Monday
11 December 2017

— A dusting of proper snow this morning!

Good Morning All,

In eleventh grade, my Latin teacher, Dotty Rounds, she who wrote the classical index used by the world for years and years, wrote on the blackboard: Know thyself, which she said was an ancient Greek aphorism inscribed in a mosaic in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. My immediate response was: Assuming one could know oneself, why would anyone want to do so?

I was hesitant for the simple reason that I was at that time residing in a world of Congregationalists,  they being the natural descents of the onslaught of Puritans who showed up in Massachusetts in the 1630s. We are talking Increase Mather and his over-the-top son Cotton Mather. We are talking the Salem witch trials in the 1690s. We are talking humans are--one-in-all--deplorable bags of sin.

As such it seemed to me that wanting to get to know oneself would necessarily include a long list of ugly transgressions, vile thoughts, and assorted other degradations committed in accordance with one deadly sin or another. After all, I’d read The Scarlet Letter and had suffered along with poor Reverend Dimmesdale as he angonized and chastized himself page after page for his sins. It did not help that his chief sin seemed to have been jumping Hester in the forest. In eleventh grade, my ecumenical desire to jump any of my female classmates in the forest was a topic I visited several times a day.

A couple of days later, Miss Rounds, as if to rub it in, wrote on the board: The unexamined life is not worth living.  She allowed that this bothersome statement was written by Socrates, a Greek, who—I wanted to point out—had bugger-all to do with  what ought to be happening in a Latin class.

Still and since I had great respect for Miss Rounds, I decided to at least give this self-examination business a shot. It turned out pretty much as expected: I was by all accounts and estimations a heinous sinner, one deserving of God’s immediate wrath.

Since then, I have put some distance between myself and my Congregationalist roots. Probably not enough, but some. That said, I do occasionally find myself in the wee hours dwelling on what seems to me a long litany of personal failures and cowardly small-mindedness.

The poem below happened last week some time when I could not—at first—get to sleep. The second and third stanzas recount a truly wacky dream I had after I did get to sleep. It is certainly one of the weirdest dreams I’ve ever had. No doubt, it was partially inspired by my recently planting all those spring bulbs. But that is only the beginning.

I am attaching the poem with some hesitation, partially because it may seem I am too easily letting myself off the hook. (I have, I know, been guilty of that in the past.) Also, I do not have a very clear sense of what the poem may be about. I’m hoping it's about the redemptive power of love.

Undeserved Benevolence
Bheka Pierce

My midnight thoughts and I do not always get along.
Some nights, I see again faces of friends in anger I have
Wronged, family neglected, unwritten letters, unmade calls,
A throng of lies, small deceits, betrayals disguised as song;
All the usual pretense and bluff and cant and shame of:
Live without regrets, we all know we must be strong.

Again then comes the bizarre dream where all of us                
Are in the garden in fall’s glory, my folks, brothers, wife,
Our kids, an entire team of those wronged friends
Who do not seem by my flaws and selfishness appalled.
By their digging, I might think they all quietly deem
Me somehow forgiven, held not much accountable at all.

It’s my sins they’re planting, each a large bulb shown me
Before dug down by the lilacs to greet another spring.
I fear what black and bedraggled flowers will surely cling
To April’s slanted breezes; I am humbled by the granting of
Such graceful absolution and feel no less the gentle sting of such
Love when golden daffodils arrive with the robin on the wing.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Do not miss the poem in today's Day Book!

P.P.S. Two Holly snaps: