temporal

“It is not in vain that the fires of this divine discontent
have been kindled within.”

~ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica ch. 1


1

In an attempt to regain a sense of normal creativity, I’ve glanced back at the recent weeks of my journal entries en route to this essay. Indeed the apartment house which had been my home for many years was sold by the progeny whose family had owned the property for a century. All nine apartments had to be evacuated, and my household was the penultimate departure. For every person, the experience was emotional, as nobody wanted to leave the elegant old landmark, but it was necessary, and none of us wanted to face eventual eviction. The extreme stresses revolving around hunting for a place to live during this state’s worst-ever housing crisis was as intense as the trauma has been for me. In my determination to climb out of despair, I’ve kept on writing, along with going to work every day. The emergency move finally happened 4 days after the sale of the building closed, so I can say I outlasted the former landlords. Being gentrified out of one’s home is a woefully common plight in present-day southern Maine.

Four months of scouring the region for an apartment acquainted me with dozens of stories that remain with my thoughts. The picking being slimmer than nil, due to my income, I found a painfully small place- two neighborhoods away- unsurprisingly and absurdly expensive. Strain and exhaustion led to the current disappointment. Of course, the entire scenario would have been positively cathartic, had I found something really nice. There was no choice but to move, and despite having to sign a litigious 13-page lease, this can only be considered temporary. As for the old place, which is now being gutted as I write these words, I’m grateful for all I enjoyed there: all the dinner parties, guests, space, and general tranquility. At the same time, it is critically important to remember that I never owned a square inch of the edifice. Finally leaving an empty building, depleted of all my neighbors, revealed to me that it was merely a tired old shell. Settled and caring souls are what make for a home. The music of life had disappeared. A row house that comprised the lives of doctors’ offices, writers, a piano teacher, families, eccentrics, and artists is now an object of investment real estate. Like covid, the housing crisis has struck far too many people. I tried my best to desensitize for the move. I find that I cannot call the present apartment home; it is referred to as the place.


2

Amidst times that force countless among us to absorb increasingly greater expenses with decreasing resources, shall we permit ourselves the luxury of ambition? Is it unreasonable to expect advancement and stability during economic recessions and housing crises? How costly is hope? These recent months have shown me that housing is essentially for the affluent, and better employment is for insiders. From my diminished perch, the currently propagated logic that says inflation will slow down when there are fewer jobs looks terribly twisted. I know that I’d have found appropriate housing with a much better salary. For anyone, that would exceed the obvious. My own experience is the juxtaposition of fighting on through underemployment and inferior housing, upon the din of temporality and glaring imperfections at all hands. Indeed, I am very far from alone in such circumstances- yet speaking for myself, there must be improvement. The urgency is crippling, but my awareness of the temporal is oddly assuring. It is nothing particularly new or unique to have to get used to detestable things. In a place so cramped and unappealing, I’ve only unpacked clothing and books- along with kitchen and bathroom contents. From the boxes to my bookshelves (thus clearing some rarified patches of floor space), I reached for Thomas Merton’s Life and Holiness. In the book, he described how people and institutions tend to “cling to subtle forms of inertia and mental paralysis.” Merton challenges his readers to actively see to it that a consistent sense of sanctity must prevail, while facing truths of the imperfections in our situations. Having this is mind, I set about scrubbing the floors of the oppressive little apartment- which is more like a compartment- to make things as livable as possible, and so that I can begin the work of repacking for another move.


3

Temporary, for many, is a convenience- such as a rented car or a nice hotel room. In my present case, it’s painful and anguishing. As I try to figure out any useful divine purpose in this, when I write my daily journal entries that are equivalent to surfacing for air, I try to recall the value of the dynamic of the provisional. I remember well enough how the temporal used to be hopeful and exciting- or at times a kind of fear that something held dear was about to reach an unwelcome end. Now with a visegrip of a living space, immediately after losing my home, I am beyond eager for this captivity to be short-lived. The tote I had labeled “desk drawer” prior to moving is still next my empty writing table, which took weeks for me to unearth from beneath piles of boxes. It is unavoidably a hold-pattern kind of life which I am striving to redeem. Where is home, when one cannot go home? If anything, this is a difficult and protracted learning about attachments to places and things. At worst a prelude to mortality, and at best an opportunity to muse about an open-ended future.

