Joseph Conrad's "The Censor of Plays"

In 1907, Joseph Conrad wrote "The Censor of Plays." The full text appears below.

Conrad tried his hand as a playwright only once, producing a one-act play that the audience rejected. After he had finished the script he learned of the existence of the Censor of Plays, and this inspired the following satirical essay about the obscure civil servant who Conrad felt had no place in twentieth-century England.

Given the vulgarity and tasteless quality of many contemporary British (and American) plays, one wonders if Conrad might not be tempted to reconsider his assessment of censorship were he living today. (Of course, the question of censorship is as old as Plato (pro) and Aristotle (con), and we shall not resolve the matter here, but note that Conrad does hold Jules Lemaitre, the French drama critic and "censor of plays" in high regard.)

What follows is a delightful piece of writing that reveals Conrad's love of things English and his association of "mustiness" and "monstrous illusion" and with the Middle Ages and the Orient.

The Censor of Plays

An Appreciation

By Joseph Conrad

A couple of years ago I was moved to write a one-act play - and I lived long enough to accomplish the task. We live and learn. When the play was finished I was informed that it had to be licensed for performance. Thus I learned of the existence of the Censor of Plays. I may say without vanity that I am intelligent enough to have been astonished by that piece of information: for facts must stand in some relation to time and space, and I was aware of being in England - in the twentieth-century England. The fact did not fit the date and the place. That was my first thought. It was, in short, an improper fact. I bet you to believe that I am writing in all seriousness and am weighing my words scrupulously.

Therefore I don't say inappropriate. I say improper - that is: something to be ashamed of. And at first this impression was confirmed by the obscurity in which the figure embodying this after all considerable fact had its being. The Censor of Plays! His name was not in the mouths of all men. Far from it. He seemed stealthy and remote. There was about that figure the scent of the far East, like the peculiar atmosphere of a Mandarin's back yard, and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, that epoch when mankind tried to stand still in a monstrous illusion of final certitude attained in morals, intellect and conscience.

It was a disagreeable impression. But I reflected that probably teh censorship of plays was an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a survival, since it seemed obviously at variance with the genius of the people, but an heirloom of past ages, a bizarre and imported curiosity preserved because of that weakness one has for one's old possessions apart from any instrinsic value; one more object of exotic virtù, an Oriental potiche, a magot chinois conceived by a childish and extravagant imagination, but allowed to stand in stolid impotence in the twilight of the upper shelf.

Thus I quieted my uneasy mind. Its uneasiness had nothing to do with the fate of my one-act play. The play was duly produced, and an exceptionally intelligent audience stared it coldly off the boards. It ceased to exist. It was a fair and open execution. But having survived the freezing atmosphere of that auditorium I continued to exist, labouring under no sense of wrong. I was not pleased, but I was content. I was content to accept the verdict of a free and independent public, judging after its conscience the work of its free, independent and conscientious servant - the artist.

Only thus can the dignity of artistic servitude be preserved - not to speak of the bare existence of the artist and the self-respect of the man. I shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public. To the self-respect of the public the present appeal against the censorship is being made and I join in it with all my heart.

For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish figure, the magot chinois whom I believed to be but a memorial of our forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque potiche, works! The absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be alive with a sort of (surely) unconscious life worthy of its traditions. It heaves its stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous arm: and with the censorship, like a Bravo of old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs its victim from behind in the twilight of its upper shelf. Less picturesque than the Venetian in cloak and mask, less estimable, too, in this, that the assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk deriving no countenance from the powers of the Republic, it stands more malevolent, inasmuch that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but the body, whereas the grotesque thing nodding its mandarin head may in its absurd unconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of an honest, of an artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.

This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr Stiggins's plug hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office. An office of trust. And from time to time there is found an official to fill it. He is a public man. The least promnient of public men, the most unobtrusive, the most obscure if not the most modest.

But however obscure, a public man may be told the truth if only once in his life. His office flourishes in the shade; not in the rustic shade beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of mind, where tyranny of every sort flourishes. Its holder need not have either brain or heart, no sight, no taste, no imagination, not even bowels of compassion. He needs not these things. He has power. He can kill thought, and incidentally truth, and incidentally beauty, providing they seek to live in a dramatic form. He can do it without seeing, without understanding, without feeling anything; out of mere stupid suspicion, as an irresponsible Roman Caesar could kill a senator. He can do that and there is no one to say him nay. He may call his cook (Molière used to do that) from below and give her five acts to judge every morning as a matter of constant practice and still remain the unquestioned destroyer of men's honest work. He may have a glass too much. This accident has happened to persons of unimpeachable morality - to gentlemen. He may suffer from spells of inbecility like Clodius. He may... what might he not do! I tell you he is the Caesar of the dramatic world. There has been since the Roman Principate nothing in the way of irresponsible power to compare with the office of the Censor of Plays.

Looked at in this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in the odius and the absurd. This figure in whose power it is to suppress an intellectual conception - to kill thought (a dream for a mad brain, my masters!) - seems designed in spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the greatness of a Philistine's conceit and his moral cowardice.

But this is England in the twentieth century, and one wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter for meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.

He must be unconscious. It is one of the qualifications for this magistracy. Other qualifications are equally easy. He must have done nothing, imagined nothing. He must be obscure, insignificant and mediocre - in thought, act, speech and sympathy. He must show nothing of art, of life - and of himself. For if he did he would not dare to be what he is. Like that much questioned and mysterious bird, the phoenix, he sits amongst the cold ashes of his predecessor upon the altar of morality, alone of his kind in the sight of wondering generations.

