Happy Christmas
Amid wars and rumours of war the poor old earth staggers on towards the end of another year. Poverty is still rampant; wars are still being fought; there is famine in Yemen, while Trump wallows hand in hand (a euphemism) with the Saudis and Putin; and every year the carol "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" becomes more apt and more impossible to sing through the tears it engenders, particularly verse 3:
Yet with the woes of sin and stir,
The world hath suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled,
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not,
The love song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
Through all the sorrow and strife, and in spite of all attempts to drown it out, may you hear the angels' song this Christmas and follow the star throughout the New Year.
Yet with the woes of sin and stir,
The world hath suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled,
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not,
The love song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
Through all the sorrow and strife, and in spite of all attempts to drown it out, may you hear the angels' song this Christmas and follow the star throughout the New Year.
posted by Maggie Ross at 2:04 pm
5 Comments:
I read this (too quickly--old eyes) as "Poetry is still rampant," and I believe that, too, to be true.
How is your health? Hope to hear from you soon, Inshallah
Silence is golden, but this is too much. Is Maggie okay?
I am OK but have written myself into silence, at least for the moment.
Thanks for enquiring.
Maggie
Maggie, you posted previously about Cloud of Unknowing and the word "experience". I wonder if you could say more about that.
I am about to take the plunge to start to read it in the original Middle English so as to hopefully get around those kind of fundamental meaning issues that a translator may not even be aware of.
The experience trap (believing that a special experience is necessary or is somehow significant) is pretty invisible to a lot of people in the "spiritual" world. Similar is the "practices" trap, but I am not sure if the christian contemplative world has that as much as the asian one and its derivatives (buddhism/yoga).
Thanks for posting.
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