For someone like me that instinctively looks for solutions to problems and routine conundrums, I want reasons, purposes, and strategies to get me out of wheelspinning ruts. Thinking about transcendence is a much better distraction than to let stomping elephantine upstairs neighbors hijack my wellbeing. I used go home for the peace and quiet; now I run away from the place to seek peace and quiet outdoors. Illegitimi non carborundum, as the pseudo-Latin goes. The name Hosea, in actual Hebrew, means salvation. Hosea the Prophet (8th century B.C.) famously wrote (chapter 10):

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, ‘til He comes to you raining righteousness.”

The imagery of fallow ground never leaves my inquisitive thoughts. What is its meaning? Well, the biblical prophetic voices have always had the purpose of turning people to the Light of life: to God and to vocations of being instruments of holiness for the benefit of others. Hosea essentially bids the reader to self-reform, though it requires a broken and contrite spirit. He used the agrarian language of the ancients, “plowing up the fallow ground” to make the foundation of life receptive to renewal. Cultivate the ground such that heart and soul are cleansed of all that corrupts, removing weeds and thorns impairing the causes of uprightness and good works of generosity. Then my thoughts were drawn to the portion in Jeremiah, warning against “sowing among thorns.”

Me being me, I want a meaning, a message, something I can implement like a marching order. And like the Psalmist, I contemplate the words and digest them like food. What’s this about unproductive, fallow ground and sowing among thorns? Maybe life in the comfortable old place in the West End (which I could afford) was fallow ground that needed to be tilled. Maybe the moneycraving landlords and their doings (and misdoings) were part of this casting away into the abyss. Perhaps I live in a city and a state that amount to fallow ground, complete with thornridden recipients of one well-composed cover letter and résumé after another. If this is true, I want to know right away, before any more life forces are wasted. I could look back and grind away more in persistent defeatedness, or strain to look ahead for the miraculous.


4

While disciplining my thoughts to steer away from the brink of tempting despondence, I write my determination to leverage the temporal toward promising horizons. The pandemic era got most people to internalize “making the best of a bad situation.” Trauma lingers and anxiety remains: the latter due to the expense and unsuitability of the place. There needs to be another move, a liberation from such an oppressively claustrophobic environment. Last month’s emergency move notwithstanding, precious resources were sown in the wrong kind of soil, thus any sort of harvest I can salvage is out-of-joint.

My better musings return to gathering some functional thoughts to try recognizing Divine purpose in this intense trial. As I transfer my personal effects from cardboard to reclosable plastic totes (since the place is too small for unpacking, and I want to be better prepared for the next move), I’m reacquainted with treasures I haven’t seen in four months. I get to see what I’ve missed and what I did not miss. From a box of childhood keepsakes, I unpacked my Felix the Cat- the sight of which brought me to tears, and I apologized to him for these crabby confines. Felix is a keeper, though I am finding other things to give away or sell, as I make yet another comprehensive purge. It’s all unsatisfactory, yet coping is necessary, reconciling without settling.

In the midst of this continuing crisis, as I’ve surely seen throughout the last six months, multitudes cannot even find small places to stack their treasures, and still more are homeless. Along with the health crisis which has claimed almost 7 million lives worldwide, maintaining a sense of context is critical. An impartial observer that notices the fortunate that get good jobs and have nice places to live, must also keep an awareness of the less-fortunate. My definition of home has become elusively fluid. The best thing said to me came from one of the wonderful librarians at the Boston Athenaeum, who compassionately wished that I’d find a sense of home at the library, and at any time I open my journal to write. Having made decades of pilgrimages, it’s easy to call to mind how writing is a movable feast- even with just a morsel, a notebook, and a pencil. Still, the pride of place I had for many years in a lofty Victorian row-house has been brought to something lowly, clenched, and yet overpriced. It’s nothing to be proud of, and will be easy to leave behind.

Boston Athenaeum terrace

If ambition really is a luxury, then I stand flagrantly overdrawn. Aspirations are pearls of great price and I intend to invest with them, rather than to hoard my credentials. Even in these harsh circumstances, I insist upon enriching myself with studies and knowledge. These pursuits long predate this year, and there have been plenty of rewarding adventures. Why not anticipate more? Living against the barricades of canned confinement and treadmill workdays must amount to a launch into something healthful and lifegiving. Several years ago, a counselor to whom I described my work situation replied with a memorable turn of phrase: “Well, that burns the platform hotter, doesn’t it?” It’s not to say I feel that I’m owed anything; it’s more like a marrowdeep desire to live and work in better environs. The perseverance muscles are flexed, as is the longing for the fulfilment of two careers’ worth of cultivated abilities.

depths

“Pieces of coal, hewn from the deeps of the earth,
Here in my hand, spectra of lights retain;
Crystal on crystal knit, back in its birth-
Sun meeting sun again.”

~ Huw Menai, Pieces of Coal

formed from this earth

We are formed from this earth. Like the coals drawn from untold and lightless depths, the soul is drawn to surge upward to divine fires. With the coal-blackened laborers and the burdened haulers, I, too, know the work is relentless. Nothing less than conscientious effort is needed for me to arise and walk this earth with strength and wisdom. Through the winter, I’ve had a fragment of coal on my desk. It is from very far beneath the ground, brought up in untold tons by unseen hands that toil and risk their lives’ safety. Souls whose wildernesses are subterranean, whose ocean is the earth’s crust, and their enormously hard-worked paths are confined to narrow tunnels.

In the work life I endured that enveloped my twenties, my average workweek saw very little daylight. Prolonged travail in complete darkness disrupted my sense of what time it was- save for deadlines. Further and broader still, extended overtime and intenseness in a foul and exploitive darkness seemed to meld the years. I don’t know how much more of my earnest energies I’d have added to that job, had I not found myself in a tide of layoffs. It was confining and toxic- though only one level underground, but being a daily reality, difficult to break away from. I free-fell into the light of day, and though it was barely ten years ago, some of that shock of life-contrast does remain in my ordinary thoughts. Re-evaluating one’s continuum sets a soul on the verge of self-definition. Aquinas wrote of how the reality of creation stands at the brink of the world. Every time we dare to behold the wonder of creative power, we stand at the edge of the known world.

depth and depths

What breathes life into dry ground and stone ledges? Along the roads, still layered with months of sand and grit, the landscape remains barren with granite, ice, and spines of trees. Outstretched branches try to collect enough rain. They do not wait in vain to be reshaped, even as fire transforms masses of anthracite to set colossi into motion. Often when we think of our sources, we refer to the ground of our being as though we had a geographical idea of our rootedness. But surely my basis isn’t limited to the substrata beneath my feet. Might there be roots nearby, far above, and even right alongside my hands writing these words? Speaking of a “center,” or a “core,” may confine us into imagining the spirit that gives us life begins within us, rather than respirating through us.

Among my disciplines is an effort to avoid clichés, or at least unclarified terminology. In this society, we accept too many catchphrases, pat lines, and sound bites- and it seems counter-cultural to take the time to explore and more thoroughly comprehend. It’s fine to conscientiously “go to one’s center.” All right, go to the source. And then what? You just stand there? Not at all. I’d like to think life is more a working library than a sealed-off museum. The source is for our immersion. Mine the depths of the soul; jump into that water of life. Traverse that guardrail from spectator to participant. Looking at a sumptuous meal is one thing, but savory dining is quite another interaction. Even in the early morning, I find it vital enough to give space to recollect thoughts- but that coffee should be downed while it’s hot. If stopping at the shoreline of the Source isn’t satisfactory, take that as a good sign. Indeed, as the Holy Spirit takes hold, the unresisting natural course is to respond and pursue. My understanding of immersion begins with internalizing the wisdom that I gradually comprehend. “So walk ye in him,” wrote Paul, as he wrote his listeners to practice their professions of faith. For me it is to seek more of the source, and even to become part of it. To arise with a constant gratitude that mirrors the constancy of the wellspring of life.

coal and work

The coal on my desk was given to me by a railroad trackman, along the waterfront. The heap of coal reminded me of the histories that described black mountains of anthracite on Portland wharves that were regularly offloaded from massive schooners. Nowadays, we rarely see such elements as those which are consumed in the operations of our days. These pieces of coal may have been cut from seams that were two or three kilometers underground. But they look like they could be from the Moon. As it were, reverse-meteorites from darkest inner-space. When struck by light, the fragments reflect as glittering silver. During my fourteen years in photographic manufactures, we’d quip about our labors as “silver mining,” with hours in which we could not see our hands in front of our faces. I remember driving to Pictou, Nova Scotia and stopping in Stellarton. It was only months after the Westray Mine disaster, and I wanted to pay my respects to the more than two dozen miners that perished at their work far beneath the ground. It was a rain-spattered afternoon, and amidst a mournful and desolate stillness, I stood and sent my deepest prayers to the living and to what memories they had of the deceased. May they rest in peace. Almost reluctantly I took a few pictures, since I often think through the camera. About a half-dozen years later, the entire Westray complex was torn down- the ashes returned to the earth.