And I will end with a quotation reproducing not perhaps the exact words but the true spirit of a lofty conscience.'Often when sitting down to write the notice of a play, especially when I felt it antagonistic to my canons of art, to my tastes or my convictions, I hesitated in the fear lest my conscientious blame might check the development of a great talent, my sincere judgment condemn a worthy mind. With the pen poised in my hand I hesitated, whispering to myself "What if I were perchance doing my part in killing a masterpiece." '

Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaître - dramatist and dramatic critic, a great citizen and a high magistrate in the Republic of Letters; a Censor of Plays exercising his august office openly in the light of day, with the authority of a European reputation. But then M Jules Lemaître is a man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine conscience - not an obscure hollow Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr Stiggins's plug hat and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother - the State.

Frankly, is it not time to knock the improper object off its shelf? It has stood too long there. Hatched in Pekin (I should say by some Board of Respectable Rites, the little caravan monster has come to us by way of Moscow - I suppose. It is outlandish. It is not venerable. It does not belong here. Is it not time to knock it of its dark shelf with some implement appropriate to its worth and status? With an old broom handle for instance.

Censorship of Plays in Great Britain

Great Britain's "Censor of Plays" was described by Joseph Conrad in 1907 as a "public man" whose "office flourished in the shade; not in the rustic shade beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of mind, where tyranny of every sort flourishes."

This certainly seems to describe Britain's official censor from the viewpoint of the liberal 20th century. Following are some of the Censor's considerations in deciding whether a play would live or die.

Never show Jesus or refer to royalty. Do not blaspheme or mention homosexuality.

Anyone harming friendly relations with a foreign power is in trouble. Anything likely to cause a breach of the peace could bring the curtain down.

It is a miracle any plays ever made it to the stage, so strict were the rules laid down by the lord chamberlain, a senior member of the royal household who acted as Britain's official censor.

Now, for the first time, his records are being published, revealing the judgements of the military officers turned "stage police" hired to read every script.

The 200-year-old office of the lord chamberlain had to check each new play before it was staged in Britain until 1968, when censorship was abolished.

"The whole thing was a tragi-comedy," said Dominic Shellard, a professor of English whose book The Lord Chamberlain Regrets ... was published on Wednesday.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot was labelled "an interminable verbal labyrinth" by censors, who demanded he replace one "fart" with a "belch". Swear words were swiftly excised.


Read it all here.

More on Sayers and Classical Education

In her "Lost Tools of Learning," Dorothy Sayers describes what it means to be classically educated. The following essay discusses some of the forms of "classical" education found today in the USA. It is apparent that the designation "classical" can be employed in ways that definitely as not. This essays appears at the website of Logos School Materials.


What is Classical Education?

The resurgence of classical education over the last decade has been heartening in many respects, but some aspects of it are a bit confusing. No one holds the copyright on the word classical, and given the nature of the word, there has been something of a scramble in the various manifestations of classical education. This is not surprising, especially in a time when classical can refer to a ’57 Chevy, an original cola formula, the early Beach Boys, or a classic rock radio station.

Within the field of education, the word classical has a number of legitimate applications and a few spurious ones. There is the democratic classicism promoted by Mortimer Adler. There is the elite classicism of the well-established wealthy prep schools. We also see the classical approach advocated by David Hicks, which has been called “moral classicism.” And then there is the classicism argued for in these pages and practiced in the Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS) schools. Among these contenders for the term, the one thing necessary is care in definition. These various schools of thought should not fight for the glory of sole possession, but rather argue in such a way that what everyone means is clear. Put another way, every form of classicism should be able to agree on the importance of early definition of terms in any discussion or debate.

But, unfortunately, because the world is the messy kind of place it is and because America is the kind of place it is, we should also expect to find various knock-offs and counterfeits. One common practice is simply to take whatever the school was already doing and simply call it classical.

Another less-than-adequate approach introduces just enough of a classical touch (one elective, say, on Latin word origins) to persuade inquiring parents that a classical education is being provided. In the long run, it is not necessary to engage such practices in debate, for, as Cicero would have said (had he thought of it), the proof is in the pudding.

In their survey of the classical school resurgence, Gene Veith and Andrew Kern provide the valuable service of identifying differences and similarities in the various legitimate classical approaches. For example, they compare the classical Christian approach with the democratic classicism advocated by Adler.

There are significant differences between the ACCS and the Paideia schools. ACCS questions the validity of state schooling; by contrast, the Paideia proposal is specifically geared to the reform of public schools. Religion is foundational to the ACCS curriculum, and Christianity is the point of integration through which all knowledge is made complete. Paideia does not dismiss the importance of religion, but its approach is more secular, and its foundational value is democracy. If the approach of ACCS can be described as Christian classicism, Paideia’s can best be described as democratic classicism.1

Various aspects of this proposal have already been discussed in earlier chapters. Here it is only important to point out that the Paideia proposal, as a great books program, is a legitimately classical approach to education. But for classical Christian educators, “classical” is not enough. We want our schools to be thoroughly and rigorously Christian as well.

