Sunday Night Journal — July 31, 2011

I picked up this little book at a used-book sale a few weeks ago and immediately began reading it, partly because it’s so short. I’ve had a copy of The Reed of God sitting around the house unread for years, and have encountered intriguing samples of Houselander’s work here and there, but this is the first extended exposure I’ve had to her. It looks like a book of poetry, but Houselander doesn’t claim that description for it; rather, she calls these free-verse meditations “rhythms.” That was nicely diffident of her, because they aren’t especially good when considered as poetry. But as vivid devotional and theological pieces they are very good.

These Rhythms are not intended to be poems in a new form but simply thoughts, falling naturally into the beat of the Rhythm which is all around us.... The theme which recurs in them is the flowering of Christ in man.

Her use of the word “flowering” in that sentence would seem to be deliberate: it is her consistently used analogy for the Christ-life within us all. Neither is “man” an accident; she did not say “Christian,” because it seems to be a central aspect of her view of the world that Christ is present in all of us, not only in those who profess him.

The book was published not long after the end of the Second World War, and many of the pieces refer to the war, and so it is often the crucified Christ that she sees. And the tree that flowers is of course the Cross. “In an Occupied Country” is about the anguish of a woman standing in the ruins of her home, “Frans” about a refugee boy. The final piece, “Holy Saturday 1944”, describes the preparation for Easter Mass in a time of war, and the hope which includes and transcends hope for peace in this world.

Perhaps it’s only because the room in which I’m writing this has suddenly grown dark from the approach of a thunderstorm, and I’d rather watch it than write, but I’m feeling rather impatient with the role of book reviewer here. I think I’ll just reproduce what is at the moment my favorite of these meditations; better that you should read one of them for yourself than my attempt to describe them.

***

The Young Man

There is a young man
who lives in a world of progress.
He used to worship a God
Who was kind to him.
The God had a long, white beard.
He lived in the clouds.
But, all the same,
He was close to the solemn child
who had secretly shut him up in a picture book.

But now
the man is enlightened.
Now he has been to school
and has learnt to kick a ball
and to be abject
in the face of public opinion.
He knows, too
that men are hardly removed from monkeys.
You see, he lives in the light
of the twentieth century.

He works twelve hours a day
and is able to rent a room
in a lodging house
that is not a home.

At night he hangs
a wretched coat
upon a peg on the door
and stares
at the awful jug and basin
and goes to bed.
And the poor coat,
worn to the man’s shape—
round-shouldered and abject—
watches him, asleep,
dreaming of all
the essential,
holy things
that he cannot hope to obtain
for two pounds ten a week.

Very soon
he will put off his body,
like the poor, dejected coat
that he hates.
And his body will be
worn to the shape
of twelve hours’ work a day
for two pounds ten a week.

If he had only known that the God in the picture book
is not an old man in the clouds,
but the seed of life in his soul;
the man would have lived,
and his life would have flowered
with the flower of limitless joy.

But he does not know,
and in him
the Holy Ghost
is a poor little bird
in a cage,
who never sings
and never opens his wings,
yet never, never
desires to be gone away.

***

That last image is worthy of any poet, though Houselander's line in general lacks the mysterious tension of free verse at its best. Her writing seems to have been only one part of her work; she was also a wood carver and, perhaps most importantly, a mystic with a gift of spiritual healing. The Wikipedia article seems to be a pretty good introduction, and there is more material in the external links provided there. I notice that the library which houses my office has her autobiography; I plan to read it next.