Westray Mine; Plymouth, Nova Scotia, Sept.1993 - after the disaster.

antiquity and present

Bringing our souls up from the depths means a descending of mind into profoundest heart- and there we mine the bituminous ore the Spirit can ignite. The ancients whose thoughts are compiled in the Philokalia shared their imagery of prayer as being a descent into the heart of our being. Imaginably inspired by their desert wildernesses, inwardness always seems equated with ways modern westerners refer to upwardness: vast yet intimate. It is fascinating to notice what appears as an inversion of upward and downward, perhaps not intended by the ancients as a reversal of popular perceptions. They described contemplation as a search through the depths of the human heart, prayer being the descent. In these journeys, it is necessary to navigate through the darkness of one’s most haunting and destructive thoughts- armed only with faith and a disciplined mind. With a view that considered thoughts as separate from self, St. Neilos the Ascetic wrote, in the 5th century, of how “the mind descends into the darkness of our thoughts.” But indeed, we are not to simply dwell in such crepuscular paralysis. Realizing the presence of mercy, and that it comes not from but through us, we are brought to a humility that cleanses the heart. Arriving at a recognition like this, even in tears, as Nikitas Stithatos noted:

“...your consciousness of the love of God will grow lucid and you will begin to contemplate the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven and the inner essences of created things. The more you descend into the depths of the Spirit, the more you plumb the abyss of humility.”

Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, observed how the brink of creation is known in our depths. He equated the darkness encountered by the soul as Divine mystery. When we realize how creation was called into being from nothingness, our sense of wonder defies plain sight, and we plunge into truths we cannot see. But going forward must be without hesitation, even if one is “caught between the terror of mystery’s invitation to step out into the darkness- and our mind’s insistence on knowing the truth.” Comfort is found, alas, in realizing one’s mind is not the full measure of all truth. In this instance, vastness takes the astonishing form of reassurance.

Miners' Memorial: Springhill, Nova Scotia - 2003.

source

Still amidst times of seismic upheaval, I know the vitality of vigilantly drawing from sources of strength and trust. And as I heard myself say to a friend the other day, it can be as unspectacularly consoling as opening a cherished book and seeing the soothing words. In the swirl of the fluidity of these times, I take heart that God is both steadfast and creating force. As strengthening as it is to know what the ancient Psalmist called “the everpresent help in times of trouble,” I try assuring myself of the unusual dynamism of unknowing. Rather than to presumptuously assess that which is around blind corners and distances beyond my field of vision, I’d sooner take stock in the openness of what is yet to be. God is ever so much nearer than I thought. As near now as in the murky, damp, cement-floored darkness that I’d grown accustomed to as I made my living for a fourteen year span. What fascinates me now is this unseeing sense of certitude even though I am not sure how dark the figurative glass of comprehension, through which I must navigate, will remain. Next week, I’ll return the coal fragments to the heap near the railroad where it will all be used. And I’ll continue to wonder at the prospect of whether depth is measured from above or below, or if the spiritual life even has a fixed surface from which to determine measurements. Is the pitch darkness in an earth-gripped tunnel or a lightproof corridor as close at hand as the sky? The Divine is as near as the notebook in which I write my words. Indeed, proximity may need only one reference point.

capacitatem

“Therefore, be attentive to time and the way you spend it. Nothing is more precious.
This is evident when you recall that in one tiny moment heaven may be gained or lost.
God, the master of time, never gives the future. God only gives the present, moment by moment, for this is the law of the created order, and cannot be contradicted in creation.
Time is for humanity, not humanity for time.
God, the Lord of nature, will never anticipate our choices which follow one after another in time. We can never be able to excuse ourselves at the last judgement, saying to God, ‘You overwhelmed me with the future when I was only capable of living in the present.’”

~ The Cloud of Unknowing (14th century)

Anonymously, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote his observations and counsels, intending the words for novices in his monastic community. The unnamed author essentially mentored people for whom the consecrated life must have been quite new. One can just imagine the stories he must have heard from postulants, struggling to distinguish between frustrations of the past and doubts they naturally confronted. The quote surely attests to the spiritual teacher’s addressing the serious matter of discouragement. Regret and remorse are powerful emotions, and enough to deter anyone’s growth and renewal. The author knew the ageless anguish of those who, in futility, wished to repair their pasts while also trying to comprehend the roads before them. In the monastic life, as with this uncertain society, one’s haunting misgivings manifest as desert temptations that threaten to isolate. One needn’t even be a novice to be swerved off course by a sense of being just too far behind the metaphorical eight-ball to not only regain one’s steps, but also to know progress of new terrain. Kempis once pointed out how our spiritual visitations are either in the form of challenge or consolation. If this is so, then both circumstances inevitably present the need for a cultivated discipline of remaining encouraged. A practice so attentive, and yet not centered on self, means keeping close at hand that which inspires, as well as determining what must be kept out of one’s midst. The protagonist of Pilgrim’s Progress follows the admonishing to “fly to God by prayer,” echoing the ancient wisdom of unburdening oneself and casting our cares upon God who ever invites us.


