Tag Archives: truth

The Burning of the Books

books, poetry, politics, ,

THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cart loads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me. Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!

-Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956

 Opera Square in Berlin, Germany on May 10, 1933

 

Where the breath condenses.

poetry, winter, , , , , ,

INSIDE

I am my own
geology, strata on strata
of the imagination, tufa
dreams, the limestone mind
honeycombed by the running away
of too much thought. Examine
me, tap with your words’
hammer, awaken memories
of fire. It is so long
since I cooled. Inside me,
stalactite and stalagmite,
ideas have formed and become
rigid. To the crowd
I am all outside.
To the pot-holing few there is a way
in along passages that become
narrower and narrower,
that lead to the chamber
too low to stand up in,
where the breath condenses
to the cold and locationless
cloud we call truth. It
is where I think.

-R.S. Thomas

I began to read a biography of R.S. Thomas a while back. Its tone was unsympathetic, and as with many biographies of writers, it didn’t facilitate my relationship with the poet. With Thomas, if you want to be any kind of friend, you have to accept his particular “geology,” which is full of rocks and stones and cold clouds, all waiting for that day when the sun will shine fully on the landscape, burn off the fog, and never set again. I am content to wait with him, and not to try to “figure him out” in this life.

Where I grew up our winters frequently featured cold fog. Foggy days such as I actually enjoy on the beach nearest me, when the thermometer stays above 50, are way different from the 27-degree tule fog of my youth, which can hang on and chill the spirit all day.

Thomas seems to be saying that those few people who stumble into his inside, where he thinks, will not find a comfortable  place to rest. It’s a place without location, somehow. Whatever can be felt with the senses, it’s cold and cramped. There is little solace in abstract truth.

Even the request, “Examine me… tap… awaken memories of fire” refers to something of the mind: memories. But if this is a prayer, the real God who is not a memory or an idea, but is the only one who has Being in Himself, might come and be present in the present. Not just to revive memories of past events, but to create actual warmth and spaciousness in the soul. He has been called a consuming fire, and the Sun of Righteousness. He is definitely what the wintry and frozen soul needs.

“But for you who revere my name,
the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.
And you will go out and leap like calves
released from the stall.”

Malachi 4:2

Expect kissing and fruit.

poetry, Psalms, ,

The poetry of this Psalm enlivens my spirit with its many action verbs that evoke the overflowing love and energies of God as we humans experience Him, being turned, quickened, gladdened; hearing our Father speak peace and living in His Kingdom where righteousness and peace kiss, truth springs up, and fruit naturally grows on the trees.

O God, Thou wilt turn and quicken us,
and Thy people shall be glad in Thee.

Show us, O Lord, Thy mercy,
and Thy salvation do Thou give unto us.

I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me;
for He will speak peace to His people and to His saints
and to them that turn their heart unto Him.

Surely nigh unto them that fear Him is His salvation,
that glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth are met together,
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth is sprung up out of the earth,
and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.

Yea, for the Lord will give goodness,
and our land shall yield her fruit.

Righteousness shall go before Him
and shall set His footsteps in the way.

-From Psalm 84

Rousing us with sharp stings.

quotes, reality, , ,

Our Lord had no design of constructing a system of truth in intellectual forms. The truth of the moment in its relation to him, The Truth, was what he spoke. He spoke out of a region of realities which he knew could only be suggested — not represented — in the forms of intellect and speech. With vivid flashes of life and truth his words invade our darkness, rousing us with sharp stings of light to will our awaking, to arise from the dead and cry for the light which he can give, not in the lightning of words only, but in indwelling presence and power.

–George MacDonald