The moment

Posted on by Vincent

Previously published on 18th April, 2011

I went out to the backyard on Sunday morning. Purpose: to hang washing out on the line. The sky above was blue. There are trees beyond the fence, growing in the children’s playground, and on one of them I saw a little bird, insistently repeating the same note: “Tweet; tweet; tweet” as its ancestors had done perhaps for a hundred thousand years. Behind its monotonous song was a hush, a wide silence which carried a scrap of conversation from half a block away, or a small clatter when someone dropped something. From the backyard, I looked at our row of joined-together houses, their shared chimney-pots outlined against the blue. Then I remembered to hang out the washing, taking care to hang each item well, and peg it in matching colours with domestic pride like the generations of my forebears, or (in the case of my mother’s family) the servants of her forebears. I wanted to distil the scene like a perfume. Could I run for the camera, take a shot that took it all in at once: the bird on the branch, the pastel colours of the garments and their plastic pegs, the warm brick colours of the chimney-stacks and their terra-cotta pots against the blue, the pure white blossoms on our cherry-tree? No: I must paint it in words.

This is the fourth spring we’ve lived here. My ambitions for the garden are less each year. In winter the sun doesn’t reach it. You can only start working it in spring. I went out and bought a new stiff broom for the side path, the part where the sun doesn’t reach even in summer. There wasn’t really time for all this, it wasn’t relevant to the day’s plans, but I had to pay my respects to the moment. Who does not live for special moments? Instants of time fall on us like snowflakes in a lifelong blizzard, each ice-crystal unique. Some expanses of time are dull, others unwelcome; a few we are determined to forget. From the album of moments we choose those which define to our satisfaction who we are, who we decide to be. We stretch the handwoven fabric of our imagination to fill Eternity and Infinity with our ideal vision.

So let me sum up my life as that Sunday morning backyard, my miniature Eden of momentary perfection: not for the first time. I’ve written about it more than once here, and used to mention hanging out washing in my Blogger Profile, as the sole item under ‘Interests’. I imagine that everyone identifies their essence, or imagined source of joy, by reference to the moments which seem to release them from mortality into another place. I sympathise with the person who tells me that Jesus is her saviour; for that is the label she attaches to her defining moment. She has perhaps had an experience which corresponds to John 10:9.

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

So I can understand and respect her religion, whoever she is, or whatever his religion happens to be. I understand perfectly that having known a divine moment—perhaps one no longer than the time it took me to hang out those clothes on the line, whilst I heard that Sunday morning hush, felt the whole world quivering and new-born like a Spring lamb under the April sky—he has dedicated his life to it.

In the nature of things, these moments are not continuous, and so we may dedicate ourselves to courting them, with prayers and pilgrimages: all to be worthy of the moment’s gift.

20 thoughts on “The moment”

  1. Thanks, Francis. And indeed, “Yes, yes, yes.”But tell me, please. Is one not courting something – a lifetime of moments, perhaps – when one trains to be a Dominican priest? CS Lewis was a Christian already but didn’t find joy till he found Joy, and they fell in love.

    To the priest, Joy and her sisters are in the ‘noli me tangere’ department, so there must be some vision of moments to compensate for what’s lost there.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins the Jesuit got his ecstasies from religion as well as Nature, and chose to write poems about a bugler-boy too, and Harry the Ploughman. But then he had black depressions too, which I fondly imagine were repressions of his deeper knowledge that he’d made a dreadful mistake taking on the Cloth.

    Because I am only me, and cannot see into anyone else’s soul, I don’t know if their God-mysticism is anything like my Nature-mysticism. But I always want to give them – and myself – the benefit of the doubt.

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  2. Your word pictures are very beautiful, Vincent.

    I don't know if it necessarily helps to “court” these moments, my experience is that they come when they will. “Surprised by joy,” as C.S. Lewis said, though he – as an inveterate Christian apologist – would undoubtedly be displeased at me using the phrase this way!

    I had a similar moment this morning – funny, one does seem to have such experiences more often in the early morning – shortly after seven, having arrived at work. The patient (the curmudgeonly old man I've described in my blog before) was still asleep and I went out onto the balcony. The sun had just come up and all around, the trees are blossoming and blooming and bursting out of their buds – a riot of fragile decent colours after the long starkness of winter. The birds were, of course, busy – and noisy about it. I had the feeling that the day was pristine, still unused, unsullied by what would come in the course of the day.

    Such moments are a gift – luckily, the gift is always there, ready to surprise us.

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  5. Ah, my Dominican past!

    I have to say that my Christian “faith” was a very intellectual thing and that I never experienced any kind of immediate encounter with God – in the way generally described by Christian mystics – during my time in the “religious life.” In that sense, my experience paralleled that of another former friar (albeit of the Augustinian persuasion), one Martin Luther!

    Reflection in recent years has brought me to the tentative conclusion that I probably never really had faith in God anyway – it was much more that I wanted to believe and was convinced that believing was necessary. Various events in my life, many years after I actually left the priesthood, led me to a point where I could relinquish this “wanting” – and a very liberating experience it was too!

