00:29:26.060

every sacrifice has the blood and that of course, believes us to thinking about every cup on every covenant tal table, and by now I'm thinking about Eucharist and the cups that are set on those wooden tables

00:29:26.740 - 00:29:44.320

, somebody had to believe to make it wooden tables that we come to for unity and for communion with christ. And that of course, is where the wounded body lies, the body of christ broken on

00:29:44.320 - 00:29:57.930

the table, The blood of christ poured out into cup and body here is capitalist. So what I'm doing is not just the body of christ but also the capital body of christ. The gathered church still

00:29:57.930 - 00:30:15.270

centered in the sacramental realities, but it's dead, it's awaiting autopsy. And the rest of us, those who think we may survive this event are lurking in the hallways, fighting over the personal effects.

00:30:17.640 - 00:30:34.560

So again, an extended metaphor, one that for me contemplates the pain of our insisting that we separate from one another even while we are called back into a reality or unity rather by the very blood we

00:30:34.560 - 00:30:51.640

shed and was shed for us pulling moves back and forth with that blood imagery in ways that I'm not altogether sure I understand myself, but there it is . It's deliberately dark to my way of thinking.

00:30:51.640 - 00:31:08.760

This is a good friday holy saturday poem meditates on themes of blood and death and sacrifice and our failure to see those sacrifices as unifying. Let me move now to probably the most famous of the poems I

00:31:08.760 - 00:31:25.300

want to put in front of you today and that's Emily Dickinson's wonderful poem that we know by the title drawn from her first line. Dickinson almost never titled her poems after Great pain of formal feeling comes Uh

00:31:25.310 - 00:31:48.810

this is F- 372 in the Franklin collection of Dickinson's poets. After great pain of formal feeling comes the nerves sit ceremonious like tunes, the stiff heart questions , was it he who bore and yesterday or centuries

00:31:48.810 - 00:32:16.460

before the feet mechanical go round a wooden way of ground or air or ought regardless, grown a court's contentment like a stone. This is the hour of lid remembered if outlived as freezing persons recollect the snow

00:32:17.240 - 00:32:39.110

first chill than stupor. Then the letting go. Well. The first thing to say about Dickinson is the thing that everybody notices every time you read it and that is her utterly bizarre system of capitalizations and

00:32:39.110 - 00:32:57.730

strange grammar, especially the use of dashes. Um Dickinson probably had some consistent system in mind, but no one has been able to figure it out and she never left any instructions about it. All of

00:32:57.730 - 00:33:08.920

her poems, she instructed, they all be burned at her death, fortunately her sister ignored her instructions and preserved them. Or we wouldn't have one of the great contributions to english poetry that we have in

00:33:08.920 - 00:33:28.550

her work. I think that what she does in capitalization is to draw attention to particular words. And so it may be helpful to pay attention to those words as we go through the overall image that Dickinson

00:33:28.550 - 00:33:43.530

has in this poem and thus the metaphor that it functioned. The figure for this metaphor is the image of a group of people gathered together after great pain , presumably after a death. When I read this

00:33:43.530 - 00:34:00.560

poem, the first thing I think about is going back to a family's home after a funeral and sitting with that family as it comes to terms with the grief it is experiencing and how oddly silent and weirdly

00:34:00.560 - 00:34:14.600

formal that experience is, how you don't know quite what to say or what to do with your hands after great pain. A formal feeling come, she says, and then as if to define that feeling

00:34:14.600 - 00:34:28.550

. Following the dash, she gives us this marvelous image of the nerves that sit in ceremonious fashion. Somehow, another our nerves are drawn up at attention as though we were passing review as though we were

00:34:28.550 - 00:34:45.550

in some way or another, engaged in some formal moment, but also and more powerfully for Dickinson they are like tunes. So the tombs become a figure for our nervous feeling. Which itself is a figure

00:34:45.550 - 00:35:00.430

for this formality we feel. Which itself is a way of dealing with this grief we are talking about . So it's it's metaphor within metaphor within metaphor. And she will keep piling it on the stiff heart

00:35:00.440 - 00:35:14.510

and heart is capitalist in this odd sort of way . Why this word? I suspect it's because having talked about the nerves, she is now talking about heart. She is drawing us into the very center

00:35:14.510 - 00:35:29.770

of ourselves, into the core of our being and saying that the grief that surrounds us penetrates down to the heart of us the stiff heart questions, was it he who bore? And of course, we

00:35:29.770 - 00:35:49.070

don't know who the he was, her capitalization of . He makes us wonder if the he is christ and the word bore rather than died here lends itself to that suggestion as well. But she doesn't define

00:35:49.070 - 00:36:04.100

it. And Dickinson was not one to speak formally about religious commitment. So one doesn't really know. And when was this grief? Was it yesterday or centuries before? Yet again, is it christ we're

00:36:04.100 - 00:36:22.350

talking about? Or is the sense of grief that Dickinson is describing? Something that seems so long and so endless and so ancient that its centuries old, whatever she keeps on pushing that sense of grief now

00:36:22.350 - 00:36:38.180

she's talking about feet yet again a body metaphor. The feet of the grieve er mechanical, she says , go round a wooden way again, that sense that things are moving, but they're moving according to

