What I do is me, for that I came.

Even for someone as prone to tears as I am, I know I have finished a good biography if I cry at the end when the subject dies. The last book that moved me like that was Christophe Wolfe’s biography of J. S. Bach, and it goes without saying that I knew what was coming in the end. “Winston & Franklin” on the other hand, made me eager for the demise of both protagonists. Last night I got misty reading the end of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani. I’ve always admired Hopkins’ poetry (and Mariani’s, for that matter) but had only a passing familiarity with the circumstances of his life - I knew he was a convert, a Jesuit, lived throughout Great Britain, died young, achieved no literary fame in his lifetime.

On the other side of having read this biography, that’s still the story. I now have a greater understanding of his trademark sprung rhythm, a term for which I’d only had cocktail-party level comprehension. New Hopkinsian terms like inscape and instress have worked their way into my vocabulary and will likely disappear once I’m off what promises to be a “Hopkins kick” and have moved on to another temporary obsession.

Every biographer is going to focus on one element or another of a subject’s life, and throughout much of this book we read about Hopkins desire for sacrifice - he sacrifices reputation and relationship to ‘swim the Tiber’, he sacrifices his writing and creativity seeking obedience to his order, and he sacrifices much of his health in that same spirit of obedience. From what I know of Mariani’s other writing, the biographer has undertaken spiritual journeys of his own, including the Spiritual Exercises. The knowledge, both intellectual and spiritual, of Hopkins’ Catholic (and Jesuit) world makes all the difference in his writing about the poet. I imagine it is hard to write about a man who punished himself too much - who probably took himself too seriously - while loving and respecting the man and his actions. Mariani never laughs at or dismisses Hopkins’ deep desire for sacrifice or communion with God.

What I do is me, for that I came. I know I’m not the only person for whom that is one of Hopkins’ most memorable lines. My little liturgist rises up at this affirmation that what we do matters - not what we think, or believe, or intend, or someday might do.

I realized about 2/3 of the way through the book that I was basically reading from poem to poem. Though I gave attention to and was interested in the circumstances of his life, all the while I was measuring out Hopkins’ life in sonnets. I turned each page hoping to see more of his familiar poetry, accompanied by the circumstances of its writing and by Mariani’s unparalleled insights on its inspiration. But would the poet have read his own life the same way? Would he have agreed with posterity on the reason for which he came?

What I do is me, for that I came. We can think we know what it is we do, for what it is we come, but perhaps like our friend Gerard that which survives of us won’t resemble our dreams and intentions. Knowing the future’s uncertainty what else can we do other than catch fire, draw flame, keep grace, offer ourselves over to God and to each other? Perhaps Hopkins would have been even more prolific, more genius (is that a possibility?) had he not indulged his religious scruples. But the brilliance that we have from him was born in that intersection of devastating sacrifice and creative indulgence. His reality - his ‘me’ - was the filthy manger in which his spark took flesh.

For that I came. The eager and inspired want to know what “that” is. It is music, it is sport, it is health, it is justice - we have ideas of our purpose and our end. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we just slog through, with no sense of what makes us most ‘me’, what will survive, and what may reach beyond us across years to help others suss out dappled things, bright wings, God’s grandeur, our end.

Into Great Silence

Recently I showed some clips from one of my favorite films, Into Great Silence. It documents the lifestyle of the monks in a Carthusian monastery in France. Rather than being about monastic life, the film is like monastic life, and its slow pace and timeless sense of prayerfulness is intoxicating.



I spend enough time around the dismissive anti-religous to know that there are a lot of people who think that those monks are escaping from the real world, or are incapable of living with reality. When I watch them I know how brave they are. How could anyone imagine they are escaping? They live a life that offers no escape from who they really are. How many of us would be able to survive without the day-to-day preoccupations that distract us from the huge questions of our existence? How many of us could really let ourselves go and say to God 'it is ok if no one remembers me. It is ok if there is no trace of me left in this world. I abandon myself to you and need no other recognition'?

Years ago I went on a long silent retreat. When I tell people that they smirk and laugh in a way that is actually somewhat hurtful. Because I'm highly verbal no one can ever believe that I spent some time in silence, but I did and it taught me a lot about being myself rather than acting like myself. I don't think I'm built for the monastic life - like most people I am too proud to give up my pursuit of accomplishment and recognition. I envy the trust and courage of the monks at Grande Chartreuse who leave behind what they know and seek to be subsumed in God's silence.

Watch, therefore, for you know not the hour.

I really didn’t want to go to New York today. ‘Tis the season, as they say, but when “they” refers to singers, we’re not talking about being jolly but about heading down to New York, to a narrow building on 54th St with dingy bathrooms, in hopes of catching the eye and ear of one of the numerous auditors who park in those studios for hours at a time hearing aria after aria.

Last night was New Hampshire for a gig. When I got back to Boston in the late evening I took some time to wind down, packed a bag, laid out some travelling clothes, and hit the sack.

I woke in the middle of the night, as I tend to, and saw that the power was out in my apartment. Immediately I saw in my mind’s eye the letter from the electric company warning me it might be out this morning. My phone, which could have told me the time, also serves as my alarm clock. Therefore it was far across the room in the only place where I can guarantee I will have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Not knowing what time it was bothered me a lot. For whatever reason when I wake in the night I like to know how long it will be until I actually have to get out of bed. On days like today, when I needed to be up at 5:30 on the dot to make my 6:30 am train, it seems even more crucial. But last night I realized I had to live with the uncertainty and be ready for the alarm when it came.

ADVENT THEMES ALERT!! I thought to myself in the drowsy night, as I fought off the insomnia that I seem to have caught from my brother over Thanksgiving. Watch, therefore, for you know not the day nor the hour. (Mt 25:13)

When the alarm sounded at 5:30 I swung out of bed, wove my way across the room, hit the button on my phone, lit a candle, and got moving. I followed the plan I had determined the night before, was in a cab at 6:00 and on the road at 6:30. At some point during the 10 hours I spent on the Megabus today, I realized I was able to get out the door not because I’m wily or because of any exceptional night vision, but because I knew what I wanted to take with me.

What do I want to take with me when the trumpet sounds? Faith, hope, charity, mercy, justice, love? If so, I better keep them near me, “laid out” like my clothes (read: tossed) on the futon while I sleep nearby. There are things there would be nice to take, and then there are essentials. Today it was a dress, heels, and the Hopkins biography I’m reading. Maybe a good exercise for Advent is to think about what I truly can’t live without, what I want to have close at hand when the alarm rouses me in a powerless night, earlier than I ever expected.