Welcome to A Wild Green Heart. What is your heart longing for this week? Hopefully something here might meet a tiny portion of that vast territory of yearning.
Today's post is one that I recommend listening to rather than reading, because after a brief introduction on the notion of longing, I'm going to share a poem. It's nine minutes long, and in my opinion a far better feast for the ears than for the eyes. Nevertheless, for the insistent reader, the poem is also included in the text.
What is longing? We all instinctively know it, but how to describe such a sensation? Maria Popova wrote in her piece The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing on her wonderful website, The Marginalian:
Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning came all of art; out of our longing for truth all of science; out of our longing for love the very fact of life. We may give this undertone of being different names — Susan Cain calls it “the bittersweet” and Portuguese has the lovely word saudade: the vague, constant longing for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality — but we recognize it in our marrow, in the strata of the soul beyond the reach of words.
Others have described it differently. Here's elder and author Stephen Jenkinson, speaking with Anya Kaats on her (no longer active) podcast A Millennial's Guide to Saving the World.
These are my paraphrases rather than direct quotes (the podcast is over two hours long and doesn't have a transcript!) Jenkinson first makes a distinction between desire and longing.
Desire's cover story, he says, is that it will be sated and stop. But it never is sated.1 Whereas longing isn't pretending that it is trying to stop; it exists precisely to keep going. Being alive is an awe inspiring thing, but we forget. Longing is there to remind us of this, and it just asks for a little gratitude in return.
Jenkinson then goes on to speak about belonging: 'Be-' is the intensifying prefix. Longing is accentuated as a consequence of belonging to a place, a time or an idea. Belonging isn't a feeling, he insists; it's a skill. You have to practice it. When you belong, your troubles are even more apparent than before, but, Stephen says:
now you can operationalise your longing in service of the better day, which longing points you towards.
I'm realising already that I could write much more about the concept and experience of longing, and I suspect I probably will. I'm captivated by this universal human feeling that exists not to be met, but to remind us to be grateful we're alive. It is indeed a powerful, generative force that propels us toward making meaning in our lives. It seems, in this capacity, to be intrinsically connected to Imagination, which is, of course, what this series of posts is about.
But today's focus is a poem. A long poem, about longing. A poem that I now describe as being born from my deepest Imagination, though at the time it felt more like it was downloaded directly into my body, so insistent was its presence.
It came into being four years ago - specifically in the early hours of April Fools Day, 2021. I couldn't get to sleep the night before it, and shortly after midnight passed and 1st April was upon me, words began to appear with such urgency that I roused myself and began to write them down. After a long while, and many words, I felt like it was done and I gratefully fell asleep.
However, when the clock turned 6am, I was awakened again with a further forceful flow of words, which I straight away transcribed once again. This is not an experience I’ve had often, though it isn't unique.
That poem, gifted to me from the Imaginal Realm - “the meeting of the spirit and the flesh” in Danny Deardorff’s words, which you may recall from my last post on Imagination - is today's gift to you, dear reader. The poem is hopefully self-explanatory, and of course it will mean to you whatever it means to you. However, when it comes to the figure of the “simple, wandering fool”, it's probably worth mentioning that I was neck deep in the story of Parsifal at the time, and rather taken with his status as this kind of archetype, at least in the earlier parts of the story. Smothered by his mum, and even dressed by her as he sets out seeking to be a knight, there's an innocent, blundering quality to him. Nevertheless, he has quite the adventure and becomes greatly changed by both love and suffering along the way. Suffice to say, I can identify with that!
So, without further ado, here's the poem. If you can, get yourself comfy, close your eyes, and let the story of the poem carry you wherever it will!
Longing
All we have is the
memory of a memory of a memory,
a sweet inner knowing
buried beneath aeons of slumber
that there is More;
like awakening from the threads
of a dream
so intangible that
only the ghost of a feeling remains,
perhaps a single, fleeting glimpse,
no more.
Yet that is Enough
enough to set our spirit
sighing and groaning,
staring at the moon,
yearning for a Home we
cannot see or hear or touch
or taste or smell,
but still remembered with
some vestigial animal sense,
the warmth of being
Known to one's core,
Accepted without exception,
Revealed without shame,
Exalted without pride,
Delighted in without demand,
Loved without cost.
But how to trace the origin
of such an elusive place?
No map, no compass,
no flame to light the way
beyond that which fills
the inner eye with fire.