Then there is elite classicism. For one example, Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis offers a rigorous elite education. But is it classical? On one of their brochures they answer the question this way: The term “classical” implies different things to different people. The subjects we teach and the works we include in our syllabi are, for the most part, time-tested and acknowledged as important by most educated people and by American colleges. But the material, or the approach to it, may in some cases be as new as the current year. An English class may study Maya Angelou alongside Shakespeare. In biology class, the student will not only gain a knowledge of anatomy, accumulated over centuries, but will also learn about the latest advances in knowledge of the human genome. A student reading the Odyssey in Greek will not only be sharing an experience that goes back 2,500 years but will also be viewing Odysseus and his adventures through the eyes of a 21st-century citizen. We leave it to each reader to decide whether our program fits his or her own definition of a classical education.2

Not only is the education rigorous, but the classical and time-tested aspects of the curriculum are mixed in an eclectic way with more modern elements—Maya Angelou alongside Shakespeare. Of course, some might say this is not a mixture of modern and ancient, but rather a mixture of the time-tested and the trendy.

Still, the parents of students enrolled in such academies are paying, ahem, significant amounts in tuition, and they are not doing this in order to get illiterate kids back. The standards are clearly very high. But at the same time, the standards are high because of the social position of the families of the students and the social position of the school. In the other classical academies the standards are high because the schools are trying to recapture something, take something back. With some of the more well-heeled, established schools the standards are high because the schools inherited such standards.

Veith and Kern point to another classical approach, which might be called moral classicism. The leader in this movement is David Hicks. In his book Norms and Nobility he sets out his approach to education. Veith and Kern discuss Adler’s Paideia proposal, the ACCS approach, and the Hicks approach. Or if we think of them in terms of their pedagogical ancestry, the Aristotelian approach, the Augustinian approach, and the Platonic approach.

If the ACCS offers a Christian classicism and Paideia champions a democratic classicism, Hicks can be described as a spokesman for a moral classicism. Each approach to classicism described here rests on somewhat different philosophical foundations, though their intentions and methods are quite similar and compatible. Douglas Wilson is an Augustinian: his school teaches that which can be known with systematic rigor, but it does so with an awareness of human sin, the need for God’s grace and sovereignty over all of life, positions that characterize Wilson’s specifically Reformed, Calvinist theology. . . . Mortimer Adler is an Aristotelian, and the Paideia proposal reflects the scrutiny of purpose, making of distinctions, and commonsense rationalism that are Aristotle’s legacy to Western thought. Hicks finds his inspiration in Plato. He builds his educational theory around a search for the ideal and a conviction that education should be a path to virtue. His curriculum is akin to the classical humanism of the Renaissance, which studies the humanistic disciplines to cultivate man’s potential.3

The ACCS approach to education is specifically and distinctively Christian, and hence it is more dogmatic and settled than what either Adler or Hicks would propose. The purpose of an open mind, the Christian classicists would say, paraphrasing Chesterton, is the same as the purpose of an open mouth—it is meant to close on something. While ACCS schools vary among themselves in their doctrinal commitments—some are Reformed, some more Lutheran, and others are confessional evangelical—they all would glory in their doctrinal commitment, seeing that commitment as the only way to gain educational traction in a slippery world.

Hick’s and Adler’s approaches have in common a dedication to dialectic in education. “The first characteristic of a classical school, according to Hicks, is its reliance on dialectic.”4

For ACCS schools, dialectic is one part of the educational process but not a first principle. The goal in classical Christian schools is to move from grammar to dialectic, and then from dialectic on to rhetoric. To remain in the dialectic would be considered a failure.

The goals vary as well. Adler would want to train students to be able to participate in the great conversation with intelligence and grace. While not differing with this, Hicks would want more of an emphasis on moral improvement. “Hick’s goal is to restore to education norms—standards of morality and excellence—and to education, the elevation of young students to lives of virtue and achievement.”5

So, then, what is the definition of classical education? It is important to understand that I am giving a stipulated definition. In no way do I begrudge other legitimate uses of the phrase. In other words, classical education, as I am using the phrase, refers to a particular pedagogical approach together with an emphasis on passing on the heritage of the West. The pedagogy refers to our commitment to Dorothy Sayers’s basic insight—that children grow naturally through stages that correspond nicely with the three elements of the Trivium. We teach the grammar of all subjects to the younger children; we teach dialectic to the children of junior-high age; and we teach the rhetorical disciplines to the high school students.

At the same time, Western culture receives the emphasis it does because this is the culture in which the Christian faith has made the greatest advances. Western civilization is not synonymous with the kingdom of God, but the histories of the two entities are so intertwined that one cannot be understood apart from the other. Try to imagine a decent history of the West that made no reference to Christianity or a church history that made no mention of Charlemagne or Constantine. We do not teach Western culture in a jingoistic fashion; rather, we believe that students who are taught to love their own culture will understand why other people love theirs. A man who honors his mother understands another man honoring his. In contrast, our society’s multicultural experiment attempts to teach children to respect the cultures of others by instilling in them a practical contempt for their own. But global harmony will take far more than occasional food fairs with samples of international spicy foods.


Notes
Gene Edward Veith, Jr., and Andrew Kern, Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America (Washington D.C.: Capital Research Center, 2001), p. 26.

“Thomas Jefferson School Curriculum Guide.” The school is located at 4100 South Lindbergh Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63127.

Veith and Kern, Classical Education, p. 33-34.

Ibid., p. 36.

Ibid., p. 40.


Related reading:  Response to Sayers' Lost Tools of Learning

CS Lewis on Hedonism

Alice C. Linsley


I'm reading an excellent book edited by Gregory Bassham and Jerry L. Walls. It is titled The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy. Bassham is a philosophy professor at Kings College in Pennsylvania and the author of a book I use with my Critical Thinking classes.

