In the first of these Time of Quiet1 posts a week ago I mentioned how Paul Simon’s recent “Seven Psalms” album had got me thinking. So in this second one I’m going to try something I’ve not done before, which is to use some of his own thoughts from that album and see what responses of my own they might provoke. The way I’ve decided to do this is to use a method of spiritual interpretation called exegesis2 that interested me when I went for a stay in a monastery and saw the monks using it as a way of interpreting sacred texts during each day’s sermons. So yes, I am going to treat Paul Simon’s record like it’s also a sacred text, though I doubt I’ll be as theologically scrupulous as the monks in my use of their ancient method. I’ll also be referring to the author of my text as “Paul” rather than the more formal “Simon”. Not that I know him, of course. But then I’m sure those monks didn’t know the early Christian author of their Epistles, who they were also calling Paul, either. So “Paul” it is.
The words I’ve used in the caption below the photograph of my wife Sarah at Ness are how Paul’s half hour contemplation on life, death and eternity begins. And from it all I’ll now go on to select seven further short quotes, to which I’ll respond with whatever my own thoughts turn out to be.
Beginning with this:
The seeds we gather
From the gardener's glove
Live forever
Nothing dies of too much love
I’ve done a lot of the thinking about this writing while working or just sitting on the allotment I effectively share these days with Sarah. She’s the principal gardener and designer there, while I’ve helped her with caring for the place over these past few years. During which it’s gradually become sacred to me as well, as I’ve learned the rhythms of its spring, its dieback and renewal. This year I’ve watched, photographed and treasured the poppies you can see here, which had mostly seeded themselves. Surprising us both by turning up in beds where they were never planted by either of us. All flowered, gloried over and gone in their turn to seed now. And this week I’ve been gathering a bowl of their seeds from the last few remaining seed pods. Which we’ll duly scatter, again. And no doubt be surprised anyway by where next springtime’s poppies then turn up.
Thinking about Paul’s “the seeds we gather” then, leads most obviously to thoughts of the generations that will follow us. But it’s important, I think, that we also leave those generations the seeds of our ideas, our experiences and our creations. Things done, said and, like here, sung about. Things written down being my own version of Paul’s seeds that might “live forever”. Not from being passed on as obligations of course, but to be learned from and valued if, when and as our children’s children might wish.
Then there’s Paul’s most striking line from this quote: “Nothing dies of too much love”. What might that be saying? Maybe that, inevitably and much like these poppies, we will all die in our time anyway, however much we were loved. But that while we live it does no harm to love and care for each other all we can, then have our memories and ideas treasured after we die.
The Covid virus is the Lord
The Lord is the ocean rising
Here Paul alters his perspective from death to creation. From die back to renewal. Having listed some of the wonders of nature and creation he arrives at the first hints of the doubts he’ll be expressing later on. Saying that if there is a “Lord” who creates all things, then they can’t just be creating the nice and wonderful things can they? Life, death and eternity are tough things to think about I think he’s saying. As his contemplating goes deeper in, and gets more personal.
I lived a life of pleasant sorrows
Until the real deal came
Broke me like a twig in a winter gale
Called me by my name
My own “life of pleasant sorrows” was unexpectedly interrupted, a bit like this, too. Working steadily away at the ups and occasional downs of my utopian PhD had led me to a line of thought that was wondering about whether the attempted utopias of the twentieth century had failed so disastrously because the religious moral high ground of previous centuries, at least here in the increasingly secular west, was barely being occupied any more by churches still sufficiently influential or principled enough to have questioned the existence of such atrocities as gulags and the holocaust. Which line of thought sent me off to consider issues of morality, ideologies and religion, at first suspecting I might have found my post-doctoral area of utopian study. Except it ended up breaking if not me then at least my faith in what I’d been doing, like Paul’s metaphorical “twig in a winter gale”. Ending my interest in utopia, its PhD and remaining in an academic culture where I’d never truly fitted in. Feeling I simply didn’t have the time, youth or energy left in me for the likes of all that any more. And that my life and how my remaining time would best be spent needed thinking seriously about, right now.
So I took that time off I wrote about on here last year, for what I thought was that think. Walked around, went and stayed in that monastery and, much agonising later, left the university.
I'm not a doctor or a preacher
I've no particular guiding star
Then I stayed in another monastery, would go regularly to different cathedral services, back to a theology library I’d done PhD work at before. And this time read some of the Christianity, Judaism and Islam books there, and also in Waterstone’s. But didn’t find my “particular guiding star” in any of those books or places. Though I valued many of their wisdoms I could never eventually say, even about the Quakers who I was the most impressed by, “that’s the one for me”. Nor was the intangible place and sense of peace and belonging I was looking for in the books on atheism and agnosticism I’d found on some of the same shelves. Particularly the atheism ones, reading like the wilfully binary opposite of the religions they objected to. Touting another “this is the way” belief system in their know-all manner. But how can we know, I kept thinking. How can we know?