00:36:38.180 - 00:36:59.160

some um almost marionette like fashion where we are following a path determined by something other than our own capacities to decide. It is though, events, events have overwhelmed us and we are out of body almost

00:36:59.630 - 00:37:15.350

and we observe ourselves going around a wooden way away of ground or air or an Ohana phrase here or ought somehow, there's some propriety involved in this. What one ought to do in a moment like this

00:37:15.930 - 00:37:32.740

. But isn't that precisely the question she starts with , regardless of where it comes from, she seems to suggest it's a court's contentment, like a stone to hard rock like images that remind me of mary

00:37:32.740 - 00:37:46.350

karr's stone fist, A sense that somehow or another at the heart of us, by the way, it reminds me also of her stiff heart in her first stanza in some way or another. What's at

00:37:46.350 - 00:38:06.010

the heart of us in these moments of grief is something that has re ified that has solidified. That has become stone and the livelihood and the vitality that we feel as we experience life has somehow hardened in

00:38:06.020 - 00:38:23.710

the brick or stone or courts. And then she pushes the metaphor one step further, taking it out of the body sort of but not quite. This is the hour of lid yet another hard image but

00:38:23.710 - 00:38:40.370

this time not just an image of hardness but also an image of weight. An image of heaviness in the sense that grief has sort of overwhelmed us and not permitted us to move. We are leaden and

00:38:40.370 - 00:38:58.330

we remember this this hour and then she phrases if outlived and there's an ominous threatening quality about that as though we might not survive this. We remember it . And here the crowning metaphor of the poem,

00:38:58.820 - 00:39:19.240

the person who is freezing to death in the snow as a freezing person recollects the snow. And then she gives a marvelous line with just single words chill stupor, let him go. And she ends the

00:39:19.240 - 00:39:39.500

poem with our death in this cold, dark, stiff place. No, I want to suggest that is very nearly the perfect statement for holy saturday. It is the day after the death. It is

00:39:39.500 - 00:39:55.950

the day before the impossible possibility emerges. It is a day when we cannot contemplate that there might be anything other than the end of things. And Dickinson's poem gets at that better than anything. I know

00:39:57.920 - 00:40:15.470

. Yeah,! All of these poems are holy saturday poems. So let me give you one more . This is one of mine. And let me say just a word about this problem. Before we

00:40:15.470 - 00:40:30.440

started, this is a villain L. For those of you familiar with the formal categories poems, you know that a villain L is a very strict form . It is 19 lines. It is six stanzas

00:40:30.010 - 00:40:47.640

. The first five stances are three lines of peace and the 1st and 3rd lines of the first stanza become in alternating fashion. The third line of each of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th stands

00:40:47.640 - 00:41:07.240

us and they are used together as the 3rd and 4th lines of the final or sixth stanza, which itself is the only four line stanza in the form . Moreover, the second lines of each of the

00:41:07.240 - 00:41:25.460

stanzas must rhyme or as I'm doing it rhyme approximately , I'd say I'd give it about a 75% rhyme so that the poem is drawn together both rhythmically and structurally and in terms of its sounds. So a

00:41:25.460 - 00:41:45.140

villain L, entitled the second day. Do not yet roll the stone away, Norby in haste for morals. Dawn, let us dwell in death today . Other voices have their say outside this somatic tomb

00:41:45.110 - 00:42:01.580

. Do not yet roll the stone away, nor come to gloat. Embalm or pray lament or raise the victors song. No, let us dwell in death today. Build no castles made of clay.

00:42:01.590 - 00:42:22.720

Draw up no plans for sacred rooms. Do not yet roll the stone away and prematurely birth the day when knowledge preens and error looms. Let us dwell in death today. The possible in its unknown way

00:42:23.400 - 00:42:45.760

. We'll use the dark to make us strong. Do not yet roll the stone away, but let us dwell in death today. What I wanted to do with this poem was simply to sit with holy

00:42:45.760 - 00:43:07.120

saturday, not to leap from the cross to the flower lined empty tomb, not to leap from the hard words of he is crucified or crucify him to the joyful trumpet sounds of he has risen Alleluia.

00:43:08.600 - 00:43:23.270

But to contemplate what it means to wait, what it means. Not to know that there is a tomorrow what it means not to have a name for God, but to know it only or no God

00:43:23.280 - 00:43:46.100

only as the possible. I wanted to sit with this poem as a place for thinking about uncertainty and a place for contemplating the openness to directions, both religiously and in terms of personal devotion that one might

00:43:46.100 - 00:44:00.690

not otherwise have gone. I don't know whether I succeeded with that. You'll be the judge of that . But that's what the impetus behind this poem was . And I offer it to you. All right

00:44:00.940 - 00:44:14.250

, let me um Get us back to the main screen. Well, I know that it's after 12 and there are at least some of you who have jobs to do and places to go. So I

00:44:14.250 - 00:44:24.730

will, I'll bring this to a close. I'm willing to stay online for a few more minutes if there are other questions that folks have, but I do want to say thank you for all of you

00:44:24.740 - 00:44:39.150

for joining with us and for uh, experiencing this , we're getting used to this webinar format at Austin seminary and we hope to have more and far better examples of what might be done together online. So