Chapter seven of The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy addresses "Work, Vocation and the Good Life in Narnia." In this chapter, written by Devin Brown, the character of Eustace Scrubb is examined. Here is an excerpt from that chapter. Devon Brown writes:

Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 342 to 270 B.C., taught that the goal of life is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, a philosophy that is called hedonism. You may have heard of the modern-day resort named Hedonism that claims to be "a lush garden of pure pleasure," and in fact the Greek word hedones means pleasures. As Epicurus explained to a young disciple, "We recognize pleasure as the first and natural good; starting from pleasure we accept or reject; and we return to this as we judge every good thing, trusting this feeling of pleasure as our guide." (Epicurus, "Letter to Menoeceus")

Like Kleenex, Epicurus has the distinction of having had his name made into a general noun, although one not as well-known. If you look up epicure in the dictionary, you'll find that it refers to a person who takes great pleasure in eating, drinking, or other bodily pleasures.

There is more complexity to Epicureanism than you might think, however. For example, what if what you think of as the height of pleasure - staying in bed all day, eating Turkish Delight, and watching MTV - ends up being, well, not all that pleasurable? As a point of fact, Epicurus didn't advocate a life of wild sex and parties, as many people wrongly assume. But the goal of pleasure is certainly central to his thought, and in this sense we can see Epicurus as the great-grandfather of what we might call the Tom Sawyer philosophy of work.

In the second chapter of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom appears on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash in one hand, a long-handled brush in the other, and a "deep melancholy" in his heart. Aunt Polly has ordered him to paint the fence. In the end, he convinces every boy who passes by that painting a fence is actually a privilege, not a chore. But Tom doesn't fool us for a minute.

We know Tom hates work, any kind of work. At the merest thought of work, we are told, "all gladness left him," life "seemed hollow," and "existence a burden." Tom, normally a very upbeat guy, doesn't see whitewashing the fence as a privilege. He sees it, and work in general (including going to school) as an obstacle to the fun things he would rather be doing.

In The Chronicles of Narnia we find a character that, while not as lovable as Tom, definitely adheres to Tom's philosophy of work. Through him we can see what Lewis's view of work, vocation, and the good life is not. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace Scrubb is clearly one who practices his own brand of hedonism and sees his highest good as his own comfort and pleasure. Eustace, like Tom, looks on any kind of work, even what is rightfully his own share, with dread and foreboding because it interferes with his selfish pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. (Note that these comments apply only to the early Eustace because, as you know if you have read the book, he later becomes quite a different character, which of course is Lewis's point.)

One of the best examples of Eustace's hedonism occurs when the Dawn Treader puts ashore on Dragon Island. At this point, the ship is a bit of a wreck. Casks have to be brought ashore, fixed, and refilled. A tree has to be cut down and made into a new mast. Sails must be repaired, a hunting party organized, and clothes washed and mended. In short, "there was everything to be done" (VDT, Chapter 5, p. 459).

Everyone immediately jumps in and begins working - everyone, that is, except Eustace. Here's what Lewis says about him:

A Eustace lay under a tree and heard all these plans being discussed his heart sank. Was there going to be no rest? It looked as if their first day on the longed-for land was going to be quite as hard work as a day at sea. Then a delightful idea occurred to him. Nobody was looking - they were all chattering about their ship as if they actually liked the beastly thing. Why shouldn't he simply slip away? He would take a stroll inland, find a cool, airy place up in the mountains, have a good long sleep, and not rejoin the others till the day's work was over (VTD, Chapter 5, p. 459).

The other crew members - who begin working not only without complaining but even with a sense of a happiness - have a vastly different philosophy of work, vocation, and the good life than Eustace does.

By having Eustace grow and develop, from someone who at first cares only about his own pleasure, Lewis suggests that this pleasure-seeking state is an immature one. It's a position that might be understandable in a child but not in someone who has grown up. After his transformation, Eustace remarks, "I'm afraid I've been pretty beastly" (VDT, Chapter 7, p. 475). In associating the word beastly with Eustace's first condition, Lewis further suggests that if the love of pleasure is something we share with the animals, being human requires that we acquire a purpose in life that is greater than just our own hedonistic desires.

Glimmer Train Fiction Contest

FAMILY MATTERS
Deadline: July 31, 2008
Open to all writers.
Stories about family, not to exceed 12,000 words.

Prizes:
1st place wins $1,200, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies.
2nd-place: $500 and possible publication.
3rd-place: $300 and possible publication.

Reading fee: $15 per story.
To submit, go to http://mail.glimmertrainpress.com/sendstudionx/link.php?M=1237339&N=66&L=1&F=H, and click on the yellow submissions tab.

Results will be posted on September 30, 2008.

The Glimmer Train Editors report: "A substantial proportion of fiction submissions are heavily rooted in actual experience, which is entirely fine with us, but we do want stories to READ like fiction and anything we publish is presented as fiction. We look forward to reading your work!"

Pablo Neruda From the Heights of Macchu Picchu

“Poetry is like bread,” Neruda wrote. “It should be shared by all, by scholars and peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity."

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was called "the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language" by Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Neruda began writing poetry at an early age and had his first published poem at age 13. His real name was Ricardo Eliecer Nefali Reyes Basoalto, but at age 16 he started to use his pseudonym, Pablo Neruda. Neruda's best known work was Veinte Poemas de amor y una canción desesperada.

