Eucatastrophe Reader

"Enchant the land with amethyst"

October by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild, 
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild, 
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild, 
Begin the hours of this day slow,  
Make the day seem to us less brief. 
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,   
Beguile us in the way you know; 
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf; 
One from our trees, one far away;   
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all, 
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

ANALYSIS

This poem seems to be an appeal to the month of October to accommodate those who want seasonal change to arrive a little more slowly. In several places in the poem, Frost implores October personified to ask for a kind indulgence. Even if change cannot be slowed, he suggests, perhaps it can be made to seem like it has been slowed. Frost asks permission to be allowed more time in denial. “Give us change one leaf a day,” is the message. And if two leaves a day, make one far away where we cannot see it and be disturbed. “Slow. Slow!” the exclamation point is for emphasis. Have compassion on the grapes at least he pleads, like Moses for the people of Israel in Sinai.

It is interesting that the rhyming scheme is ordered in the first four lines and last four lines. Frost rarely does anything by way of sound pattern that hasn’t been thought through but I am no expert on why there is order at the beginning and end of this poem (ABAB and then BEEB at the end) but if I had to guess it is because this poem is about the transition from one stable season (summer) to another (winter) with all the chaos of Autumn between and that what Frost is pleading for is not simply about weather but about all sort of change that life brings in its various seasons.

When you think about this poem as an explanation for how humans generally prefer change to take place in their lives (aging, divorce, a child moving out, a new job, a move to another place, etc.) it becomes more interesting. Here is how Frost would like change to arrive.

1. He would like order to proceed to order and does not like order to chaos with no order at the end.

2.  He would be open to a little delusion if the hard facts of change involve more suddenness than he is prepared for. He is “not adverse to being beguiled.” In other words, he would like to be permitted to enjoy his state of denial a little longer.)

3. Make the change a slow and steady one. One leaf at a time works fine with him.

4. Ration the negative impacts of change equitably so no single sort of person has to deal with more than their "fair share."

5. Consider those who will be most disturbed by rapid change and set the pace according to their needs.

I am not sure what forces of change are at work in your life or whether they are listening to you as you react to them but Perhaps this poem can give you some comfort that you are not alone.

Question for Comment: What is changing in your life right now and how are you feeling about the pace of it? 

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer REVIEW

“As the couple took in the hard news that the good man who was their son was now dead, so too many English took in the hard news that the dead man, who was a German, was good.”

The biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a story riven with moral complexities. Bonhoeffer was a key architect of the German confessing church during the Nazi era. His work resulted in the recruitment of pastors and theologians who rejected the Nazification of the German church under Hitler and insisted that there were not two churches in Germany (the state approved one and the Evangelical one) but only one church (that which took seriously a responsibility to put a spoke in the wheel of injustice as it ministered to the wounds of the victims of injustice).

Bonhoeffer’s complex moral system left him free to participate in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to deceive the Nazis in the process sof doing so. He worked for the preservation of the Confessing church while pretending to be working to infiltrate and betray the same. As a double agent, he pretended to be pretending to be an evangelical. His argument was that the true Christian does the will of god in the world and that the will of God is not always a slavish adoption of principles. “He could appreciate the value of something even if he rejected that something,” writes the author, “and he could appreciate the flaws in something even if he ultimately accepted that something.” He spoke of a need for instinctual clarity that went beyond the mere application of logic and dogma. Bonhoeffer believed in “thorough thinking” says Metaxas. He attempted to inspire people to an intellectual maturity rather than a slavish dependency and he objected to the use of manipulative oratory, preferring arguments to do their own arguing – in short, he was everything that Hitler was not. “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them,” Bonhoeffer once insisted,

“Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them. God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives God’s Word but also lends us God’s ear.  . . . We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them."

“Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.”

It is hard for me not to like Bonhoeffer and so I think I shall.