    I've always loved Hopkins' poetry. The poor man had the misfortune to be a Jesuit during a period of Catholic history where intellectual and behavioural fascism reigned supreme. I see him as part of a marvellous tendency within the Society of Jesus which culminated in the marvellous vision of Teilhard de Chardin, a vision I admire enormously, even if I don't share it … at least in its Christological context.

    Hopkins inspired me to a post on environmental issues a while back, which may be of interest …

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  6. It was indeed of interest, Francis, and I wrote a well-considered comment to it, which got lost in the Blogger apology “We are sorry but we were unable to complete your request” from which (if you have not copied to clipboard) there is no recovery.

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  8. You really put my bird post to shame with this one. Very nice, beautifully written.

    In America we use dryers 😉

    Also, who is this new “Vincent” guy. What happened to the other one who looked like he just got out of bed?

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  9. Ver beautiful prose, almost poetry and a brand new photo to go along with it. This one is of someone who looks like someone who is likely to be an agreeable personality whereas the last protrayed one that was likely to be cynical. Humans appear to have many more sides to their personality than other animals.

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  10. Bryan, thanks for drawing attention to your bird post. I loved it.

    As for the grim-faced Vincent, I’ve reinstated it for the close match to my self-image, as inspired by your post “My only suit”.

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  11. This essay inspired three thoughts. I will reprocess them in the order in which they were received:

    Thought One:

    “…and on one of them I saw a little bird, insistently repeating the same note: “Tweet; tweet; tweet” as its ancestors had done perhaps for a hundred thousand years.”

    “Then I remembered to hang the washing, taking care to hang each item well, and peg it in matching colours with the domestic pride like the generations of my forbearers.”

    I love the comparison of the same phenomenon across species. It is a recurring theme. Maybe humans have free will, but we work in accordance with a design; the design is partially made by the evolutions of our own habits and methods and partially by “God’s” choosing, but as individuals we follow far more patterns than we create.

    Thought Two (resurrected memory):

    Though you probably cannot tell from the drivel I produce, I was a student of literary fiction. One summer I read between 20 and 30 books on the topic. I think I may have a read a novel or two also. Like most intensive endeavors, I walked away from the effort with little more than a hobo’s bindle of disheveled notions.

    Your essay reminded me of that period in my life and a specific sentiment that survived the exodus of ideas that followed. I will paraphrase: to interrupt someone as she writes is to steal her words forever. Though she may have similar thoughts again, her expression of the idea at that moment is always a casualty.

    Thought Three (resurrected memory):

    I have not thought of it in years:

    Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
    Is hung with bloom along the bough,
    And stands about the woodland ride
    Wearing white for Eastertide.

    Now, of my three score years and ten,
    Twenty will not come again,
    And take from seventy springs a score,
    It only leaves me fifty more.

    And since to look at things in bloom
    Fifty springs are little room,
    About the woodlands I will go
    To see the cherry hung with snow.

    — A.E. Houseman

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  15. I'm glad you guys like the suit post as well. Of all the posts that I've written so far for that blog, I think that post comes closest to what I'm trying to accomplish there. It has a touch a subtle humor, and it evokes a certain personal feeling (at least for me.) The writing on the other posts has been hit or miss. That's to be expected, since I started that blog specifically to practice that kind of writing. It's a fine line. On the one hand, you don't want a mere bare bones “see spot run” presentation of the facts, but at the same time you want it to flow naturally without cringe-inducing and pompously overblown rhetorical ornamentation. My number one cardinal rule of writing, which I recently passed on to my daughter is that good writing should be like good acting. If it's done right, it shouldn't even be noticed.

    Which is not to say that good writing or good acting can't analyzed or appreciated by fellow practitioners. It's just that both are a means to an end, and they function best when they get out of their own way. It's bad acting that draws attention to itself. Good acting weaves a spell where you believe the actor is that character, and you don't question it. Likewise, when I say the above post is superbly written, that's because it takes me to a place beyond the words, to the wash lines and chimney pots, to the ideas. The writing creates and sustains this vision, while simultaneously providing a background of tone and rhythm. It's more fragile than we know. A wrongly placed sentence and the whole thing would pop like a soap bubble, and we'd be left staring at grey marks on a white screen. Bad writing draws attention to itself when we fumble over awkward wording or grimace at the out of key tone. You know what I'm saying?

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  16. As a fine demonstration of what I was saying, I once saw an example of bad writing where a rocket launch pad lit up at dusk was described as “a stalk of light”. This inappropriate and oddly-chosen vegetable metaphor is jarring to my imagination. It's like seeing a stunning photograph which captures the mysterious wonder of the twilight and our aspiration for the stars suddenly transformed into a crude finger painting lacking any sense of perspective. It's very unsettling, which I doubt is what the writer intended.

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  18. Returning to Thought Two, John: I was waiting to feel a resonance with that, and now is the moment.

    Yes, it is that uninterruptedness which helps the writing—is essential for it, in fact. The author is his own worst enemy in this but one needs an expanse of time free of the world’s demands. I often get up at 4am for this purpose.

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  19. I do know what you are saying, Bryan and the thought is woven into my next, or may be, for my next doesn’t quite exist yet, being a little overblown in its creator’s eye at present: wherein writing may be treated as an analogue for Creation itself. Hm. Something needs puncturing and pruning there!

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