Neruda was barely able to make a living in his homeland. His needs led him to work and travel overseas. This contributed an international quality to his work. He served as a diplomat in the South Pacific and briefly in Mexico City before returning to Chile. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

His political sympathies were with Communism which was outlawed in Chile under President González Videla, and Neruda was forced to flee to Argentina.

Neruda died of heart failure in Santiago in 1973, only 12 days after being diagnosed with cancer.

While touring Peru, Neruda visited the Inca monument Machu Picchu. The beauty of the mountain-top citadel inspired his book-length poem Alturas de Macchu Picchu, completed in 1945. In this work Neruda celebrates the achievements of the Incas but also condemns their use of slave labor to build the ancient fortress. This marked the beginning of Neruda's interest in the pre-colombian civilizations of the Americas, an interest that he would continue to explore in Canto General. In the Canto XII (below), he calls upon the dead of ages past to be born in him and to speak through him.

Martin Espada, poet and creative writing professor at the University of Massachusetts, hailed Canto General as a masterpiece, declaring that "there is no greater political poem."

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu PicchuPablo Neruda

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flintsto kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.
And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Tozer's Prayer Upon Ordination

Lyle Dorsett has written concerning A. W. Tozer's prayer: "This is the prayer of a man called to be a witness to the nations. This is what he said to his Lord on the day of his ordination. After the elders and ministers had prayed and laid their hands on him he withdrew to meet his Saviour in the secret place and in the silence, farther in than his well-meaning brethren could take him. And he said:

O Lord, I have heard Thy voice and was afraid. Thou hast called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. Thou are about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. O Lord, our Lord, Thou has stopped to honor me to be Thy servant. No man takes this honor upon himself save he that is called of God as was Aaron. Thou has ordained me Thy messenger to them that are stubborn of heart and hard of hearing. They have rejected Thee, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the servant.

My God, I shall not waste time deploring my weakness nor my unfittedness for the work. The responsibility is not mine but Thine. Thou hast said, “I knew thee—I ordained thee—I sanctified thee,” and Thou has also said, “Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.” Who am I to argue with Thee or to call into question Thy sovereign choice? The decision is not mine but Thine. So be it, Lord. Thy will, not mine, be done.
Well do I know, Thou God of the prophets and the apostles, that as long as I honor Thee Thou wilt honor me. Help me therefore to take this solemn vow to honor Thee in all my future life and labors, whether by gain or by loss, by life or by death, and then to keep that vow unbroken while I live.

It is time, O God, for Thee to work, for the enemy has entered into Thy pastures and the sheep are torn and scattered. And false shepherds abound who deny the danger and laugh at the perils which surround Thy flock. The sheep are deceived by these hirelings and follow them with touching loyalty while the wolf closes in to kill and destroy. I beseech Thee, give me sharp eyes to detect the presence of the enemy; give me understanding to distinguish the false friend from the true. Give me vision to see and courage to report what I see faithfully. Make my voice so like Thine own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow Thee.

Lord Jesus, I come to Thee for spiritual preparation. Lay Thy hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet; not a promoter, not a religious manager—but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from the bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from overeating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that I could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall expect opposition and try to take it quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falleth out to Thy servants, I shall have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Thy kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that it will not injure my soul nor diminish my spiritual power. And if in Thy permissive providence honor should come to me from Thy church, let me not forget in that hour that I am unworthy of the least of Thy mercies, and that if men knew me as intimately as I know myself they would withhold their honors or bestow them upon others more worthy to receive them.

And now, O Lord of heaven and earth, I consecrate my remaining days to Thee; let them be many or few, as Thou wilt. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and I would not influence it if I could. I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame and I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven. Though I am chosen of Thee and honored by a high and holy calling, let me never forget that I am but a man of dust and ashes, a man with all the natural faults and passions that plague the race of men. I pray Thee therefore, my Lord and Redeemer, save me from myself and from all the injuries I may do myself while trying to be a blessing to others. Fill me with thy power by the Holy Spirit, and I will go in Thy strength and tell of Thy righteousness, even Thine only. I will spread abroad the message of redeeming love while my normal powers endure.

Then, dear Lord, when I am old and weary and too tired to go on, have a place ready for me above, and make me to be numbered with Thy saints in glory everlasting. Amen."

-From A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett (Chicago, IL; Moody, 2008), pp. 65-68.

Hat tip to The Shepherd's Scrapbook.

Family Reunion

The following poem was written about the gathering of the Linsleys at Zion's Hill in Connecticut on March 18, 1898. The occasion was the 25th wedding anniversary of the Rev. and Mrs. Harvey Linsley, who had 7 grandchildren. Two died before adulthood. There were also 2 sets of twin boys: Ray and Vivian, and Paul and Earle.

Ray Linsley went into business in Hartford. Vivian studied for the ministry in Boston and later moved to California for his health. Edna attended Mount Holyoke College for 3 years, then graduated from U.C. Berkeley. She later went to Japan as a missionary. Paul Linsley (my paternal grandfather) helped his parents at their ranch in Yucaipa, California, studied nursing and worked as an overseer of construction crews working on the Boulder Dam. His twin, Earle, finished at Colgate and moved to California where he began his teaching career at California Baptist College. Earle later became the Director of Chabot Observatory and Science Center in Oakland.

It was with much joy that the grandparents were surrounded by their granchildren for their silver wedding anniversary. Miss Edna Linsley wrote the following poem to mark the celebration.

A fourth of a century blended,
Their paths have run together;
From snowy Maine they trended
To fair Colorado weather.

