First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
"Cosmic Mariner: Destination Unknown"
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore May 20, 2001

And in the Human Heart XXVIII (28)

Green, green, and green again, and greener still,
spring towards summer bends the immortal bow,
and northward breaks the wave of daffodil,
and northward breaks toe wave of summer's snow:
green, green, and green again, and greener yet,
wide as this forest is, which counts its leaves,
wide as this kingdom, in a green sea set,
which round its shores perpetual blossum weaves ---
green, green and green again, and green once more,
the season finds its term --- then greenest, even
when frost at twilight on the leaf lies hoar,
and one cold star shines bright in greenest heaven:
but love, like music, keeps no seasons ever;
like music, too, once know is known forever.

From a poem called THEE that begins with this introduction

How to condemn THEE
Yet also hymn THEE
How to praise THEE
Yet also paraphrase THEE
How to proclaim THEE
Yet also shame THEE

The part of the poem I'd like to use as our meditation, comes toward the end.

Nameless and shameless we
take THINE identity
to be
then
not to be
sharing with THEE
and daring
and o caring
for what is delicious
and what is precious
learning how slowly what to choose
and what refuse
what use
and what abuse.
Laboriously the spirit learns
THY shadow upon us like the cloud's
shadow upon the meadow
as if perhaps in our slow growing
and the beginnings of our knowing
as if perhaps
o could this be
that we
be

THEE?

THEE still learning
or first learning
through us
to be
THY THEE?
…
Magnificient THEE
the syllables I speak
and which are THINE
and mine
still cannot equal THEE
who art becoming and have yet to be
and learn to speak
as we
With THEE.

We need a theme? Then let that be our theme:
That we poor grovellers between faith and doubt,
The sun and north star lost, and compass out,
The heart's weak engine all but stopped, the time
Timeless in this chaos of our wills ---
That we must ask a theme, something to think,
Something to say, between dawn and dark,
Something to hold on to, something to love ---

Medusa of the northern sky, shine upon us,
And if we fear to think, then turn that fear to stone,
That we may learn unconsciousness alone;
But freeze not the uplifted prayer of hands
That hope for the unknown.
(Time in the Rock II)

My reflexive theme comes from the epitaph of author and poet Conrad Aiken. He saw a majestic ship in the Savanna harbor named 'Cosmic Mariner.' He looked it up in the shipping section of the newspaper and read that its destination was unknown. He combined these words as the epitaph on a stone bench next to his tombstone: Cosmic Mariner: destination unknown.

Great intention went into his pithy choice; a four word lure that reaches beyond the grave. A common theme wove through his poetry and prose. Aiken strove to discover the nature of consciousness. He was schoolmate of T.S. Eliot at Harvard, contemporaneous with Walter Lippman, Van Wyck Brooks and e.e. cummings, influenced by Freud, Jung, Havelock Ellis, William James and Edgar Allan Poe. Among the awards he won for his writing were the Pulitzer Prize in 1930, the National Book Award in 1954, the Bollingen Prize in 1956, and the Gold Medal for Literature in 1969. His style was unique among his American colleagues believing from the start that the dynamics of psychoanalysis could be integrated into a writer's metaphoric apparatus. He thought that both writers and critics could benefit from a more scientific awareness of depth psychology.(Butscher xix)

To begin discovering his poetry we must experience his words as an event awakening unique responses in each of us. His words are faintly reminiscent of magnetic poetry. Aiken is seeking to touch our unconscious mind in a way that will open us to the unknown. This theme will be our theme as I dialogue with selections of his poetry.

So I invite you to join me on a sermonic exploration for the next few minutes. Allow me to be captain of our cosmic voyage to a destination unknown.

What is a symbol? It is the 'man stoops sharp
to clutch a paper that blows in the wind
…

Catch a beam in your hands, a beam of light,
One bright golden beam, fledgling of dust,
Hold it a moment, and feel its heart, and feel
Ethereal pulse of light between your fingers:
Then let it escape from you and find its home
In darkness, mother of light: and this will be
Symbol of symbol, clue to clue, auricle of heart.

