I hate lists. Making them. Checking things off. Yet, without one, life is…there is too much, and I will forget. As a child misses the step in the staircase at night, forgetting, tumbling headlong into an unknown realm.
We’ve made a list. It is of the things we must do to leave behind our decades of memories of home. To begin again. It is long. I don’t look at it. I do the things that are there. I hope I don’t forget. That others remember.
Today is Saint George's day. For more information about Saint George and the legends surrounding his life, see Fordham's Medieval Sourcebook. Since our third son, George's birth we have grown fond of the dragon slayer, because our Georgie was born with a heart defect, his own dragon to be slain in the first few days of his life.
I found out today that the College of St Hild and St Bede will by my college while I'm at Durham University. http://www.dur.ac.uk/hild-bede/
He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I Know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
This cathedral is adjacent to Abbey House, the home of Durham University's Theology and Religion department where I'll be studying.
Photo “Durham Cathedral” by Flickr user Karmin Photography/Creative Commons licensed BY-2.0
Leap Before You Look
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
December 1940
Robbie Griggs 