To the lonely ranch on the prairie
Where the great Pike's Peak looks down,
And the stubby sage shrubs vary
The vista of changeless brown.

To the foothills closely lying
By the mighty rocky chain;
To the town of miners trying
Their luck in the silver vein.

But back to our loved New England
Led in the good Father's will,
This stage of their pilgrimage endeth
This evening on Zion's Hill.

And the friends and children gathered
Express their gladness and love,
And pray of them Heaven's rich blessing
Till the pilgrimage endeth above.

For the Lord hath given in mercy
He hath given health and strength,
And surely His promise is true,
He'll give Heavenly wealth at length.

The dearest gifts are the children seven -
The number of completeness -
Two now are safe above in Heaven
Their tender memory sweetness.

While years have come and sped their ways,
These two have shared joys and sorrow,
But have ever hopes, as this silvery day,
For the brighter, golden tomorrow.

Reflections on Chabot Observatory, Oakland

Edna Linsley Gressitt was the sister of the renowned astronomer Earle Garfield Linsley. He was the former Director of the Chabot Observatory in Oakland, California. His twin brother was my paternal grandfather, Paul Judson Linsley. Paul was a published poet and horticulturalist who cultivated hybrid roses with Luther Burbank of Santa Rosa, California. He also developed several strains of disease resistant avocado trees.


Climbing Up
By Edna Linsley Gressitt

Up,
Climbing up,
Slowly,
Thru the hostile chaparral,
Under the stiff, suspicious trees,
Hushed from any breath of breeze,
Watchfully,
Without a rustle,
On and up,
By the lonely creeping trail
Winding up the wooded steep
Of the shadowed canyon side,
In faint star light,
Where
Still,
Dim and still,
In quaint far light,
Huddled, breathless, sleeping quail
And noiseless brown hares, burrowing deep,
And still gray gophers hide,
Shivering
When the weird quivering
Cry of the night owl beats the soundless air;
Up, at last
In clear star light,
To the vast
White structure massed
On the cleared crest of the hill,
In sheer, far light,
With its circling domes of grace
Watching long
In the wordless, waiting night,
Searching far
Past Man's hope or thought or will,
In the boundless, glowing space,
Catching there
Signals from the Sovereign Power,
Granted in night's hallowed hour.


This poem first appeared in Sierra Educational News. Created in 1883 as an astronomical observatory, the Chabot Science Center and Planetarium is dedicated to applied science and technology. It offers a wide spectrum of educational, research and public programs.

Mothering a Boy Scout

The Boy Scout's Mother to Her Friends
Edna Linsley Gressitt

Will you walk into my parlor?
Flags for signalling are there;
A handbook and a bug net
Will yield to you a chair;
These raccoon tracks in plaster
Are works of art, no doubt.
Do you savvy you are stalking

The trail of a Boy Scout?
Will you come and have some tea
Upon my dining table?
The caterpillars I'll remove
As fast as I am able.
The star map and the snake skin
I'll dare you to throw out!
For I believe in scouting,
And I'm glad my boy's a Scout.

When I go to cook there's resin
On the stove a-melting down;
The sink has sample leaves and bark
Of all the trees in town;
Scout pants with coffee grains get dyed
In a tub beneath the spout;
So I savvy I am stalking
The trail of a Boy Scout.

He does not have "a skeleton
In the closet," as they say,
But bones of beasts upon his desk
Enjoy the light of day;
He sleeps well with a million
Mounted insects round about;
So I believe in scouting,
And I'm glad my boy's a Scout.

This poem originally appeared in the volume Lyrics By The Way, a book of poems written by my paternal great aunt Edna Linsley Gressitt. In the next week, I will publish more of her witty poems.

Poetry Explores Relationships

The following poem appears in Collected Poems (1957-1982) of Wendell Berry, North Point Press. It is one of a number of "farmer" poems in which Mr. Berry explores relationships.

The Farmer and the Sea
Wendell Berry

The sea always arriving,
hissing in pebbles, is breaking
its edge where the landsman
squats on his rock. The dark
of the earth is familiar to him,
close mystery of his source
and end, always flowering
in the light and always
fading. But the dark of the sea
is perfect and strange,
the absence of any place,
immensity on the loose.
Still, he sees it is another
keeper of the land, caretaker,
shaking the earth, breaking it,
clicking the pieces, but somewhere
holding deep fields yet to rise,
shedding its richness on them
silently as snow, keeper and maker
of places wholly dark. And in him
something dark applauds.

Mass of the Visitation

Ed Pacht recently had an experience at Mass that does not pretend to be a vision, but the work of imagination in the rarefied air of a High and Loving Presence. Note that such a "Catholic" poem includes reference to two old Evangelical hymns on the Cross. Ed explains, "At the Cross' and 'At Calvary' both resounded in my head as I wrote."

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (June 30) commemorates Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth, the leaping of Elizabeth's unborn son in the womb at the presence of the Savior yet unborn, and Elizabeth's word to Mary, "Blessed art thou among women ..."

There in church Ed saw the icon of Mother and Child to the left and the crucifix over the altar. Mass began ...