At least I’d looked.
I, I have my reasons to doubt
There is a case to be made
Two billion heartbeats and out
Or does it all begin again?
And do you know what? Over time I’ve come to like and be at peace anyway with this state of doubt. With this “But how can we know”. At ease now with living my life in the unknowing of that rather than be forever trying to squeeze myself into being any kind of believer or follower of anything else with a label on it. I never did like joining in with things after all.
But that’s just me and I’m fine with it. And if you are a “two billion heartbeats and out” person, or a follower of any of the faiths I’ve mentioned or all those I haven’t? Well of course they’re all fine too, for you even if not for me. Because I think we all find our own ways to think about life, death and eternity. Ways that have only ever become a problem once humans have started acting like “our’s is the only way”, then trying to force it on everyone else.
For me and only me then “I have my reasons to doubt”. And I’ve come to like it like that.
Wait
I'm not ready
I’m just packing my gear
Wait
My hand's steady
My mind is still clear
Wait…
I want to believe in
A dreamless transition
Wait
Nevertheless, and however comfortable and content I tell myself I am with all this doubt, I well know there might come that final moment of death when, inevitably still not ready for it, my last thought as I could yet be to hope of what Paul calls “that dreamless transition”.
Transition to what, though? Maybe the blank screen of nothing at all. Or perhaps to a garden which is also a library and has the best coffee and music there ever could be, and all my loved ones are either already there or will be one day when their own turns come for the great migration. Though that would mean the place, and let’s call it Heaven, would need to be next to the coast and with a rocky shoreline for Sarah. And contain who knows what else for herself and the children of Clare, my only and precious child.
But we’ll never know, will we? Not in this life.
Then finally.
Life is a meteor
Let your eyes roam
Heaven is beautiful
It's almost like home
Children! Get ready
It's time to come home
So the glorious record ends.
Exquisitely beautiful3. And like the best of stories, even if it is just a story, Paul the Storyteller doesn’t leave us hanging in doubt. Instead, with his wife Edie Brickell as “my beautiful mystery guide” and choral ensemble Voces8 gliding in as the celestial choir, he brings his story to the comforting conclusion of “Children get ready, it’s time to come home”.
Like maybe there could be that “dreamless transition” even for doubters like me. But who knows, how can we know?
Children get ready. And all sing…
…Amen
The phrase “In a Time of Quiet” that I’m using for these posts is from the Paul Simon song “Quiet” on an album he released in 2000. See, he’s been thinking about this life, death and eternity stuff for a very long time.
Exegesis is defined here as “A systematic process by which a person arrives at a reasonable and coherent sense of the meaning and message of a biblical passage. Ideally, an understanding of the original texts (Greek and Hebrew) is required. In the process of exegesis, a passage must be viewed in its historical and grammatical context with its time and purpose of writing taken into account. This is often accomodated by asking:
Who wrote the text, and who is the intended readership?
What is the context of the text, i.e. how does it fit in the author's larger thought process, purpose, or argument in the chapter and book where it resides?
Is the choice of words, wording, or word order significant in this particular passage?
Why was the text written (e.g. to correct, encourage, or explain, etc.)?
When was the text written?’
And this is not intended as a review of the record. If it were I’d have mentioned things like his references back to old songs, how the highways and hopeful hitchhikers from 1968’s “America” have now become a land of fleeing refugees, and lots more issues and wonders besides. But this wasn’t a record review, it was me having a go at thinking about a piece of music as if it was a sacred text. Which got me thinking, and I hope you too.
Ronnie, I’m so glad you revived this post and included it alongside these others. I had read all of them at the time, and remembered most of the thoughts in them. It was good to re read this in the context of those other key moments. What strikes me now, if you would permit me to hypothesise, is that within your desire for hope to remain alive , there is a disappointment somewhere that we as a human species have lost our way. I don’t really know much about how hard it is to study at PhD level, and perhaps in the context of a pandemic , when we had the opportunity to really ask ourselves the important questions about how we live, how we look after the planet that provides everything for us... how we cope with the despair of seeing potential good unravel before our eyes, as everyone goes back to the materialistic life as if nothing happened! Well, for me the most important thing your writing has given me, is the chance to reflect too. To spread your thoughts and ideas across this platform is more useful to me and those that are still hopeful they are not alone in searching how to live a better life. For that I thank you!