The World

Nous ne connaissons réellement rien de ce monde, nous ne sommes pas au monde. 
                                            --Georges Bernanos, Journal d’un curé de campagne 

In Praise of Herbs 2

You herbs, born at the birth of time
more ancient than the gods themselves.
O plants, with this hymn I sing to you
our mothers and our gods.

       --Rig Veda 10.97 (anonymous translation)

I Am Always About in the Quad

A memory returned today, after many, many years: my father quoting to me, when I was a child, Ronald Knox’s limerick based on Berkeley’s famous tree in the university quadrangle.

There was a young man who said "God

Must find it exceedingly odd

To think that the tree

Should continue to be

When there's no one about in the quad."

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;

I am always about in the quad.

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

Da redete Gott mit Noah und sprach: Gehe aus dem Kasten

I read Wilhelm Raabe’s Stopfkuchen during a difficult time in my life, and I fell completely in love with it.  (It is, I’ll admit, the kind of book that nobody reads anymore, and I’m also not attached to any of Raabe’s other books, though I gave Horacker a try.) 
     Stopfkuchen, however, awoke in me deep feelings like those of dreams, or those found in half-remembered moments from one’s own past, as well as a sense of peace and refuge that I have seldom found in the pages of a book.  I shall never forget that long summer day at the "roten Schanze"!   The book’s central message struck me deeply—as I was living in a new home at the time—the simple thought that everyone needs a place in the world.  I loved the dignity and strength of middle-aged Tinchen Quakatz, the pastoral setting of "roten Schanze," so comfortable, well-worn and homey; and even Stopfkuchen, Heinrich Schaumann himself.  He is a bore, but one who was able to keep me listening, as if I was truly there with him in the shade of the linden trees and at the breakfast table, walking the earthworks under a blue summer sky with grand history and prehistory all around and Stopfkuchen so rooted in both of them.  In the end there is justice for Andreas Quakatz; he is exonerated, although it comes too late for him; he is already dead.  But Stopfkuchen and Tinchen are redeemed and made whole by their love for one another; they have found the strength to heal and to forgive.  How often have I wanted to paint Schaumann’s motto over my own door:

    

Da redete Gott mit Noah und sprach:

Gehe aus dem Kasten.

150th Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore’s Birth

Seashell

fragments

spoke

and scratched;

split and raveled catch-

filled nets.

No boat,

no boatman,

passes.

On cyan Kali’s

mother spray

the seining labor’s

lighter,

now ripened in

the bay’s effulgence

milk of salt is whiter.

I speak of what the

world neglects,

                     take

it on myself:

the pool, the

lota, sacred waters,

in the waves

the coiling milt.

Novalis: May 2, 1772 - March 25, 1801

But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction

and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.

For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality;

Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.

                                                           --Wisdom 3:1-5