Visitation
Ed Pacht

She stands within the frame,
at the window into heaven,
holding there her child,
the Child, the Son, the Holy One,
... holding there her Child,
while behind her, as it seems,
there comes a priest to the holy place,
and there, before that holy cross,
where, pained and writhing, full in view,
the suffering Savior is portrayed
... and there upon that altar stone
where bread and cup are set
... there at those bleeding nailed-pierced feet
the words of mystery are said,
of one oblation of himself once offered,
of a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice,
of an oblation, a satisfaction, a solution
for the sins of the whole world.
She turns to look upon the cross,
and tears in rivers now are flowing
as the Mother, new-born Son, and we,
stand in helpless adoration,
at Calvary, at the Cross, at the crux of time,
at the Cross, at the Cross, where we first saw the light,
the light that showed our deepest sin,
the light that showed the destiny that we had earned
the light that drove us to our knees,
where we trembled at the Law we'd spurned,
and to the Cross we humbly turned.
And by the lips of the priest He speaks,
and in His words He comes,
and it is Calvary,
and it is a feast,
and it is the everlasting Lamb,
it is the Blood flowing from the dawn of time,
it is the everlasting feast of the everlasting sacrifice,
of the everlasting consummation of the Marriage of the Lamb.
We are there. He is here. Time fades.
I tremble.
I weep.
I feast.
Mercy there was great and grace was free,
pardon there was multiplied to me,
there my burdened soul found liberty,
at Calvary.
She turns to her place.
I see the child.
I see the cross.
I sigh, put out the candles,
and go forth full.


For other poems by Ed Pacht, go to the INDEX.

John Adams on Independence Day Celebrations

Letter to his wife, Abigail Adams
3 July 1776

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.

John Adams

Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon Disaster

Voltaire (1694-1778) was a French Enlightenment philosopher and deist who enjoyed nuanced debate about the nature of the world, humanity and God. In his youth he advocated a hedonistic philosophy, stating that “True wisdom lies in knowing how to flee sadness in the arms of pleasure.”

Voltaire became less effusive in his advocacy of pleasure after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and fire which destroyed most of the city and devastated outlaying areas. The death toll is estimated to be between 60,000 to 100,000 people.

The disaster struck on the morning of All Saints, a feast day that the devout Catholics of Portugal observed. When word of the devastation reached other European countries, it became a topic of heated discussion among the intelligentsia who pondered how to reconcile the existence of such an evil with God’s goodness.

Voltaire’s Poem on the Lisbon Disaster

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!
Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate
The iron laws that chain the will of God”?
Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
“God is avenged: the wage of sin is death”?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.
When earth its horrid jaws half open shows,
My plaint is innocent, my cries are just.
Surrounded by such cruelties of fate,
By rage of evil and by snares of death,
Fronting the fierceness of the elements,
Sharing our ills, indulge me my lament.
“’T is pride,” ye say—“the pride of rebel heart,
To think we might fare better than we do.”
Go, tell it to the Tagus’ stricken banks;
Search in the ruins of that bloody shock;
Ask of the dying in that house of grief,
Whether ’t is pride that calls on heaven for help
And pity for the sufferings of men.
“All’s well,” ye say, “and all is necessary.”
Think ye this universe had been the worse
Without this hellish gulf in Portugal?
Are ye so sure the great eternal cause,
That knows all things, and for itself creates,
Could not have placed us in this dreary clime
Without volcanoes seething ’neath our feet?
Set you this limit to the power supreme?
Would you forbid it use its clemency?
Are not the means of the great artisan
Unlimited for shaping his designs?
The master I would not offend, yet wish
This gulf of fire and sulphur had outpoured
Its baleful flood amid the desert wastes.
God I respect, yet love the universe.
Not pride, alas, it is, but love of man,
To mourn so terrible a stroke as this.

Would it console the sad inhabitants
Of these aflame and desolated shores
To say to them: “Lay down your lives in peace;
For the world’s good your homes are sacrificed;
Your ruined palaces shall others build,
For other peoples shall your walls arise;
The North grows rich on your unhappy loss;
Your ills are but a link in general law;
To God you are as those low creeping worms
That wait for you in your predestined tombs”?
What speech to hold to victims of such ruth!
Add not such cruel outrage to their pain.

Nay, press not on my agitated heart
These iron and irrevocable laws,
This rigid chain of bodies, minds, and worlds.
Dreams of the bloodless thinker are such thoughts.
God holds the chain: is not himself enchained;
By his indulgent choice is all arranged;
Implacable he’s not, but free and just.
Why suffer we, then, under one so just?
There is the knot your thinkers should undo.
Think ye to cure our ills denying them?
All peoples, trembling at the hand of God,
Have sought the source of evil in the world.
When the eternal law that all things moves
Doth hurl the rock by impact of the winds,
With lightning rends and fires the sturdy oak,
They have no feeling of the crashing blows;
But I, I live and feel, my wounded heart
Appeals for aid to him who fashioned it.

Children of that Almighty Power, we stretch
Our hands in grief towards our common sire.
The vessel, truly, is not heard to say:
“Why should I be so vile, so coarse, so frail?”
Nor speech nor thought is given unto it.
The urn that, from the potter’s forming hand,
Slips and is shattered has no living heart
That yearns for bliss and shrinks from misery.
“This misery,” ye say, “is others’ good.”
Yes; from my mouldering body shall be born
A thousand worms, when death has closed my pain.
Fine consolation this in my distress!
Grim speculators on the woes of men,
Ye double, not assuage, my misery.
In you I mark the nerveless boast of pride
That hides its ill with pretext of content.

I am a puny part of the great whole.
Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
All sentient things, born by the same stern law,
Suffer like me, and like me also die.

The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All ’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
The eagle is transfixed by shaft of man;
The man, prone in the dust of battlefield,
Mingling his blood with dying fellow-men,
Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.
Thus the whole world in every member groans:
All born for torment and for mutual death.
And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of each make up the good of all!
What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice,
Mortal and pitiful, ye cry, “All ’s well,”
The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes a hundred times your mind’s conceit.

