Waiting for the New Year and more

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

~ T.S. Eliot, East Coker

Surrounded by boxes and packing up books, desk tchotchkes, and the charms that surround my workspace, I hear Eliot whispering in my thoughts. I want him to go away.

I first met Thomas Stearns Eliot in seminary. Somehow I had gone through high school and college without ever having read or even heard of T. S. Eliot when a girlfriend talked me into taking a whole semester’s course on the poet. It was life changing.

It re-awakened a very early interest in poetry that had disappeared underneath an avalanche of philosophy, pot, and drunkenness. The Four Quartets wedged me into theology from an undergraduate degree in philosophy by offering a sophisticated poetic rendering of holiness that tickled both rational thought and imagination. Then I met Anne Sexton and Eliot seemed stuffy and pretentious.

Still,
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing…
stands up with any line from any time; scripture, verse or prose. The whole stanza is brilliant and that’s why it is in my head. It is so good, so perfectly written, and so profoundly true on every level that it remains in my head all the time. Then, in moments like these, it also ignites the fires of my heart and gut.

I am in a time of not-hope; when movement delivers stillness and all faith, hope, and love require waiting.

Saying good-bye, again and too soon, and arriving into the hull of a community full of unknowns and a future unknowable, the hope and the faith and the love are all in the waiting. When I abused substances this was a time of deliberate numbing but I have learned too many times the hard way, that entering and fully feeling the swirl of emotion is called for instead. I don’t like it at all, but that is what I try to do. T.S. Eliot is now one of the voices that reminds me to feel instead of numb and detach, which is why part of me wishes he would go away.

Still, I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing…
keeps repeating itself as Pagels, Brueggemann, and the Writer’s Market are lowered into boxes for the journey.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I want to wish you a Happy New Year, and thank you for being a visitor, follower, or friend of subversivepreacher.org. It is a privilege to surf this reformation toward religion-less Christianity with you, and to know there are so many wonderful and insightful spiritual people sharing this website.

This year subversivepreacher reached viewers in 105 countries, and witnessed an annual increase of six thousand viewers from the former, pre-website blog – 21,000 views in 2015. Thank you for being a part of this worldwide spiritual community of seekers, and please, remember that you are not in this alone.

In peace,

Cam Miller
subversivepreacher.org