R.E. Slater - Questions I Ask Myself When Nobody is Listening (a poem)

Religion by Charles Sprague Pearce

What is Apophatic Verse?

It seems the Internet did not wish to answer my question as to what apophatic verse might be. What I got were thoughts on negative theology rather than poetic verse which, I suppose, was on target if "verse" were taken to be referring to Bible verses.

Yet, this was not what I wanted when searching the Internet. And yet, in a skewed, sideways sort of mention, I suppose my query might have unconsciously asked how "Spirit" and "spirit" might coexist between my God and my heart.

As example of this latter mention, when positively declaring "God is infinite" one might redress the topic apophatically - that is, in negative rephrasing - by saying, "God is not finite." Even so, this was neither my question of the Internet nor how I normally wish to come to God's Person or Personage in negative address.

And yet, curiously, in it's reply the Internet went a bit further when expanding on the tangential subject of apophatic prayer - of which question I definitely was neither asking, nor seeking, nor even considering such a reply.... even so, I continued my sideways glance, focusing on the wayward paragraph then reading it finding my heart warmed in a way only the Spirit might do on so late an eve as I quietly read for a third time the Internet's serendipitous contemplation:

What is Apophatic Prayer?

Answered negatively, "Kataphatic" prayer has content using words, images, symbols, and ideas; whereas "Apophatic" prayer has no content. It simply means emptying the mind and heart of restless words and thoughts to find oneself simply resting in the presence of the God in prayerful reflection. Restated,... a centering prayer may be apophatic in result.

R.E. Slater

May 15, 2024

*What is apophatic mysticism? Apophatic mystics claim that nothing positive can be said about objects or states of affairs that they experience. These are absolutely indescribable, or “ineffable.” Thus, apophatic theology typically will be negative theology — meaning, we may only say what God is not. - SEOP: Mysticism

* * * * * *

Francesco Botticini, The Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1475; detail)

Questions I Ask Myself

When Nobody is Listening

by R.E. Slater

Sitting in absence wishing it were not so,

    is unlike sitting in want finding I have no needs.

On a day when my heart is broken,

    only then can it be made whole.

So too is curiosity a curious thing -

    but so is satisfaction when unmet.

There is fullness in every new day,

    yet by nightfall I find myself empty.

When mind and heart restlessly struggle,

    in God's presence I find stillness.

Can the way of the bee and the ant teach anything?

    Or is it foolishness which cannot be taught?

If it is true that a good ploughhorse requires a field,

    then a good student should require a good teacher.

When parents fail whom do they turn to?

    Or, when turning, find none to help.

I cannot say whether Time is a mystery or an illusion,

    though I believe both are true of relationships.

There is also mystery in each new day,

    but by day's end all seems known.

"Can a true thing be less true?" I ask myself.

    And if so, were it never true at all?

Too, can a false thing teach truth?

    ... Perhaps so, when discovering my own error.

Daily chores seem a burdensome imaginary,

    until unmet, then finding they were never imaginary.

Of thoughtful questions there seems no end,

    but upon reflection they seem never asked.

Might salvation be found before one is fallen?

    Or must one fall to be found?

         ... Life lessons are oftimes hard.

Similarly, if one is found had a fall occurred?

    Or was it I who needed most to be lost?

Testimony always seems right when utter,

    but in hindsight, it holds many a cruelty.

A faithful witness, like one's love,

     is most needed when spoken timefully.

To waste a day is to lose more than a day,

    but in truth, many days are just as well lost.

If one's heart goes unheeded,

    does it sour in remiss?

And if one's heart is heeded,

    does the errant day run brighter?

Most days seem futile though, in hindsight,

    they were as necessary as the air we breathe.

A good prose poem blends seamless to the hour,

    even as the wayward hour expires when unnoticed.

Age looks back on youth seeing wonder, miracle,...

    yet youth, looking to age, has yet to comprehend.

R.E. Slater

March 26, 2023

Note: An experiment in apophatic poetry

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

R.E. Slater - A Country Idyll (prose)

A Country Idyll

(prose)

by R.E. Slater

Today is one of those really cold wintry days in Michigan where time is a given and outdoor adventures are kept to a minimum unless you have the proper warm flannelled clothes, heavy coat, thick boots, hat, and scarf, and the personal ability to endure the cold and actually enjoy it. 

 

Myself, though I am growing old, I still love winter, its wonder, solitude, silence, and ferocity. The worse it gets the more I love it. In childhood if there was a raging blizzard blowing and drifting outside I and my brother were in the "teeth of it" as we sledded down our tall hills to then scramble up them, then down, again-and-again until we tired. 

