Love’s austere and lonely offices
Hello, dear reader. Thank you for being here. This week I began wondering (again) about the utility of poetry. In a time like this what we seem to need is concerted action, changes in policy and procedure, and physical acts of kindness and heroism as members of our society care for the sick, protect the helpless, lift their voices against injustice, feed the hungry… the list continues, but nowhere does someone rush in and say: we need a poem, STAT!
Except. Our spirits do need moments to recollect ourselves and our purpose, and to shore up meaning in the ever-shifting and sometimes fearful world we find ourselves in. To re-locate that still small voice, to remember what is truly important, and also to be spurred again to right action. Love is action.
Any time I teach poetry I try to include “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. If you’re looking for a perfect poem, a poem we need, this is it. The music it makes is gorgeously in concert with its meaning, which progresses from a childish indifference to rueful wisdom. Listen for the assonance here, with the subtle variation of the “a” sounds across just 2 ½ lines: (cracked, hands, ached, labor, weekday, made, banked, blaze). And the beautiful finality of the following full-stop sentence: “No one ever thanked him.”, landing with that resolving rhyme (banked/thanked). And all of the “k” sounds help us hear and feel that blueback cold, the cracking and breaking. Life is hard, and there are some chronically wrong things in it. And yet, the cold can be driven out. Often we fail to appreciate those who have done this work for us, of warming the rooms so we might more comfortably enter them.
And how about the ending, with its desperate and wise repetition, “What did I know, what did I know” and the killer final line, packed with ultimate truth?
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
What a brilliant word Hayden uses here: offices. It has a businesslike quality to it, capturing the rote feeling of punching the clock as we perform tasks in the care of others. At times this work can feel taxing, tedious, or even boring; I’m sure you can think of your own examples! Sometimes the things we do out of love are never seen or known by anyone but ourselves. But I maintain these offices (like prayer) ARE seen and known by God, and are very pleasing to him indeed.
Sometimes when we’re doing our best to care for others we feel repaid with our own frustration, exhaustion, loneliness, even fear, especially when we come face to face with how bad conditions really are for some of our fellow humans. But it’s also at these times we might see in a way not otherwise available to us: more deeply into our own sinfulness and powerlessness, and our need for God’s help. Not then operating out of a “charity model,” but with the mind and heart of mutual aid. This mysterious existence is so much bigger and more complicated, and I believe, ultimately harmonious, than we can get our arms around.
Offices are not only the specific tasks attached to a job, or positions of authority and responsibility. The Daily Office is a series of prayers and psalms said in the Christian church. Whether intentional or not, I love how Hayden brilliantly brings these two senses of the word together at the end of the poem, in the offering of service, duty, and love to others, and to God.
And from today’s Office of Morning Prayer, here’s the reading from the Old Testament.
Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:14 (NRSV)
9 Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgement. 10 Banish anxiety from your mind, and put away pain from your body; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.
12 1 Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; 2before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; 3on the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; 4when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; 5when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; 6before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, 7and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. 8Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity. 9 Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs. 10The Teacher sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly. 11 The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. 12Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. 14For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
It’s quite a beautiful passage, but the phrase that really sticks today is: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone.” The whole duty of everyone. Isn’t that what we need to keep in our sights? Our world doesn’t repair itself on its own, and increasingly we are seeing that it doesn’t go so well when only one group or another tries to manage it. It is the whole duty of everyone, to perform the daily offices of service to each other in love.
