![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaThese past few months, I keep returning to a book ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frostmorn sent to me, a collection of essays by Roger Housden titled Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again. There were a couple of things that have stood out at me, but none more so than the following poem. I've returned to it several times trying to decide if it said what I thought it was saying:
EACH MOMENT A WHITE BULL STEPS SHINING INTO THE WORLD
by Jane Hirschfield
If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.
Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.
Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.
Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.
And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant –
stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.
Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
Let the envious gods take back what they can.
Roger Housden offer's the following interpretation (also available at his website):
White bulls come in many forms. Often, we hope to pass them by. Even so, a bull – no ordinary bull, but a white one, pure, unsullied, fresh with the dew of heaven – is likely, at one time or another, to step forward, shining, into your life or mine. The bull is the epitome of strength, power, and libido. It offers us drive, direction, and purpose; a burst of new life.
It is also dangerous and frightening; frightening because you have probably never encountered such a wild beast before. Perhaps your life was coasting along swimmingly, fulfilling enough if fairly predictable. And then out of nowhere, in this very moment, something storms into your world that you cannot fail to notice; something strange, fascinating, overwhelming, even. And your comfortable, protecting circle is suddenly broken. Everything is thrown out of kilter, the center does not hold, the dishes are flying about the room.
This, precisely this, Jane Hirshfield suggests in this magnificent poem, is a gift from the gods. A gift, and not the curse we may take it to be. Our life asks us to accept it with as much grace as we are able – as if it were the very thing we would have chosen for ourselves. This kind of wildness storming into our living room could take the form of almost anything – a sudden illness, or loss of a loved one, perhaps; a spiritual awakening or crisis, a sudden reconfiguring of your work, and of course, the storm of love. Whatever breaks open the soul, pierces the lull of the daily round, is always a dangerous opportunity.
Monday morning, after an extremely long (paper) journal entry that at last came pouring out after a miserable months of ill health and ill will, I realized that this poem said something to me, too. Not just about the acceptance of gifts, but the losing of them.
As you've most likely guessed, I've been mulling over the shocking reappearance of Jason in the supermarket last week. He called last night. I didn't pick up. I haven't felt ready to talk to him, even though I've wanted nothing more this past year or more.
I did nothing wrong in the way I responded to Jason's reappearance in my life in 2007. It was a gift, like the other pivotal events of that year, (leaving my job at the publishers, meeting my dear friend D) descending unexpected, god-like, stepping without precedence or explanation into my life. My error was how I responded to his loss, a shutting down into a kind of emotional half-life, an acceptance that the inevitable sacrifice and disappointment was the way of the world, and no more than I expected or deserved, something that's reverberated far beyond my experiences with him and into the rest of my existence. (Working at the hospital, anyone?)
To me, Hirshfield speaks less of the giving of the 'white bull' in this poem, than of its inevitable loss. Rarely do these things step into our lives merely to make us happy. It was then that realized I had mistaken the gift. I mistook the HAVING of the thing for the LOVING of it:
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
she writes. Let the envious gods take back what they can.
This put a totally different spin on things, but I can't really put it into words. Suffice to say it was enough relief to allow me to sleep last night after a week of manic, wakeful, evenings, with my mind racing, while my body struggled to keep up.
There are lots of other poems in this book that deal with similar topics: the needing/loving divide, the mind/body problem, but what really struck me is how many of them speak to the interstices of incarnation. It strikes me over and over again that while scientists and philosophers are always hammering away at the mysteries of sentience/consciousness,* for the mystics its all about incarnation. One questions how meat can have spirit. The other questions why spirit would descend into meat. This poem---like most the poems in this book---is definitely from the point of view of the mystics. The sensual pleasure and beauty of the bull is apparent, experienced in a very tactile way, up through its very sacrifice. (The price of incarnation, as we mortals know, is heavy.) But the gift itself is spiritual. And while the gods send this 'gift' down in the shape of meat, determining its shape and ultimate destiny, they cannot control what emerges from meat into spirit. I'm not explaining it well, but it certainly bears more thinking about.
Today is Ash Wednesday, and questions of 'smudging the smudge' aside, I've always appreciated what I like to think of as the Lenten Challenge. I haven't put words to mine for this year, (nevertheless it's always a personal, private thing, and is not necessary, or even desirable to share) but I thought I would make mention of it anyway: 40 days is an excellent period to break a bad habit and make a new start.