The glass breaks, and the liquid is spilled, the string
Snaps, and the music stops; the moving cloud
Covers the sun, and, the green field is dark.
These too are symbols, and as far and near
As those, they leave the silver core uneaten
The golden leaf unplucked, the bitter calyx
Virginal, and the whirling You unknown.
(Preludes for Memnon V)

The chalice, the lectern, the clear windows, the colors of the walls and carpet, the pews and pew cushions all find symbolic connection to our Unitarian Universalist home. But what does it mean to say one is a Unitarian Universalist? We intentionally choose not to hold beliefs about God we expect others to adopt. We turn this decision over to each individual to make, accepting a wide range of life affirming beliefs. The reason, partly learned through bitter experience, comes from understanding that symbols have limits to what they can communicate. They leave the silver core uneaten.

This separation of symbol and core frames the struggle of the religious enterprise. How do we move closer to that silver core and partake of its nectar? Yes, limited as they can be, symbols are helpful. Experiences can enlighten us. Revelations can astound and change us. And then arrives the next moment. Was that the voice of God speaking from the burning bush or was that a figment of my imagination?

Forever the whirling You is unknown.

Indulge your terror: let him have his claws,
His goblin snout, his fangs, his huge grimaces,
Which eat the fog, your house, your heart, yourself;
Entice him; let the cold mist creep upon you,
Let him lie down beside you in your bed
And stretch his foul and sweaty reptile body
Against you, hip and thigh, and close hold hands
About your throat; feel well his scales and horns;
And the wet marsh-breath on your cheek.
…
It is our terrors that delight us
(Preludes for Memnon, LV)

The unknown is frightening. There may be no safety net. Danger shall be encountered that will 'creep upon you.' Yet the terror delights us. Adventure pulls us into taking risks, riding the roller coaster, diving underwater, and repelling down a cliff face.

In the Asian Buddhist monastic tradition, an early meditation practice is sitting in the charnel grounds and watching bodies decay. This meditation helps with attachment to the physical form and the cycle of birth and death. Think for a moment who else might also be visiting the charnel grounds. What other eyes may meditate upon the monk? The eyes of scavengers developing a taste for human flesh. Not all the monks survived this introduction to the great way of the Buddha.

… You must go a slow mile with him;
he will teach you much; …
for he will change
An acorn to an oak tree in a twinkling;
An oak-tree to an ash; and laugh, and say
'What's dead to-morrow is not dreamed to-day.'
(Preludes for Memnon, LV)

We spend our lives walking unconsciously in the presence of death. All fears find their way home to survival. All living beings prefer being over non-being. And those who end their lives intentionally, yearn for a being they perceive out of their reach.

Every hero must face his fear, wrestle with it, and as dawn breaks, discover its name. Behind the mask of fear can lie great wisdom if we are willing to walk the slow mile with it.

So, in the morning, when the east is strung
with the bright harp-strings of another day:
against whose glistening golden cords are sung
all things that birds can sing or words can say:
like a great page of music, whereto leaning
even the dark trees with their cordage sing,
each harbored bird and leaf with separate meaning,
the world's innumerable words for every string:
all things at praise or gaze, peach-bloom, oak-gall,
the greasy cricket waking, the quick ant
stepping in gold against that lightning, all
turned in that sudden fire to adamant:
so, as unnumbered, varied so as this,
the unresumable world that sums our kiss.
(And in the Human Heart XXIII)

I've had a love affair with sunrises for a long time. When I was twelve years old I delivered the Philadelphia Bulletin seven days a week. I rode my bike on my route Monday through Saturday in the afternoon and Sunday mornings. (I got an early start on a minister's schedule.) The Sunday papers were delivered before the sun came up. I'd have to wait for the truck to drop them off. Then insert the comics section with the ads inside the news portion of the paper and stack them in my red wagon. Finally I'd pull the wagon behind my bike over to the University Apartments, East Park Place, a couple of frat houses and Kells Avenue. In the darkness and silence pulling my wagon behind my bike, I felt as if I owned the streets.

On more than one occasion, there would be a breathtakingly beautiful sunrise, the sky lit up with all the colors from red to yellow against a pale blue sky. The birds would begin singing with the first light, a natural performance of sight and sound, innumerable words for every string.

My parents usually took us to the New Jersey or Delaware beaches during the summer, renting a cottage for the week. I remember getting up very early and taking my camera and a tripod out to the Cape Henlopen beach, that little point where the Delaware River meets the Atlantic ocean. In the chill of the morning air, I set it up pointing to the horizon so I could take pictures every few minutes of the sun rising. That particular sunrise seemed to bring the clouds with it. At first they were far away and small lit by the edge of the sun peeking over the horizon. As the sun began climbing the clouds began filling the sky with reflected light.

