"Poets, slavery still goes on!"

Poets helped to condemn black slavery.  Poets, slavery still goes on!  More than two thirds of humanity are slaves to hunger, sickness, forced labor, despair.  And another third is in slavery to selfishness and fear.

                                                                                              --Dom Helder Camara, The Desert is Fertile, tr. Dinah Livingstone

St. Gregory of Nyssa

 

I have always loved the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa ever since I read The Life of Moses in the “Classics of Western Spirituality” edition.  One of the very first great texts on mystical theology in the history of Christianity, The Life of Moses affected me deeply as a young person.  I remember writing out the lines from it, “He should not inflict upon his soul a heavy and fleshy garment of life, but by the purity of his life he should make all the pursuits of life as thin as the thread of a spider web,” and carrying it with me everywhere.  All of Gregory’s works shine with such a serene and optimistic vision; they seem filled with sunlight and fire and a sense of the grandeur of God and the cosmos.  At the center of his thought is the belief that humanity is made in the image of God, with all the profound implications that this principle carries with it.  Child and sibling of saints and scholars, Gregory lived among a “new humanity” in the making.  His optimism about human destiny was both shaped and reinforced by the struggle against Arianism—Christ’s true divinity and full humanity were at the center of his hope for a redeemed world. For Gregory, we humans were created to partake in divine goodness in the same way that fish were meant to live in water or birds in the air.  (He denounced slavery and the oppression of the poor by the rich in his writings because slavery and oppression were not compatible with our “purple”—that is, royal—status as heirs to the fullness of the kingdom of God.)  Life, reason, wisdom, and immortality were given to us so that we might be true images of God.  Gregory compares human beings to a painting that captures something of the spirit of the model—our attributes are given by God in likeness to Himself. That we are now bemused, weak, mortal, and prone to selfish weakness, as well as suffering, does not change our true destiny. Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit among us has accorded to all the opportunity to become children of God. Though humanity has become distorted, it can—and, as Gregory underscores repeatedly, will—be fully restored and healed.

Novalis, Geistliche Lieder, II

 

Fern im Osten wird es helle,
Graue Zeiten werden jung;
Aus der lichten Farbenquelle
Einen langen tiefen Trunk!
Alter Sehnsucht heilige Gewährung,
Süße Lieb in göttlicher Verklärung!
 
Endlich kommt zur Erde nieder
Aller Himmel selges Kind,
Schaffend im Gesang weht wieder
Um die Erde Lebenswind,
Weht zu neuen ewig lichten Flammen
Längst verstiebte Funken hier zusammen.
 
Überall entspringt aus Grüften
Neues Leben, neues Blut;
Ewgen Frieden uns zu stiften,
Taucht er in die Lebensflut;
Steht mit vollen Händen in der Mitte,
Liebevoll gewärtig jeder Bitte,
 
Lasse seine milden Blicke
Tief in deine Seele gehn,
Und von seinem ewgen Glücke
Sollst du dich ergriffen sehn.
Alle Herzen, Geister und die Sinnen
Werden einen neuen Tanz beginnen.
 
Greife dreist nach seinen Händen,
Präge dir sein Antlitz ein,
Mußt dich immer nach ihm wenden,
Blüte nach dem Sonnenschein;
Wirst du nur das ganze Herz ihm zeigen,
Bleibt er wie ein treues Weib dir eigen.
 
Unser ist sie nun geworden,
Gottheit, die uns oft erschreckt,
Hat im Süden und im Norden
Himmelskeime rasch geweckt,
Und so laßt im vollen Gottes-Garten,
Treu uns jede Knosp und Blüte warten.
 
 
From distant east our dayspring grows,
Grey times will be young,
And in the light are shades of rose,
A beverage to rejuvenate,
So that our holy longing knows
The sacred love his presence shows.
 
For us descends upon the earth
Heaven’s fairest child.
From all creation’s song of mirth,
The brightest wind of life itself,
A fiery storm that heralds birth.
Fresh embers to renew our worth.
 
Now from their tombs, the dead arise,
By new life—new blood!
To grant peace for us as the prize,
He dives into the flood of life,
Amidst us with full hands and eyes
And listening for all our sighs,
 
His gaze so tender toward our fall,
Glancing at our souls,
And joyful is his gentle call
For all those longing to be held.
Our hearts and senses now recall
Those spirits dancing with us all.
 
So let our hands stretch forth in grace,
Turning to his help,
Marked by his presence and his face
As flowers after morning dawns.
His heart alone will you embrace;
The faithful lover of our race.
 
All is ripe for our possession,
He, the one we feared,
North and south with great procession,
Germs of stars, which fast awaken
God’s own garden now in session,
Buds that call the rains to freshen.
 
                                                    —Novalis, Geistliche Lieder, II

New Novel Excerpts

 

I’ve had three mini excerpts from my two novels published in the last couple of months.  The most recent came out this weekend in Credo Espoir, a very attractive journal that features some truly good writers and artists.  The other two appeared in Cypress, a lovely and simple Canadian journal, and Harvest International, a journal with an interesting history, edited by students at Cal Poly Pomona.  The piece in Harvest International was revised rather drastically from a stylistic viewpoint by the editors, which explains the relative lack of run-on sentences for which I am usually responsible.  The story in Credo Espoir came from my second novel, The Philosophers’ Republic, and the other two from my first, Before the Rains.  They’re not the first excerpts from both (unpublished) novels that I’ve published in journals, and I hope they’re not the last.