All dead and living things are locked in strife.
Confess it freely—evil stalks the land,
Its secret principle unknown to us.
Can it be from the author of all good?
Are we condemned to weep by tyrant law
Of black Typhon or barbarous Ahriman?
These odious monsters, whom a trembling world
Made gods, my spirit utterly rejects.

But how conceive a God supremely good,
Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,
Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?
From that all-perfect Being came not ill:
And came it from no other, for he ’s lord:
Yet it exists. O stern and numbing truth!
O wondrous mingling of diversities!
A God came down to lift our stricken race:
He visited the earth, and changed it not!
One sophist says he had not power to change;
“He had,” another cries, “but willed it not:
In time he will, no doubt.” And, while they prate,
The hidden thunders, belched from underground,
Fling wide the ruins of a hundred towns
Across the smiling face of Portugal.
God either smites the inborn guilt of man,
Or, arbitrary lord of space and time,
Devoid alike of pity and of wrath,
Pursues the cold designs he has conceived.
Or else this formless stuff, recalcitrant,
Bears in itself inalienable faults;
Or else God tries us, and this mortal life
Is but the passage to eternal spheres.
’T is transitory pain we suffer here,
And death its merciful deliverance.
Yet, when this dreadful passage has been made,
Who will contend he has deserved the crown?
Whatever side we take we needs must groan;
We nothing know, and everything must fear.
Nature is dumb, in vain appeal to it;
The human race demands a word of God.
’T is his alone to illustrate his work,
Console the weary, and illume the wise.
Without him man, to doubt and error doomed,
Finds not a reed that he may lean upon.
From Leibnitz learn we not by what unseen
Bonds, in this best of all imagined worlds,
Endless disorder, chaos of distress,
Must mix our little pleasures thus with pain;
Nor why the guiltless suffer all this woe
In common with the most abhorrent guilt.
’T is mockery to tell me all is well.
Like learned doctors, nothing do I know.
Plato has said that men did once have wings
And bodies proof against all mortal ill;
That pain and death were strangers to their world.
How have we fallen from that high estate!
Man crawls and dies: all is but born to die:
The world ’s the empire of destructiveness.
This frail construction of quick nerves and bones
Cannot sustain the shock of elements;
This temporary blend of blood and dust
Was put together only to dissolve;
This prompt and vivid sentiment of nerve
Was made for pain, the minister of death:
Thus in my ear does nature’s message run.
Plato and Epicurus I reject,
And turn more hopefully to learned Bayle.
With even poised scale Bayle bids me doubt.
He, wise and great enough to need no creed,
Has slain all systems—combats even himself:
Like that blind conqueror of Philistines,
He sinks beneath the ruin he has wrought.
What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know.
This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,
Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness.
With plaints and groans they follow up the quest,
To die reluctant, or be born again.
At fitful moments in our pain-racked life
The hand of pleasure wipes away our tears;
But pleasure passes like a fleeting shade,
And leaves a legacy of pain and loss.
The past for us is but a fond regret,
The present grim, unless the future ’s clear.
If thought must end in darkness of the tomb,
All will be well one day—so runs our hope.
All now is well, is but an idle dream.
The wise deceive me: God alone is right.
With lowly sighing, subject in my pain,
I do not fling myself ’gainst Providence.
Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,
The sunny ways of pleasure’s genial rule;
The times have changed, and, taught by growing age,
And sharing of the frailty of mankind,
Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,
I can but suffer, and will not repine.

A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
This prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
“To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity—
Evil and ignorance, distress and sin.”
He might have added one thing further—hope.

Translation by S.G. Tallentyre

The Final Redemption of Cats

For Timothy, in the Coinherence
Dorothy Sayers

“Tutti tirati sono, e tutti tirano” –
(Paradiso xxviii, 129)

Consider, O Lord, Timothy, Thy servants’ servant.
(We give him this title, as to Thy servant the Pope,
Not knowing a better. Him too Thy ministers were
observant
To vest in white and adorn with a silk cope.)

Thy servant lived with Thy servants in the exchange
Of affection; he condescended to them from the
dignity
Of an innocent mind; they bent to him with benignity
From the rarefied Alps of their intellectual range.

Hierarchy flourished, with no resentment
For the unsheathed claw or the hand raised in
correction;
Small wild charities took root beneath the Protection,
Garden-escapes from the Eden of our contentment.

Daily we came short in the harder human relation,
Only in this easier obeying, Lord, Thy commands;
Meekly we washed his feet, meekly he licked our
hands -
Beseech Thee, overlook not this mutual grace of
salvation.

Canst Thou accept our pitiful good behaving,
Stooping to share at our hand that best we keep for
the beast?
Sir, receive the alms, though least, and bestowed on
the least,
Save us, and save somehow with us the means of our
saving.

Dante in the Eight Heaven beheld love's law
Run up and down on the infinite golden stairway;
Angels, men, brutes, plants, matter, up that fairway
All by love's cords are drawn, said he, and draw.

Thou that before the Fall didst make pre-emption
Of Adam, restore the privilege of the Garden,
Where he to the beasts was namer, tamer, and
warden;
Buy back his household and all in the world's
redemption.

When the Ark of the new life grounds upon Ararat
Grant us to carry into the rainbow's light,
In a basket of gratitude, the small, milk-white
Silken identity of Timothy, our cat.