 

And when not sliding we were testing our "daring do" abilities by jumping into deep snowdrifts nineteen feet down trying to hit bottom (we never did) to see if we could scale back up them or fight our way out of their massif miens. But do not worry, those hillside drifts were skinny, more tall than wide. Four feet at best, sometimes more. 

 

Across our hills lay the old 150-year-old barn where the winds would gather to crest the frozen fence lines and blow across the hill tops ringing the wetland below. There, on the hills or up at the barn we could expect 25 to 30 feet of snowdrift four to six foot deep blown lengthwise and down the contour of the hills. When younger we built very long luge runs bored like tunnels through the bottoms of the drifts. And within their interiors we built one and two-person snow rooms from early morning until late at night when the bunny rabbits hopped about, and we could watch them like gophers from our dens. Later, when older, we learned how to "bust through their tops" with a snowmobile gunning the engine straight up the big hills, then slamming the drift front-on, trying to carry 30 or so feet of air before landing on the downward side of the sloped hill. 

 

We had a lot of fun during the winters. Dad would plow the drives and stack large snow piles by the dilapidated chicken coop or barn and as the plowed snow grew higher and higher in height and girth we waited and waited until pulling out the iron shovel-spades from nearby garage, began carving out our own majestic snow castle; or play king-on-the-hill like we did at school, to be pushed down rolling all the way to the bottom of the massive snow pile. 

 

And on icy days when not using our Radio Flyer metal-runner sleds on the hills, we would glide across the flat icy fields steering around tufted island of wild grasses where the snow gave in and stopped our fun. Sometimes we ran a hundred feet and sometimes we never stopped until we reached the icicled fence lines. It was a lot of fun. 

And then there were the holidays of Christmas and forced winter school closures where we waxed luxuriant to play board games through the morning till bored then bundled up to visit our grand old grandma next door bereft of granddad back when we were too young to understand. 

 

She would watch us slide down her chimney's "coal shute" built into the house as an anchorage to the outer chimney; or make labyrinthine mazes with our booted feet, scooting across the crusty snow working around-and-around or, in-and-out, then play catch-me-tag as we scampered about the maze trying to catch one another. 

 

When cold, we would fly into the old farmhouse's back "work room" or "ready room" where dad, his brothers and sisters, and my uncles and aunts five generations back, would gather to dress for the fields and dairy barns; or undress and clean up after a long day of farming and husbandry. 

 

Most days, we flew in to warm up our little bodies. Which delighted grandma no end. We would peel off our wet outer clothes and iced-up buckle boots to be lured within to Graham Crackers and milk as we explored again the old house with its framed pictures and family rooms. 

 

And on special days when coming indoors we might find grandma working about two very large, vat-like, and rounded laundry tubs filled with steaming hot water rising about her fragile frame and filling the ready-room with much need heat. There we would watch with child-like eyes grandma move about the tubs stirring the wet clothes in the hot waters or winding them through a sturdy pre-1930s hand wringer before clothes pinning all to a strung line about the clapboard room. 

 

She always gave a wry, toothy smile from her diminutive figure clad in thin gingham dress before measuring ourselves to her frame shoulder to shoulder to see if we might be as tall as she! By age ten we had caught up with our beloved "second mom" before scampering down the cement floor hall to a back anteroom where an inside - and importantly, an unfrozen hand pump served up the best of coldest waters in a speckled blue enameled tin cup. 

 

We lived in paradise and didn't even know it... 

And if our busy dad wasn't on the roads policing or, up at the fire barns cleaning up the ash soot of the fire equipment and trucks after a fire, or driving our school bus morning and afternoon, we might find him up at cold barn in the dark of night servicing the plow tractor so it would be ready for use. He would add oil, gas, grease, check the tire chains, and always place a trickle charger on the battery to keep it in good health on cold nights. 

 

Looking around the night-filled blackened barn lay hundred-year whatnot and older, inexplicable, paraphernalia. The kind of stuff you see in Midwest antique stores. To us, it was junk, much used, and never removed by the hands that had placed it there years and years and years ago. There it lay with thick dust upon it underneath a mouldy atmosphere of age. 

 

While dad worked, we would climb up a rickety wooden rung ladder nailed into the beams which rose above the iron implements of plow, disk or tractor, thirty feet into the air, then fling upon a heavy 3' X 3'-foot double planked door to gain entry into the loft. Within, what once held hay now held more disused antiques. On summer days the space was filled with floating/wafting dust motes... but in the black, only the shafts of light from the dim bulb below gained entry through the upper planked floor. 

