It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present.
–George MacDonald (1824-1905)
THE SPACIOUS FIRMAMENT ON HIGH
The spacious firmament on high,
with all the blue ethereal sky,
and spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun from day to day
does his Creator’s power display;
And publishes to every land
the work of an almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
the moon takes up the wondrous tale,
and nightly to the listening earth
repeats the story of her birth;
whilst all the stars that round her burn,
and all the planets in their turn,
confirm the tidings, as they roll
and spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
amid their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
and utter forth a glorious voice;
for ever singing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
-Joseph Addison, 1712 (after Psalm 19)
This psalm, and its poetic rendering by Addison, was C.S. Lewis’s favorite. Why did he love it so much? Because it speaks of the wondrous, shining, singing, rejoicing cosmos, the firmament, the heavens, in the voice of the medieval mind, of which Lewis was an expert — and he thought that vision most beautiful.
In the last few years I’ve reread and re-reread the trilogy of novels by C.S. Lewis originally titled the Space Trilogy. Lewis was never happy with that name for the three books, because of the bleak connotations of the word space. He preferred the medieval vision of the cosmos and the heavens. Lately, lovers of the world that Lewis created in these novels have been calling them the Ransom Trilogy, after the protagonist of all three.
One can read about medieval cosmology in Lewis’s own work, The Discarded Image, which I plan to do. This year my introduction to the mind of Lewis on this topic was through the works of Michael Ward, who is probably the preeminent C.S. Lewis scholar alive today. His beautifully written book, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, has been on my shelf for years, long enough for me to forget about it; to my chagrin I didn’t remember until a few days before our church book group’s discussion of the Ransom Trilogy, but I was able to listen to a shorter presentation of his treatise on Audible, read by the author himself: C.S. Lewis: Christology and Cosmology. You can also read an even briefer summary of it in this article in Touchstone Magazine: “Narnia’s Secret.”
I am just a beginner in all of this, as far as it being an academic subject, and I don’t have the time or understanding to say any more about it. For now, I just wanted to share this psalm-poem, which Michael Ward puts on the very first page of his book. Because I also love the heavens and their divine message.
“The reality of the pole bean or of the porcupine is never their momentary presence. It is the sense of the cycle which is the life of the bean, from planting to bearing, or of the porcupine through all the stages of his life. Words do not merely mirror — they reach beneath the transient surface to grasp the enduring reality it manifests. So, too, with the sense of a human life. Words are the way in which the sense, the very reality of that life, emerges through the manifold doings of the seasons.”
-Erazim Kohák
Today my friend Cindy and I drove out to the beach, a birthday outing for her. It was about 60 degrees, which was truly fine when the sun came out; there wasn’t much wind. While Cindy lay under a driftwood teepee, I took a brisk walk down the beach a ways, trying to exercise my feet in the squishy sand right where the wave has just receded.
Washed up by the surf I saw several by-the-wind Sailors, Velella velella. It’s hard not to notice their brilliant blue. I had heard a couple of months ago that people were seeing thousands of them on California beaches this year, which is unusual. This one was about two inches long.
The only stop we made for wildflower appreciation was on the way home, and it wasn’t for flowers at all, but for grass. Stands of pink grass waved in the breeze a the edge of the road; I discovered it is common velvetgrass, holcus lanatus. I think this is the first time my Seek app has been able to tell me anything about grasses; maybe it has truly been adding to its knowledge base. After all, one often does get the message that “Seek doesn’t know what this is. We are still learning!”
Recently I was offered a cup of tea at a friend’s house, and it was the most delicious drink, toasty and sweet, like nothing I’d ever tasted before. When my host came back into the room I asked her, and she said it was an infusion of wild oats — she had gathered them from nearby fields, and dried them. She showed me her stash, which she keeps in a big pretzel jar:
Just now I read more about this plant, a native perennial called California Wild Oat Grass, Danthonia californica. I was surprised to learn that it is recommended for growing domestically: “In home yard use, this grass gives a lowland meadow look or grows well in a rock garden.”
I don’t think my garden has the meadow look that would provide context for this native grass, but it is nice to think that other people might take advantage of its good features, and maybe drink its flowers, as I did. For now, my own interest lies almost entirely in trying to learn about more of the many grasses that live in northern California. I’ll be sure to let you know if I do.
Gladsome Lights 