No words can capture the glory of that morning. That beach, that morning, was a holy shrine.

Mysticism, but let us have no words,
angels, but let us have no fantasies
churches, but let us have no creeds,
no dead gods hung on crosses in a shop,
nor beads nor prayers nor faith nor sin nor penance;
and yet, let us believe, let us believe.

Let it be the flower
seen by the child for the first time, plucked without thought
broken for love and as soon forgotten:
(Time in the Rock XI)

Mysticism, churches with no creeds, no beads, prayers, faith, sin, penance - sounds like many people's idea of Unitarian Universalism. Yet, let us believe, let us believe.

I've struggled a lot with intentionally directing my believing. This is what we encourage people to do here. Ruthlessly and relentlessly to question the grand poobaas, get the facts, analyze the data and come to your own conclusion. Yet all we can know is what is repeatable and predicable and follows a measurable pattern. That's a lot but not when it comes to singularities. Unique unrepeatable experiences we can't predict or control.

All this matters a lot when it comes to prayer. Does prayer change the universe or does prayer change the pray-er. What about acceptance of tragedy, when your wife and infant son are shot in a small plane over Peru? Oddly the husband has found peace through his religion. Is this self-delusion? Denial? Or something else?

There is a childlike innocence about true mystics. They are at peace with not knowing, not attached to one way of believing. They pluck the flower only for love. The love isn't in the flower of course, the picking just happens and is soon forgotten. But in that moment holding the flower, great peace and joy. Let us believe in the love the flower inspires.

And let the churches by our houses
defiled daily, loud with discord, ---
where the dead gods that were our selves may hang,
our outgrown gods on every wall;
…
Mysticism, but let it be a flower,
let it be the hand that reaches for the flower,
let it be the flower that imagined the first hand,
let it be the space that removed itself to give place
for the hand that reaches the flower to be reached ---

let it be self displacing self
as quietly as a child lifts a pebble,
as softly as a flower decides to fall, ---
self replacing self
as seed follows flower to earth.
(Time in the Rock XI)

Aiken not only wrote because he enjoyed it, he also wrote, driven by his own psychological distress which leaks through sometimes in the ghastly images like the demons earlier mentioned. Writing was his therapy and his therapist was his pen. It probably saved his life as he opened up his inner life. Self replacing self, pealing back the self and seeking a deeper, and truer self. Yet this didn't have a direction, only a cycle from seed to flower to earth. The goal of understanding the full dimensions of consciousness eluded him, as I expect it will elude us as well.

The tour of Aiken's poetry is not yet done as I know I've only selected a few morsels out of a prodigious volume of work. I hope I've been able to peak your interest in this writer and give you a short tour of his genius. The other inscription he left on the bench by his tombstone was: "Give my love to the world." If you read his work, you'll find he has done just that.

One cricket said to another ---
come, let us be ridiculous, and say love!
love love love love love
let us be absurd, woman and say hate!
Hate hate hate hate hate
and then let us be angelic and say nothing.

And the other cricket said to the first ---
fool! fool! speak! speak! speak!
speak if you must, but speaking speaking speaking
what does it get us, what does it get us, what?
Act act act act give
giving is love, giving is love, give!

One cricket said to another ---
what is love what is love what is love
act --- speak --- act --- speak --- act --- speak ---
give --- take --- give --- take --- give --- take ---
more slowly as the autumn comes, but giving
and taking still, --- you taking and I giving!!

And the other cricket said to the first ---
yes! Yes! Yes! You give your word!
Words words but what at the end are words
speech speech what is the use of speech
give me love give me love
love!

One cricket said to another ---
in the beginning --- I forget --- in the beginning ---
fool fool fool fool fool
too lat to remember and too late to teach ---
in the beginning was the word, the speech,
and in the end the word, the word, the word . . .

But they quarreled, these two foolish crickets,
and bandied act with word, denying each,
weighing their actions out in terms of speech,
the frost came whitely down and furred them both,
the speech grew slower, and the action nil,
and god began again.
(Time in the Rock XII)

Sources:

Butscher, Edward, Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale, U of Georgia Press, Athens & London, 1988, ISBN 0-8203-0760-2

Marten, Harry, The Art of Knowing: The Poetry and Prose of Conrad Aiken, U of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1988, ISBN 0-8262-0654-9

Copyright © 2001 by Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.