When I think of the reference points that restore courage to my heart, I wonder how all that is good can be so easily forgotten. In the practice of strengthening a sense of assurance, it now occurs to me how simply one can recollect and take stock of the present in order to rejoin the continuum. Here, a reaching back for a past impression becomes a practice of great value- delicate yet powerful. Memory is itself a bottomless mystery of abstraction and objectivity, of idea and actuality. Indeed a two-edged sword to deftly wield, with enough anecdotes to incriminate, but indeed with a potentially forceful trove of grounding knowledge to reassure one’s being. Given a quiet moment, be it a stoplight or a long walk, any one of us can recall comforting or encouraging words, reinforcing events, even their accompanying faces and voices. Perhaps your recollections include the light and air, the colors and musical sounds encapsulated in the occasions in which you felt profound purpose and a sense of being alive to the very instant. But in the distillation of what we remember, there is a refining intuition that informs our choices to keep and to release. Keep and maintain what inspires and can be shared. Relinquish and release what ceases to help and that which clouds the pursuit of what is holy.




Speaking as a professional archivist, I can attest to the wise practice of keeping only the documentation that is of enduring value. Assessing manuscripts requires a learned instinct for recognizing records with evidential value, but indeed to be able to discern documents of research value. This is to say, we cannot keep everything and the careful and costly work of conservation is reserved to the documents deemed worthwhile to preserve. What is worth preserving? Generally, the best way for me to know is to read through all the materials, understand their context, and use a subtractive process. For practical reasons, we must always consider how much space the by-products of material culture occupy. Indeed, there are instances when our best practical and axiological assessment causes us to make room for something extraordinary. This also holds true for all of life’s dimensions. Just the other day, for the first time in my life- and I have always lived by the ocean- a hat flew right off my head in a wind gust. All I could do was watch the cap tumble across the tilting deck and into the choppy wake of sea forever lost. After a momentary sulk, I rationalized that I can just find another if I really miss the hat after all. The best part was that it got me writing- and on a windy starboard-side I held the notebook with a good grip. My thoughts turned to how we change what we consider to be “indispensable,” with time and our own evolving priorities. Imagine the ideas and things held highest at different intervals of your life’s journey. For years I would assiduously file my negatives and slides in a set of fireproof strongboxes. In recent years they have been joined- and at times replaced- by my journals, family pictures, and all the letters I saved from my grandmother. Ideas and perceptions have strongboxes of their own, albeit unseen. Concepts can take up a lot of space. There’s a far-reaching expression in the gospel about binding and setting loose; what we cannot release will bog us down later, and what is conscientiously sown now will manifest at a time we cannot know. When we are anchored down by obsolete burdens, we cannot be borne up on the winds that fill our sails with affirmative direction.

Considering the exercise of making room for what ceases to be of constructive use, I begin to imagine the soul’s capaciousness in the way the trunk of my car efficiently holds only so much material. Capacity has a connotation when it comes to items we can undamagingly pack, as well as it concerns the images, thoughts, and sentiments we hold. A person’s capacity indicates more than a passive ability to receive or contain. Strength of mind brings us to capably absorb impressions and make sense of them. At the same time, the pace of living and the desire for learning and formation makes it necessary to pare down the excesses and release what ceases to encourage.

Outdated notions resemble broken mechanisms that we often find with “out of order” signs on them, or vehicles with “out of service” marquées that will not take us anywhere. Such blunt mottos can work both ways: there are “no admittance” signs to represent closed avenues, and surely I can say “out of service” right back- to ways of thinking, as well as to directions. It “does not serve” to help my own forward motion, or to support anyone else’s. Becoming a vessel with more spacious capacity, it is possible for me to notice and to maintain those open windows needed for the Eternal to move through me. Releasing my grip on sharply-focused remembrances of wrongs does not eliminate what I’ve learned from their significance, it just releases me from them, from things that serve no purpose. “These things of humanity,” wrote Aquinas, “prayers, merits, sufferings, and all the rest are by no means futile; they are the coins by which heaven is bought, not because they change the will of God but because they fulfill it.” Making room for newness of vision and thought, in the spirit of trust, is revealing an expanse of capacity, even an unbinding that allows for an absorption with God. If “capaciousness” could be called a process, indeed the abilities involved in releasing and making space will be vital for the length and breadth of the journey.