The Daily Boost #727
Kneel and be carried across
Consider these words from Richard Rohr, excerpted from his meditation on “The Sacred in the Concrete”:
Robert Frost said, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness.”1 If a poem doesn’t give us a lump in the throat, is it really great poetry? My final theological conclusion is that there’s only one world and that it’s all sacred. However, we have to be prepared to know what we’re saying when we say that. If we say too glibly that the trees are sacred, along with our dog, a friend, and the roses, then we don’t really believe it. We first need to experience “a lump in the throat” to have encountered the sacred. The sacred is something that inspires awe and wonder, something that makes us cry, something that gives us the lump in the throat. We must first encounter the sacred in the concrete and kneel before it there, because we can’t start with the universal.
Poets . . . make the connection between the concrete and the universal. When we make that connection, there’s suddenly a great leap of meaning, an understanding that it’s one world. The very word “metaphor,” which comes from two Greek words, means to “carry across.” A good metaphor carries us across, and we don’t even know how it’s occurred.
. . . If we’re reading a poem too quickly, between two urgent meetings or other hurried spaces, we probably won’t get it, because we don’t have time to release ourselves. We need quiet, solitude, and open space to read poetry at greater depth. Then and only then do poems work their magic.
(My thanks to Fr. Richard Rohr, via the Center for Action and Contemplation and Rafter
.Robert Frost, “Some Definitions,” in Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (New York: Library of America, 1995), 701.
The Gentle Nudge
Join other Rafters this week for . . .
WEDNESDAY: Our final Creatives’ Coffee (Zoom, 4:00-5:00PM Central, at this link)
THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)
I was fortunate to participate in a retreat with Richard Rohr, and Joanna Macy, in 2010. She, by the way, is a huge Rilke aficionado, and has done her own translations. I just finished Rohr's Immortal Diamond, about finding our true self. I think that title ties back to this message, in that to really appreciate poetry, we have to get to that true self consciousness, which is open, unrushed, attentive, nonjudging, appreciative, and willing to be amazed.
“The sacred is something that inspires awe and wonder, something that makes us cry, something that gives us the lump in the throat.”
Well, nature, dogs & cats, babies, etc. often make me feel that way…..bring the “sacred” to me.
And the kindness shared by people.