 

One especially good memory I have is that on the worst of the winter storms or summer gales, I would brave the elements to gain the barn, squeeze through between the jammed tractor doors, and sit in the loft above listening to the old barn groan and moan telling me of its hoary memories as I might imagine them from the dissolute litter lying about me. 

In my mid-twenties I sadly tore down the old wood barn. We were selling all our homesteaded acreage as all my relatives were dying or too old to keep the farm with their day jobs. We had already sold the old sixty-foot Quonset steel barn which held the dairy herd below under heavy planked floor. It had been disassembled and rebuilt north of us on an active pig farm. Forty years later I was blessed to walk within its structure at the consent of the owner who had torn it down, and with my cousin and wife, we fell silent and simply listened to the movement of the old iron beams swaying and creaking for a while. It was the finest of symphonies to our humble hearts and ears. 

 

As I took down my heritage, I first removed the attached-and-slated corn crib then proceeded to remove the ancient, boarded siding and overlapping ribs. Dad wanted all the old nails removed and bucketed, which took some time. Once stripped of naked of cladding I next tried to undowel the 6/8" wooden tendon pins and the massive 14/16" beam pins to no avail. Worse, I could see all the work down 150 years ago by my ancestor who had hand-adzed each beam across the length of all four of its sides. This was truly a labor I did not like nor one I had wished to do. 

 

Watching, my dad and his brother (my uncle) suggested pulling down the structure with the old tractor. It was an old, rusted Farmall M that had been well cared for and never spent one night outside in the rain or snow. We strapped a length of chains to the back frame of the tractor then commenced tugging-and-pulling 8 of the 12 main upright beams holding everything up: Imagine walking alongside a broken, tottering structure to attach chains to several corner and side beams... we left the interior beams alone of course. 

 

One by one we broke the bottoms of the grand, noble, upright beams, until the whole skeleton finally gave in along with the falling tinned plated roof. In our moment of glory, we each found a deep sadness which comes from living too long. I have grieved for years over the loss of our pioneered land, our farm buildings, my grandparents, and the many overwhelming memories of family and friends working the fields and gardens together, picnicking, hunting, or playing baseball on the hay fields.  

 

We lived in paradise and didn't even know it... 

To grant homage to the pre-industrial, agrarian pioneering days of yesteryear, I was listening one winter day in early December to my schoolteacher read to me in second of third grade the wintry idyll, Snowbound, by John Greenleaf Whittier. As I sat at my old fold-top desk listening to the verse's tones and lights I felt a deep, inner affinity for the words and imagery being read. 

 

Here, as my own generations had done for many years, in this simple one-room school built 150 years ago by my ancestors; where I walked every morning and mid-afternoon across the hay and grain fields, and dairy pastures; climbing up-and-over the boxed-wired rotting fence posts and lines; or drawing through the barbed-wired and rusted post fence lines; grudgingly wading through wet morning dews of field clover with my lunchbox in one hand and books in the other; where my pants, thin socks, and worn shoes took all morning to dry; here, I fell in love with a well-scripted verse by a poet I never knew. And though I have tried my own hand at this written art I realize it is only for the gifted few who have the muse and verve within the souls which might spill their words across the gilded page welling-up deeply held, visceral feelings we thought had long died within us long ago. 

 

So, here, at the start of January's dark wintry days and blacker, moonless nights, is a poem you may, or may not like. But at the poetry site I am directing you too, you may find other poems to explore, read, muse, or share.

 

To cold and wintry travellers

seeking comfort the warming

fires at day's end, clothed

socked feet, flannel shirt,

bound round 'versed dreams,

of fairer days when yesteryear's

youth was nigh;

wreathed loss loves forged

lingering fortitudes well-scented in

benighted, florid moments,

tranced distant memories dulled

the intervening years of a lived

life, yearning a christening trove

of beloved sights and sounds,

dear smells and touch, stirring

living eye and soul long forgotten

trysts which once enflamed a

child's heart it's first footfalls

of wandering adventure, lit a

grandfather's kind eye's hearty

embrace granting permission to

live one's best possible life

before holding yon next

generation of beating hearts,

flying hands, and happy feet,

pinching weathered ears, or

wrinkled elbows for fun,

assurance, and fond farewell.

R.E. Slater

January 16, 2024

Rev. May 1, 2024

*To Wes, my heart and soul, and

  to Levi and Titus, my faraway loves...

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

John Greenleaf Whittier - Snowbound, A Winter Idyl