Choruses from The Rock - T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot

Here are some excerpts from “Choruses from The Rock” by T.S. Eliot:

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;
The men you are in these times deride
What has been done of good, you find explanations
To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.
Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.
The good man is the builder, if he build what is good.
I will show you the things that are not being done,
And some of the things that were long ago done,
That you may take heart, Make perfect your will.
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
There are hands and machines
And clay for new brick
And lime for new mortar
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of GOD,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together,
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore;
Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;
Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone,
Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless prayer,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD,
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened
before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has
never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned
upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?
There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.

In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.

Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or
lifeless
Joined with the artist’s eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal
imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the
place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.

O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!

We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled,
The light of altar and of sanctuary;
Small lights of those who meditate at midnight
And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

On a Ranch near Ennis, Montana

This is a story of my staying on a ranch for a couple of nights in southwest Montana.

This past week I was hitchhiking in Montana and I ended up in Ennis. I went to the library and typed up some stuff on my Digihitch blog and then I walked to the Exxon gas station.

I was inside the convenience store buying something to eat, when this older man walked up to me and asked, "Are you the traveler? Is that your backpack out front?"

I said, "Yeah."

His name was Arthur and he said that he had done some hitchhiking in his younger days. He was originally from San Diego and did a lot of surfing at one time. Arthur used to hitchhike with a guitar. He asked me if I needed a place to stay for a while. He told me he needed some work done on his ranch and that he had a bad back; he had been in a real serious car crash years ago.

So I told him that that would be great and that I would like to work for him. I grabbed my backpack and we drove around six miles to his ranch. He had a housemate named Hal who had lived there for five years; Hal was married and divorced and pretty much retired. Arthur used to be a miner years ago.

I fed the horses hay and grain while I was there. Arthur and I hauled some garbage to the local dump and we did a lot of cleaning up of some trash in the house and rearranging some boxes for storage.

I ended up staying two nights and then hit the road. I hitchhiked south and made it to Driggs, Idaho where I met up with a friend. I stayed at he and his wife's place in Drummond last night.

Yesterday, I checked my email and Arthur sent me a very kind and thoughtful note; here it is below:

(20 December 2009)

"Hello Saw man we are glad in the lord and holy power for leading you to us. We are very much lovers of good men who follow the path in life that few dare to seek, I find in you the good warm energy that god has bestowed upon you, follow your path no one else can, and remember us in your prayers we shall forever be in your kindness and have no regrets for the time you and we shared with you. Be always welcome in our tee pee. We enjoyed you and the god & man energy to shared with us. Have a safe and full filled life and some day return to us that we may share what god has given us to share with his chosen few. you are special in our hearts and minds so be good to yourself and we will not judge you but find in you faith to carry on and struggle with our human condition and remain thankfull to god first and the life of mammon second.
your friends Arthur And Harold.
ps glad you liked my cooking. pax goldbear"

["Sawman" was my nickname when I was working at Hanson Lumber Company in Ames, Iowa.  "Sawman" is also my username on Digihitch.com.]

Best Character Introduction in Cinema History - John Wayne - Big Jake (1971)

_____

"No man has hired us
With pocketed hands
And lowered faces
We stand about in open places
And shiver in unlit rooms.
Only the wind moves
Over empty fields, untilled
Where the plough rests at an angle
To the furrow. In this land
There shall be one cigarette to two men,
To two women one half pint of bitter
Ale. In this land
No man has hired us.
Our life is unwelcome, our death
Unmentioned in 'The Times.'"

"When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?'
What will you answer? 'We all dwell together
To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."

"Remember the faith that took men from home
At the call of a wandering preacher."

--T.S. Eliot
"Choruses from 'The Rock'"

[Originally published by Digihitch.com]

More Montana Posts
Hitchhiking Stories from Digihitch

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

Two days ago I finally finished reading Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild. I read the first five or six chapters at a bookstore in Driggs, Idaho; I finished reading it here at the public library in Dubois, Wyoming. I liked the book a lot. Eventhough, the death of Chris McCandless was a tragedy, I believe that the two years of his life before his death were redeeming. He experienced more in two years than most people experience in a lifetime. He lived "deliberately" as Henry David Thoreau would have said.

Krakauer writes extensively on his own life and experiences. Krakauer was trying to draw a parallel between his strained relationship with his dad and Chris McCandless' difficult relationship with Walt McCandless. When McCandless found out about his dad's other wife and children, it seemed like he had been living a lie--maybe McCandless felt he was illegitimate: it wounded him deeply. This deep wounding partly drove him into the wild, onto the edge, the fringes of society.

The main reason McCandless hitchhiked, rode freight trains and ended up in the wilderness of Alaska was to prove to himself that he could survive on his own. Krakauer writes of his own mountain climbing experiences; he was young and he wanted to prove to himself that he could climb the mountain and survive some near-death experiences.

At first glance, I thought, how does mountain climbing compare with hitchhiking? Isn't it much more dangerous to climb mountains than to hitchhike? At second glance, people die climbing mountains and people die hitchhiking the highways of the world. Mountain climbers explore and hitchhikers explore: they explore new geographical territory and terrain and they explore their own limits in difficult environments.

McCandless was obviously a very well-read young man. I liked the quotes of various writers at the beginning of each chapter in Into The Wild. McCandless left a deep and lasting impression on many people in his travels. Ron Franz, the old guy McCandless met in southern California, was especially touched by his life. I don't see any evidence that McCandless had a relationship with Jesus Christ, but he did believe in God.

When a man of ninety-five dies, people say that he lived a long life and that it was time for him to go. When a young man like McCandless dies at the age of twenty-four, we say it was a tragedy that he died so young. Tragedy is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, I would rather that McCandless had survived his ordeal in the Alaskan wilderness, but he lived more in twenty-four years than some people would live in two hundred years. People have and will learn from McCandless' life and death. It is not how long you live your life, but it is the quality of the life you lived that is important.

People will be reading and writing about McCandless' life for years to come. I saw the film Into The Wild for the first time last summer; the cinematography is beautiful--I liked the movie a lot. The hitchhiking scenes in the movie reminded me of my own hitchhiking experiences: the people you meet on the road, sleeping in the desert, the odd jobs you get to make a little money. I may have hitchhiked more miles than McCandless, but he rode more freight trains than I ever will.

I was hitchhiking through Belle Fourche, South Dakota a couple of years ago and this lady picked me up. She told me that she and her boyfriend picked up McCandless while he was hitchhiking through South Dakota back in 1992.

I believe the Lord wanted me to read Into The Wild for a reason. There are similarities and differences between my life and McCandless' life. I did a lot of exploratory hitchhiking back in 1986 and 1987, but since 1996, my hitchhiking has been God's will for my life--this is my work: obeying the Lord on the road.

Genesis 47: 9: "And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage."

Jacob's pilgrimage ended when he was one hundred and forty-seven years old (Genesis 47: 28); Chris McCandless' pilgrimage ended when he was twenty-four; I am still a pilgrim on this earth.

"When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?'
What will you answer? 'We all dwell together
To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."

--T.S. Eliot

Matthew 8: 20: "And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."


Chris McCandless Revisited
Fairbanks Bus 142
Into the Wild (2007) (Tragedy, Epiphany and Closure)
A Critical Review of Into the Wild
Chris McCandless on 20/20 (1997)
The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless
Hitchhiking Stories from Digihitch
Stobe the Hobo