 Among Bonhoeffer’s various writings are to be found arguments that were influence millions. In his speech given at the ascension of the Nazi Party, he predicted the demise of the Fuhrer principle. In his book on the cost of discipleship, he insisted that following a person like Jesus had its benefits and costs and one could not have the one without the other. When asked if it would not be better and safer to join the Nazified church and work from within he said “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” “To renounce a full life in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human,” he added.

Next year, I am hoping to visit the monastery in Ettal Bavaria where Bonhoeffer began to work on his book on ethics and where he began meeting with the various conspirators who would eventually make several attempts on Hitler’s life.

When Hitler discovered the identities of the plotters that had almost killed him, he instructed his henchmen to destroy them all in his last inglorious act of vindictive spite only weeks before he took his own life. Bonhoeffer was hanged on April 9, 1945, two weeks before the camp he was executed in was liberated.

He is one of the world’s weirdest martyrs having been executed for trying to kill a man for Jesus.

Question for Comment: Is it possible for a principle to become an idol?

"The One Absent Most"

Up late. Thinking about poetry. 

Waiting—Afield at Dusk by Robert Frost What things for dream there are when spectre-like, Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled, I enter alone upon the stubble field, From which the laborers’ voices late have died, And in the antiphony of afterglow And rising full moon, sit me down Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock And lose myself amid so many alike. I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour, Preventing shadow until the moon prevail; I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven, Each circling each with vague unearthly cry, Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar; And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem Dimly to have made out my secret place, Only to lose it when he pirouettes, And seek it endlessly with purblind haste; On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back, That, silenced by my advent, finds once more, After an interval, his instrument, And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there; And on the worn book of old-golden song I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; But on the memory of one absent most, For whom these lines when they shall greet her eyes.

“One Absent Most”: Thoughts on Robert Frost’s Waiting Afield At Dusk Note: The word “afield” can mean “in a field” or “far away from home.” Both are probably appropriate for this poem. To further the idea of disconnection, Frost refers to himself as ghost of sorts (specter-like). A specter is a disembodied or dissociated spirit. Someone here but not here. And this is an important observation given the theme. The first stanza sets the atmosphere – twilight with a rising moon casting an eerie and somber stage. One wonders with the references to death if the poet is contemplating its nearness. Clearly the moment captures the essence of a time in between two states (day-night, awake-asleep, conscious-dreaming, present-past-future, earth-heaven, life-death). Note Frost’s references to senses (the lighting, the sound of birds, the sound and feel and smell of the hay). Everything in the poem indicates that he is fully present in the moment until you get to the last two lines of the poem when you discover that his memories of the past and his anticipation of the future has him firmly in their grasp. He is specter-like in that his deepest thoughts (or feelings) are dissociated from his surroundings as pungent as they are to all his senses. It almost comes as a surprise that despite all the sensory immersion of the moment, his mind is actually on something that is not in the scene at all – a person. Despite the symphony of nature around him and his keen observations of nature. Despite the fact that he has his favorite book of poems with him (the line “the worn book of golden song” refers to an anthology of poetry edited by Francis Palgrave that Frost had loved and “read ragged” since he was a teenager) his mind is drawn to “the memory of one absent most” and to a longing to share this moment and if not the moment, then the poem he constructs to capture the moment, with her (assume it is a her only because it is for me as I read it.) It is as if he is preternaturally present enough to experience an almost dream-like moment in poetic sensory HD but as soon as he has, his mind is magnetically drawn to who is *not* there to share that beauty and solitude with him. With the last two lines of the poem, the meaning of the title is revealed. The poet struggles to stay connected to the present beauty because of what (or who) is missing in the scene. Someone is not sitting beside him and he feels the crushing presence of her absence (perhaps his deceased daughter?) He writes a poem for her and feels the glorious present as a time full of agonizing waiting for that day when he can share it with “the one absent most.” I suspect that all poets feel a desire to share beauty when they see it. And I suspect that we all have someone in our lives who is no longer there to share it with that we hope we will get to share with someday – someone who is of all people we miss, *the* person we miss most. I find myself wishing that I could share this poem with such an one tonight.