"At Least it Requires Awe..."

     Du-oh!  We're already 12 days into National Poetry Month and I haven't said a word about it yet.  My lofty ambition is to post something everyday this month related to my favorite art form, unless napping is an art form.

     Today I was ordering books for a fall course on British poetry and trying to decide who to include on the syllabus.  Leafing through Derek Walcott's Collected Poems, I remembered a crazy night many years ago shouting some of these poems out of a car window as the Dudette drove us down an empty Texas highway. We needed protection, a talisman, something to ward off the evil spirits of what we feared might be wide open spaces and tiny, closed minds.  So, like a lunatic, I start reading aloud.  First, just in the car, then with the windows rolled down, then hollerin' and carryin' on, declaiming Walcott's words to our amusement and to the certain dread of surrounding cattle and the occasional bewildered farmer.

  Poetry makes people weird.

  Not that Walcott is weird at all.  Oh, far from it.  He's a Caribbean poet, Nobel Prize winner, and the author of such lines as, "Things do not explode, / they fail, they fade" in a poem aptly titled "Endings."  That one always gets me.

  In "Volcano" he suggests that one could give up writing and become the ideal reader of the great writers instead:  "At least it requires awe / which has been lost to our time."  And then he delivers his one-two punch:

so many people have seen everything,
so many people can predict,
so many refuse to enter the silence
of victory, the indolence
that burns at the core,
so many are no more than
erect ash, like the cigar,
so many take thunder for granted.
How common is the lightning,
how lost the leviathans
we no longer look for!
There were giants in those days.
In those days they made good cigars.
I must read more carefully.

  I used to hand out this poem on the first day of any class so the little tykes might actually read (much less carefully). "How lost the leviathans we no longer look for!"  Now there's a line. 

  However, if you want to be blown away, run, don't walk, to your nearest Google and read "Love After Love."  It. Will. Rock. Your. World.  It's a leviathan, a talisman.  It is the silence of victory itself.  Money-back guarantee.

This Day of Eggs

  


Happy Easter everyone!  It's a glorious Day of Eggs here in the 'Ham.  

   Since, as Picasso said, "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal," I have stolen the title of today's blog from BFF Cintra Wilson.  Yes, I'm name-dropping here, but I'm fixin' to name-drop Jesus, so just hang on to your hats.

   My dear friend from high school, Donald (a.k.a The Señor because we took Spanish together) posted words of wisdom on the Facebook regarding Easter.  I'm one of those annoying people who want holidays to mean something.  Yeah, blah blah blah eat a lotta food.  Usually candy is involved whether it's trick-or-treating or candy canes or chocolate bunnies, but what is the deeper, cool-like-Anne-Lamott-cool story behind holidays that can make them fresh again?  Usually these questions receive an eye-roll from some, a Cadbury egg stuffed in my mouth from others.  Things could be worse.

  So, The Señor says this:

  "Whether you are Christian or not, you have to appreciate the essence of today.  When you are down and out, finding your spirit brings about renewal and new life.  It's why we love rags-to-riches stories, dramatic comebacks, and last second reversals for victory.  It's the story of all of us.... Surviving loss and finding renewal."

   Gracias, Señor.  That works for me.  Those words alone are enough to chew on, but then I got a little lagniappe in church with the boys this morning.  We're reading the resurrection story from the book of John, and a small detail catches my eye.  Our preacher makes great points about the importance of hope (I dig that) and how Jesus first appeared to a woman (I really dig that), and then we get to this:

   "[Simon Peter] saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself."  (John 20: 6-7)

  What an odd narrative point.  The research I found about this says little more than Peter, unlike the other disciples, ventures into the tomb and sees that it is empty, hence resurrection. 

  Ok, fine. I get it.  But here's the Big Question no one asks: Who folded the linens?   Who "rolled up in a place by itself" the cloth that had been on Jesus' head?  Who is the maid?  I'm not being blasphemous here.  I am struck by this detail.  Did Christ, in the biggest moment of his life, take time carefully to re-wind what must have been many feet of bloody linen, and if so, why?  

  There are four accounts of Jesus' resurrection that, of course, complicate the question. Matthew describes an angel guarding the tomb.  No one ever goes in.  Mark describes a "young man" in the tomb who might be an angel.  He talks to the women, but there is no mention of any burial garments.  Luke says "Peter saw the linen clothes by themselves," but no mention that anything was folded because Luke moves straight on to the "amazed" at the resurrection part.  And who can blame him?

   But John feels the need to paint a little scenery.  Linens over here; cloth on Jesus' head over there. (Side note: The King James version calls the cloth a "napkin," but that just seems silly.)  Maybe the "young man" in Mark's account cleaned up a bit before the women showed up, but we don't know this.  Taking John's account on its own terms, we find an empty tomb and, well, a lack of mess.

   There's a message here, I think.

   

   I want to think that Jesus did the folding.  It's not that I need to believe in an OCD, Martha Stewart kind of Savior in the same way that Ricky Bobby needs to believe in "8 lb. 6 oz. new born infant Jesus" or Cal Naughton requires his Jesus to be "in a tuxedo shirt because it says I want to be formal but I'm here to party."  Rather, I like the idea that maybe part of the Easter message is Hey, rebirth is messy.  Sometimes our first instinct is to get our bearings and clean up the joint.  I know when I feel overwhelmed, the first thing I do is wash dishes.  Despite His divinity, surely the same man who felt apprehension in the Garden of Gethsemane felt a little overwhelmed at just, um, coming back to life.  He knew it was gonna happen, but still....

   And He must have known how the we'd react.  The tomb is empty.  If the body were stolen, the linens would be gone.  If the linens were strewn all over the place, it might look more like a scene from Quentin Tarantino.  Taking in an empty tomb is shocking enough.  That little touch, that tiny tidbit of folding considers anyone who might notice such things, or anyone who would want to keep the linens but not want to have to deal with dried blood and decay.

  We take care of each other.  In the raw wake of survival we don't have to live in disorder and disarray.  I imagine Jesus, as crazy as this sounds, thanking the things that held his body during his death, then folding them, placing them, and moving on to the next beautiful thing.  We need to honor the things that hold us together and honor the ones who look for us.  

  I'm going to think of this next year when we the little ones are looking for eggs, and at the end of the day when we fold up our Easter best until next year.  I may be reading it all wrong, but it's a nice thought.