ADVENT
SECTION ONE OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)
Advent is the season we have just finished —the season the Consumerist Cultural Christmas calls “The Christmas Season.”
But, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and, like that earworm torture of a song, it does indeed run for twelve days.
But to counter that consumerist cultural Christmas narrative — and also to boldly urge you to keep those decorations up at least though January 6th— I thought I’d unpack “For the Time Being” (FTTB) in a series of posts during this “Christmas Season.” I know, you’re already thinking Christmas is over, but trust me, it’s not. And if you want to strike a blow against consumerists Christmas, join me in celebrating through January 6th.
FTTB, this long form work of poetry is truly one of my favorite literary works of all time.
So influential that my first CD title, and several songs on it, are homages to the work.
I would learn later that it was also the favorite of my pastoral mentor, Dr. Bill McElvaney….and that he and Fran would read it together every Christmas season.
This work is deep, dense, and powerful, if you take the time to dig in..which of course, we don’t tend to do these days. All the major Christmas story characters will make an appearance —Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi, Herod— and Auden will give them voices that bring true depth to their stories.
So, as we’ve said, Advent is the first section of the poem, and the season that just ended. There’s typically a very serious cognitive dissonance between what the CHURCH PREACHES during Advent, and what the CULTURE SELLS during that same Thanksgiving-to-Christmas time span.
Advent is all about waiting.
It’s not necessarily a cheery time at all. In fact, it’s a somewhat somber time, where the days draw shorter and shorter, and where we feel cold growing.
Auden certainly captures this in the initial “Advent section of FTTB.
He wrote FTTB in a tumultuous period in his own life and in the life of the world. It was 1940-41 when he started to work on it.
His Mother had died. A man he considered his husband did not reciprocate his affections. And, of course, the world was descending into World War II.
Everything seemed dark and disjointed…which is, of course, the point of Advent. At this very moment, Auden refound solace in Christianity. But not in fundamentalism or personal piety…in a robust faith that looks straight at the harshness of life.
And so, it seems to me Auden’s Advent section could apply to our world, as we wrestle with recovering from a pandemic, and with the still too real dangers of fascism in our time.
He wrote these words eighty years ago…but it seems like any poet could write them today:
“The evil and armed draw near;
The weather smells of their hate
And the houses smell of our fear;
Death has opened his white eye
And the black hole calls the thief
As the evil and armed draw near.
Ravens alight on the wall,
Our plans have all gone awry,
The rains will arrive too late,
Our resourceful general
Fell down dead as he drank
And his horses died of grief,
Our navy sailed away and sank;
The evil and armed draw near.”
I mean, that’s not just 1941 friends.
That’s 2023….right?
The poem features a “Narrator” who drops in from time to time, like the Stage Manger in “Our Town.”
He’s in the middle of describing a simpler time that seems to have somehow slipped away from humanity again…as the Narrator says this:
“But then we were children: That was a moment ago, Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.
Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain
We noticed on certain occasions-sitting alone
In the waiting room of the country junction, looking Up at the toilet window—was not indigestion
But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?
Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:
We can only say that now It is there and that nothing
We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,
For nothing like It has happened before.
That the world of space where events re-occur is still there, Only now it’s no longer real; the real one is nowhere
Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen…”
This reminds me of the Indigo Girls’ great song, “Kid Fears”
“What would you give for your kid fears?” They ask.
Near the end of the Advent section is a stanza I printed out with my own Macintosh 512 computer —very grainy dot matrix paper— and put up on the wall for decades.
In this last section is that even though we are all living in a world that feels deeply broken, the vision of wholeness is still inside us all.
And what it takes is embrace the paradox of faith, of the journey of faith….
Of holding doubt and faith in tension…as part of one process…
Of trusting that despair and love are part of the journey too…
Of taking a kind of “leap” to follow the path, even in the midst of our dark times.
I’ll let Auden have these last, powerful words that I kept on my wall for so long:
“For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is
not a desert;
The miracle is the only thing that happens, but to you it will not be apparent,
Until all events have been studied and nothing happens that you cannot explain;
And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.
Therefore, see without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking:
The Inevitable is what will seem to happen to you purely by chance; The Real is what will strike you as really absurd;
Unless you are certain you are dreaming, it is certainly a dream of your own.
Unless you exclaim — “There must be some mistake” —you must be mistaken.”
The rest of our journey through FTTB will come back to these themes of lost innocence, lost trust in systems, lost FAITH…and what it might take to restore it…time and again… stay tuned.