The first, far-too-early sunset of Central Standard Time has cast blurs of pink and purple all the way across the sky. I saw them even from the east-facing windows of my living room. Not quite 5 p.m. and trees, evergreens, everything close to the earth was in shadow. If I had a fireplace I'd be thinking about building a fire, more for the light than the heat.
Metaphors were everywhere this morning in church on All Saints Sunday, from the pilgrim throng to the throne of God and the saints singing in glory. And the golden evening brightening in the west in the hymn "For All the Saints," just like the real one here in the Chicago suburbs a little while ago.
I am steeped in all these images from a lifetime of All Saints celebrations, funerals, Easter services and prayers for the dying. On some days, in some circumstances, they open up the heavens for me, or lift the veil or something else -- alas, something metaphorical -- between life and death, between what can be known and what can't. On other days -- well, I can only marvel at the human poetic imagination.
Poesis, philosophically, is making something -- making something that did not exist before, such as a poem, a play, or a musical composition. You make it by speaking or putting words on paper, by singing or recording notes on a staff. Not as impressive as God speaking light and darkness, dry land and living creatures into existence in Genesis, but still, the making of a poem (or a blog post) is a creative act. There's no more blank page, there's something there.
So it follows that other somethings must have been brought into being by other creators. And are those things brought into being real things, or just images of some greater and more perfect reality? I'm in far deeper than I set out to be. The little I know about Platonic ideals is nipping at my frontal cortex, and since what I know is indeed very little and I am not a methodical thinker, it seems best to back out of this mess.
And return to pondering those metaphors which seem entirely other-world to me lately. Not as in heavenly, but as belonging to a very specific world or tradition within the church and western literature and liturgy, which may be slipping away. Do they still have any meaning for us today? Would they have any meaning at all outside the church, away from being among those who attend worship services or read Christian devotionals?
There is, of course, the music associated with these texts, music brought to the texts to bring them more emotion, more dimension. You don't have to know the Bible to grasp the Brahms Requiem or the Verdi.
For me today, the best text from this morning was this one* which is very direct:
All of us go down to the dust,
but even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia.
We've all seen decay, we've seen the ashes. We've stood at the graveside. We all die, yet we rejoice in the beauty and mystery that is life on earth. Our brains can grasp -- or perhaps create -- that transcendence.
Thanks be to -- God?
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| Washington Island sunset |
*Evangelical Lutheran Worship #223, setting by Matthew Mummert