S
[* I love Prof. Morton's comment that perhaps we're expecting too much of sentience. Perhaps it's nothing more than 'on' which would count for computers and most appliances.]
frostmorn sent to me, a collection of essays by Roger Housden titled Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again. There were a couple of things that have stood out at me, but none more so than the following poem. I've returned to it several times trying to decide if it said what I thought it was saying:EACH MOMENT A WHITE BULL STEPS SHINING INTO THE WORLD
by Jane Hirschfield
If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.
Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.
Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.
Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.
And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant –
stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.
Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
Let the envious gods take back what they can.
Roger Housden offer's the following interpretation (also available at his website):
White bulls come in many forms. Often, we hope to pass them by. Even so, a bull – no ordinary bull, but a white one, pure, unsullied, fresh with the dew of heaven – is likely, at one time or another, to step forward, shining, into your life or mine. The bull is the epitome of strength, power, and libido. It offers us drive, direction, and purpose; a burst of new life.
It is also dangerous and frightening; frightening because you have probably never encountered such a wild beast before. Perhaps your life was coasting along swimmingly, fulfilling enough if fairly predictable. And then out of nowhere, in this very moment, something storms into your world that you cannot fail to notice; something strange, fascinating, overwhelming, even. And your comfortable, protecting circle is suddenly broken. Everything is thrown out of kilter, the center does not hold, the dishes are flying about the room.
This, precisely this, Jane Hirshfield suggests in this magnificent poem, is a gift from the gods. A gift, and not the curse we may take it to be. Our life asks us to accept it with as much grace as we are able – as if it were the very thing we would have chosen for ourselves. This kind of wildness storming into our living room could take the form of almost anything – a sudden illness, or loss of a loved one, perhaps; a spiritual awakening or crisis, a sudden reconfiguring of your work, and of course, the storm of love. Whatever breaks open the soul, pierces the lull of the daily round, is always a dangerous opportunity.
Monday morning, after an extremely long (paper) journal entry that at last came pouring out after a miserable months of ill health and ill will, I realized that this poem said something to me, too. Not just about the acceptance of gifts, but the losing of them.
As you've most likely guessed, I've been mulling over the shocking reappearance of Jason in the supermarket last week. He called last night. I didn't pick up. I haven't felt ready to talk to him, even though I've wanted nothing more this past year or more.
I did nothing wrong in the way I responded to Jason's reappearance in my life in 2007. It was a gift, like the other pivotal events of that year, (leaving my job at the publishers, meeting my dear friend D) descending unexpected, god-like, stepping without precedence or explanation into my life. My error was how I responded to his loss, a shutting down into a kind of emotional half-life, an acceptance that the inevitable sacrifice and disappointment was the way of the world, and no more than I expected or deserved, something that's reverberated far beyond my experiences with him and into the rest of my existence. (Working at the hospital, anyone?)
To me, Hirshfield speaks less of the giving of the 'white bull' in this poem, than of its inevitable loss. Rarely do these things step into our lives merely to make us happy. It was then that realized I had mistaken the gift. I mistook the HAVING of the thing for the LOVING of it:
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
she writes. Let the envious gods take back what they can.
This put a totally different spin on things, but I can't really put it into words. Suffice to say it was enough relief to allow me to sleep last night after a week of manic, wakeful, evenings, with my mind racing, while my body struggled to keep up.
There are lots of other poems in this book that deal with similar topics: the needing/loving divide, the mind/body problem, but what really struck me is how many of them speak to the interstices of incarnation. It strikes me over and over again that while scientists and philosophers are always hammering away at the mysteries of sentience/consciousness,* for the mystics its all about incarnation. One questions how meat can have spirit. The other questions why spirit would descend into meat. This poem---like most the poems in this book---is definitely from the point of view of the mystics. The sensual pleasure and beauty of the bull is apparent, experienced in a very tactile way, up through its very sacrifice. (The price of incarnation, as we mortals know, is heavy.) But the gift itself is spiritual. And while the gods send this 'gift' down in the shape of meat, determining its shape and ultimate destiny, they cannot control what emerges from meat into spirit. I'm not explaining it well, but it certainly bears more thinking about.
Today is Ash Wednesday, and questions of 'smudging the smudge' aside, I've always appreciated what I like to think of as the Lenten Challenge. I haven't put words to mine for this year, (nevertheless it's always a personal, private thing, and is not necessary, or even desirable to share) but I thought I would make mention of it anyway: 40 days is an excellent period to break a bad habit and make a new start.
S
[* I love Prof. Morton's comment that perhaps we're expecting too much of sentience. Perhaps it's nothing more than 'on' which would count for computers and most appliances.]