No means of travel other than
the heavy feet we tread,
one weary step at a time,
Love then Truth,
then Love then Truth,
the trail appearing behind us
in our wake,
mystical tracks laid subtly
for any who follow
and possess the eyes
to see our madness made Whole.
Prints we too discover,
leading us closer to our warm eternal den;
or round in dizzying circles
chasing wild geese,
confounded in the labyrinthine chambers
of our own inner lostness,
so certain that we passed this way before,
not seeing it was yesterday
and not that deeper Yesterday
which laces our hunger with
the sweetness of ten thousand deaths.
Who are they that hear this
whispered promise,
whose diligence awakes,
rending them asunder from within?
They come in every age
and every people,
and not in ones and twos
but endless streams.
There are those who seek to be sated in the halls of religion, waiting in temples and cathedrals, hands clasped together and eyes squeezed closed in fervour, praying to a god they cannot fathom for a thing they cannot name. They walk the long stone colonnades and cloisters, gaze fixed heavenwards, not sensing that their hearts are pulled to earth, deeper into the dark and fertile soil that birthed the ancient deities, censured by their scriptures, yet holding in their curved and wicked teeth the very keys that their pious supplications seek. How can they say their prayers are never answered, those who blind themselves and trust that God will dwell in houses made of stone not hearts of flesh? Then there are those driven mad by their desire, who rend their garments and flee into the wilderness, there to be succoured by its vast and barren beauty, those immeasurable spaces full of Nothing in which to dissolve, perhaps becoming stone or sand or scorpion, returning in another age to pick up the trail eroded in their soul.
What of those whose nameless longing propels them to the seas, charting ships or stowing away as means allow, finding passage to countless distant shores, disembarking in every foreign port to wander through crowded markets, winding streets, squares with fountains and ladies dancing, eyes haunted by the sight of ten thousand exotic women but no muse, no angel, no Goddess, their jaws clenched while resolution ebbs to doubt, and sometimes bitter resentment at the cruelty of fate and the miserly uphill climb of Settling for Less than that thread of a dream so distant. No wonder, then, that some, in crazed despair, hurl themselves at ruin, make secret pacts with death, search out the many roads to self-destruction, reckless in abandoning themselves to boozing, brawling, diving, climbing, flying, racing, wrestling eagles, riding crocodiles, always screaming to the elements to hasten their demise, yet always also aching to feel something, anything, pain or zest or marvel, to inhabit bruised and battered bodies, to touch the sides of something to stimulate the soul to share its secrets, to strangle it for holding back its truth. Then we find the kings and tyrants, and all the lesser beings of the courts, the power hungry madmen, believing hard that status can truly be a means to satisfy their deepest choking needs. Using wealth, coercion, titles, mansions, crowns and land, imprisonment and torture to turn the aloof and empty eyes of disinterested lovers, going through the motions for the hollow prize of meeting material desires, while the rulers, ever pushing, draping, oozing, on and on and on, but far too proud to plead, seek to sense the spark, the locus of their hunger, while unknowingly they empty any vestiges of hope from hollow hearts, bleeding out their life with grasping fists. What, then, shall we make of the simple, wandering fool, too focused on his honest daily tasks, to seek the heavens chart the seas or hurl himself at death? Walking only where his feet are bidden, never seeking any extra merit, not laden with a hunger fierce or pained, yet held aloft by forces far beyond his guileless means. Stumbling, sometimes sprawling, almost accidently felling foes or finding castles, invited into chambers where exquisite queens abide, holy, broken angels who lie in wait for such a fool as this.
Do not ask for fairness in this brief, preposterous life. Waste not your time in raging, shaking trembling fists at sullen skies, whose averted, sultry face will never deign to glance at such contemptible disdain. Do not cry for justice human soul, least not upon yourself, lest justice find you wanting! You who know not where you came from, where you go, or what you hold! Rather, dig within, determine that the evanescent treasure you heard tell of in your dreams lies deep inside the body you distrust. Reach out your open hand to contact grace, caressing with the air beyond your fingertips, the golden hair of messengers on wind. Offer thanks for everything you think of, praise the air with poems, plant the earth with love, unreserved and unrestrained. Let tears roll and fall into your plantings, water every intercession nurturing the growth but never seeking harvest. Never close your fingers on what is given freely, remembering that each and every time you let things go, your eyes flick down and glance your hands: Full, beyond your scope or power to hold.
Thanks for listening. I'm very curious to know where the poem took you. Where did you find yourself in it? Which characters and motifs stood out to you? What else did it bring to mind? What feelings did it elicit? See you in the comments!
See: neo-liberal capitalism
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