A Little Church

Today’s poem on the Panhala website, e.e. Cummings’ “I am a little church (no great cathedral),” contains the stanza:

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

I suppose that many, probably most, atheists are put off by that “Him” and “His.”  People who reject the notion of an anthropomorphic deity (like myself) and those who prefer The Goddess are also likely to be put off by it.  Yet, who cannot find beauty and even inspiration in that line “merciful Him Whose only now is forever”?

Earlier in the poem we have the lines: “around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection.”  Besides being a lovely poetic truth, arguably it is also a factual truth.  One can quibble about the meaning of “unceasing,” and one can argue about the appropriateness of “miracle.”  But since no science provides anything remotely close to an answer to the Why and even the ultimate How of existence, there is no ultimate ground for rejecting the word “miracle.”  And though the part of this “miracle” that is observable by humans will some day cease, or at least grow deathly dark and cold, there is no good reason to deny that the “miracle” could eternally spark new domains of birth and glory and death and resurrection.  

To give this miracle a name, a face, a gender is human enough, though rather a child-like part of our humanness.  To attach ideologies, moralities and power struggles to it is also human enough – but alas, has anything but evil ever come of that?  

And then there is the other questionable word of the final stanza: “merciful” and the missing word “suffering” that should be ensconced midway in that phrase “unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection.”  But to welcome the light and accept the darkness is at least to give that suffering a context, a meaning.  And if we find mercifulness in our own soul, is that not the working of The Miracle?  If like the poet we find the sadness or joy of others to be “our grief and gladness” perhaps we have given The Miracle a face and gender; perhaps we have made The Miracle human.

The complete poem reads:

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

To subscribe to Panhala, send a blank email to:

Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com