“The highest light is God, unapproachable and ineffable, neither grasped by the mind nor expressed in language. It illumines every reason-endowed nature. It is to intelligible realities what the sun is to sense-perceptible realities. To the extent that we are purified it appears, to the extent that it appears it is loved, to the extent that it is loved it is again known. It both contemplates and comprehends itself and is poured out but a little to those outside itself. I speak of the light contemplated in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, whose wealth is the confluence and the leaping forth of this radiance.”
-St. Gregory of Nazianzus (The Theologian), Oration 40, on Baptism
Transfiguration of Christ, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, Russia, 1497
I am always trying to write more letters. So I was very pleased when our sisterhood at church organized a pen-pal match-up, for anyone who wanted to exchange letters once a month with another woman in the group. I got matched up with Gwen, and she and I were thrilled about that; we somehow rarely get a chance to talk or be together outside of church services, so letter writing is perfect for us. We have been writing back and forth now for a year, though we may have fallen off a bit lately.
Because of all this, I loved reading what Donald Hall had to say to an interviewer on the subject. I am sad that people like him seem to be a “dying breed.” Do you think there is any hope of a revival of letter-writing? Even people without smart phones often use a computer to write emails instead of paper-and-ink letters.
Last Christmas I gave all my younger grandchildren ten stamped postcards each. They were of various designs, from my huge collection of postcards that remain from when I often wrote them to the (now older) grandchildren, and was for a time sending postcards all over the world as a member of Postcrossing. I included in the Christmas packages a list of their cousins’ and my addresses, and told them that postcards are fun because you only need to write a few words to fill up the page; it’s an easy way to let people know that you think of them.
Postcard from Ogden Nash
This post would not be complete without mentioning my friend Di, who has neither a computer nor a smart phone, and writes me a letter at least twice a year. She is one of the best letter-writers I have ever known, and I should write a whole post just featuring excerpts from her witty missives to me. I doubt a letter from Donald Hall could please me as much as hers do.
INTERVIEWER:
Another subject. You’re notorious for answering letters. Is your heavy correspondence related to your art? Doesn’t it get in the way?
DONALD HALL:
Sometimes I wonder, Do I write a letter because it’s easier than writing a poem? I don’t think so. Letters take less time than parties or lunches. How do people in New York get anything done? My letters are my society. I carry on a dense correspondence with poets of my generation and younger. Letters are my café, my club, my city. I am fond of my neighbors up here, but for the most part they keep as busy as I do. We meet in church, we meet at the store, we gossip a little. We don’t stand around in a living room and chat—like the parties I used to go to in Ann Arbor. I write letters instead, and mostly I write about the work of writing.
The poem below got me started thinking about mountains and their symbolism. I discovered a very long article on the subject, “The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor: The Symbolism of the Mountain,” which I don’t have time to read deeply, because as I type this draft, I’m in the midst of packing the car for five of us who will be in the mountains together by the time you read my post. I hope the article is not paywalled. It is a treatise on the subject going back millennia, opening with this from René Daumal:
“[The] summit touches the sphere of eternity, and its base branches out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the path by which humanity can raise itself to the divine and the divine reveals itself to humanity.”
The Transfiguration, Mount Tabor
The author examines traditions throughout the world, beginning in ancient times and concluding with thoughts on what The Mountain means for us Christians who are on a continuum with those 2,000 years ago. Here is one excerpt to help you know if you are interested in the subject from a scholarly perspective :
“In the traditional Hebrew and Christian understanding of the world, places are what they are by their teleology: it is not so much by the material or structural elements that they are recognized, but by their function. Things are what they are because of their purpose and their place in a web of relationships within reality which help create our own map of meanings. Therefore, it is very difficult to understand from a purely geographical (time-space) position where God dwells with regards to this or that mountain. For this reason, many physical mountains have been ‘the mountain of God’. There is only ‘one’, but it’s not confined to one geographical space-time location as we modern people understand it.”
I guess it’s obvious that I myself am interested, and I thought of printing this article to take with me to the high country, but I’m afraid I won’t have time to read it up there, either. My family and I will be too busy playing around our grandfather’s knees.
THE MOUNTAIN
The Mountain sat upon the Plain In his tremendous Chair— His observation omnifold, His inquest, everywhere—
The Seasons played around his knees Like Children round a sire— Grandfather of the Days is He Of Dawn, the Ancestor—
“The intimate darkness of our most precious cognitive organ constantly reminds us – whether we like it or not – that the “inner” content of any human is never absolutely available to our cognitive powers. The most powerful among the senses, thus, recognizes the deepest human cognitive powerlessness precisely during the encounter with the most powerful sense organ of another human being. However carefully we approach or analyze it, the unique personal existence of every human always stays partly hidden in the darkness of the unknowing.
“And this is most expressively manifested when we encounter the small black dot that is the pupil of the eye. At this place we truly do “enter into the human soul,” but at the same time –confusingly and paradoxically – we realize that we cannot enter it. In this kind of darkness, we can get lost and go crazy, or feel warm and safe – for the same reason: because we cannot possess what it reveals/hides. This darkness can be scary or the most welcoming place in the world for the very same reason: because, herein, we recognize the utmost freedom of the human being.
“Through the encounter with the pupil of another human being, we fall directly into the other’s personal infinity, which can never be fully attained – even if our faces are only a few centimeters from each other. Experiencing this kind of infinity, finally, becomes the cognition of the utmost human freedom – freedom that does not depend even on itself.”
I added paragraph breaks to this excerpt from an article by Todor Mitrović from the Orthodox Arts Journal, on “The Epiphany of the Eye.”
I found the author’s ideas fascinating, and convincing. I am not an artist, but I do gaze upon icons quite a bit. When I do, I am looking through the “window,” not caring to analyze what features of the image are having what effect on me. This article nonetheless does help me to better appreciate the whole phenomenon. The artistry of an icon is not the most important thing about it, but contributes to its beautiful effect on our souls, our deepening relationship to Christ through prayer.
Gladsome Lights 