Consider My Meditations:
"Sunday Morning" pt.1

September 3, 2006

Churches have an advantage in organizing social groups: they have a book everyone agrees on, the Bible. Vibrant churches spend a lot of time getting people to engage with that book, which has built-in cultural authority. I know the Bible is a lot broader than conservatives would have us believe.. but I am still frustrated that so many cultural battles must take place on that same narrow plot of ground. I don't think that either the prophet Isaiah or the Apostle Paul.. no, nor Jesus.. has a corner on wisdom. But try to get people to come together on Sunday morning to talk about the Stoic philosopher Epictetus! Not going to happen. On Sunday mornings I am going to work slowly through various forms of secular scripture. I invite anyone to consider my meditations.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Enroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

[first stanza of "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens]

The focus is on a woman, wearing an informal peignoir and sitting carelessly in the sun on a Sunday morning. She is clearly not doing what one should be doing on a Sunday afternoon.. she is not at church, nor doing anything remotely religious. The details in the first five lines sketch her careless position in colorful strokes: oranges, coffee, sunny chair, green cockatoo, and a rug. It could be a bright still-life.

The poem changes tone in line 6. "She dreams a little".. and then comes the approach of that "old catastrophe." There are several mentions of a dark event through the stanza, and by its end she is on her way to Palestine, "dominion of the blood and sepulchre." Clearly the reference is to the crucifixion.. an event central to the experience of Sunday morning for most Christians.

The stanza darkens. The elements that at the beginning are part of a bright still-life portrait, a few lines later have been recruited as part of a darkly colorful "procession of the dead." The calm and careless Sunday morning is on the way to becoming a time of remembrance of that serious event. The woman sitting in her peignoir must defend her carelessness from the call to religious seriousness.

Reading the stanza this morning I noted especially the difference between waking and dreaming. The opening seems vibrantly (if lazily) awake and conscious of the world. It is as she "dreams a little" that the elements of her world are re-arranged into more fearful patterns. And by the end her "dreaming feet" are taking her across the seas, to silent Palestine. The poem as a whole is defending exactly that first state of guiltless consciousness of the world.

"The day is like wide water, without sound.." I think one thing that was re-awakened for me last year as we attended Quaker meetings in Atlanta was my need for a place of calm and silence.. for contemplation. I want that kind of quiet to be a mark of my life.. but without the fiction of thinking "religious" thoughts.