Boldt Words & Images: A poem

Eliot in 1934,
by Lady Ottoline Morrell

With apologies to TS

By Bob Boldt

Don’t worry. I won’t be leaving the planet without a fight. Old Screwtape will have to pay dearly for this soul.

Tuesday Voice

Oliver Sacks

Thoughts upon hearing that Oliver Sacks will soon depart

By Bob Boldt

It was a dark and stormy night when I ventured out into one of the biggest blizzards of the young year 2007. My destination was the Lensic Theater, where one of their landmark discussions was being held by the Lannan Foundation. The night’s guest was Lawrence Weschler, who was hosted by Oliver Sacks.

Mecca is where "the sacred there" is

In the context of pilgrimages, my reference yesterday to going on vacation could have been misleading. Going on a pilgrimage is not the same as going on vacation. And staying home to kick back in an easy chair is not the same as experiencing home as a destination worthy of pilgrimage—that is, as a "shrine or sacred place" (to quote The American Heritage Dictionary's definition of "pilgrim").

Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, that there was "no there there." But there's "there" and there's "there." The "there" that shrines have is a sacred presence. But I think it can be anywhere that we can bring the appropriate consciousness to.

I have for years often experienced the mundane as sacred, enjoyed routine tasks like making the bed or folding the clothes as sacramental. These mundane places and routines are ever present at home. The only journey we need undertake to reach them is spiritual, a road to mindfulness and awe. Awe-mindedness.

Home is for me the still point of which T.S. Eliot wrote:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
        [from "Burnt Norton," the first of his Four Quartets]

Home is the sweet spot where the dance of life can be engaged everyday, the dance by which Zorba the Greek celebrated and expressed life's sacred awe.