Pondering: I'm Not a Two-Part Invention

I've begun a beautiful book, Endless Life: poems of the mystics by Scott Cairns. I'm reading "slowly, / and thoroughly, tasting / each word's trouble."

from the Preface:

Noetic prayer is the heart of our matter; if it is acquired and sustained, it becomes the means by which we apprehend God's presence and His will. Nous is a tasty noun from which the adjective noetic springs--a word found throughout the Greek New Testament and throughout the writings of the fathers and mothers of the Church. In translation its spot as, say, the intellective aptitude of the heart is almost invariably lost. It is the center of the human person, where mind and matter meet most profoundly, and where the human person is mystically united to others and to God.

...the word is most often rendered as mind or reason or intellect, and these curious choices have become complicit in one of our unfortunate dichotomies, that of the human person into a two-part invention: a relatively deplorable vehicle (the body) and its somewhat more laudable and worthy passenger (the soul or spirit)...You might recognize its legacy as an ongoing, body-bashing error among a good bit of the Western Church, both high and low. A rediscovery of nous, therefore, would be a very good thing.

And this first poem from Saint Paul the Apostle, you may recognize.


Beyond Knowing
translated by Scott Cairns

I'll bet your wits won't let you
quite believe any of this; it is, however,
precisely so.

I know a man, a follower of Christ,
who, some fourteen years ago
was lifted clean

to the third heaven--whether this
occurred in the body or out of it,
I could not say,

though God knows. And this same man--
whether in the body or out of it,
I do not know,

though God surely knows--was lifted
(hear me!) clean to Paradise, and there
he heard such words

--so marvelous and grave--that no
human tongue could repeat them,
nor think to try.

Pondering: A Modern Psalm

Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields
By Robert Siegel

Let this day’s air praise the Lord—
Rinsed with gold, endless, walking the fields,
Blue and bearing the clouds like censers,
Holding the sun like a single note
Running through all things, a basso profundo
Rousing the birds to an endless chorus.

Let the river throw itself down before him,
The rapids laugh and flash with his praise,
Let the lake tremble about its edges
And gather itself in one clear thought
To mirror the heavens and the reckless gulls
That swoop and rise on its glittering shores.

Let the lawn burn continually before him
A green flame, and the tree’s shadow
Sweep over it like the baton of a conductor,
Let winds hug the housecorners and woodsmoke
Sweeten the world with her invisible dress,
Let the cricket wind his heartspring
And draw the night by like a child’s toy.

Read the rest here at Flourish magazine. It's well worth the time.