from "Grace Paley, the Saint of Seeing" in The New Yorker (March 3, 2017). https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/grace-paley-the-saint-of-seeing
"What does a writer leave behind? Scale models of a way of seeing and thinking. Those of us still down here are always in need of these models, especially in times of trouble. (And all times are times of trouble.) We have, most of us, yet to find a way of seeing and thinking that works—that allows us to live comfortably and positively in all of this beautiful mess—but our writers...have put forth some pretty good models, so that we might suffer less, or at least suffer within some beautiful context. Faith, in [Grace Paley's] story “Friends,” says something about the act of tutoring children that is also true of the conversation between reader and writer: “Though the world cannot be changed by talking to one child at a time,” she says, “it may at least be known.” A writer as good as Paley helps us (at least) know our world by modelling a certain stance toward it that is so pure and distinctive that it makes us go back into the world and take a harder, fonder look at it.
"Paley’s model advises us to suffer less by loving more—love the world more, and each other more—and then she gives us a specific way to love more: see better. If you only really see this world, you will think better of it, she seems to say. And then she gives us a way to see better: let language sing, sing precisely, and let it off the tether of the mundane, and watch the wonderful truth it knows how to make.
"To see better means: more joy, less judgment. There is a roof on our language that holds down our love. What has put that roof there? Our natural dullness, exacerbated by that grinding daily need to survive. A writer like Paley comes along and brightens language up again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up."
"What does a writer leave behind? Scale models of a way of seeing and thinking. Those of us still down here are always in need of these models, especially in times of trouble. (And all times are times of trouble.) We have, most of us, yet to find a way of seeing and thinking that works—that allows us to live comfortably and positively in all of this beautiful mess—but our writers...have put forth some pretty good models, so that we might suffer less, or at least suffer within some beautiful context. Faith, in [Grace Paley's] story “Friends,” says something about the act of tutoring children that is also true of the conversation between reader and writer: “Though the world cannot be changed by talking to one child at a time,” she says, “it may at least be known.” A writer as good as Paley helps us (at least) know our world by modelling a certain stance toward it that is so pure and distinctive that it makes us go back into the world and take a harder, fonder look at it.
"Paley’s model advises us to suffer less by loving more—love the world more, and each other more—and then she gives us a specific way to love more: see better. If you only really see this world, you will think better of it, she seems to say. And then she gives us a way to see better: let language sing, sing precisely, and let it off the tether of the mundane, and watch the wonderful truth it knows how to make.
"To see better means: more joy, less judgment. There is a roof on our language that holds down our love. What has put that roof there? Our natural dullness, exacerbated by that grinding daily need to survive. A writer like Paley comes along and brightens language up again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up."
from Mark Jarman's "Five Psalms"
First forgive the silence
That answers prayer,
Then forgive the prayer
That stains the silence.
Excuse the absence
That feels like presence,
Then excuse the feeling
That insists on presence.
Pardon the delay
Of revelation,
Then ask pardon for revealing
Your impatience.
Forgive God
For being only a word,
Then ask God to forgive
The betrayal of language.
First forgive the silence
That answers prayer,
Then forgive the prayer
That stains the silence.
Excuse the absence
That feels like presence,
Then excuse the feeling
That insists on presence.
Pardon the delay
Of revelation,
Then ask pardon for revealing
Your impatience.
Forgive God
For being only a word,
Then ask God to forgive
The betrayal of language.
February Evening in New York, by Denise Levertov
As the stores close, a winter light
opens air to iris blue,
glint of frost through the smoke
grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.
As the buildings close, released autonomous
feet pattern the streets
in hurry and stroll; balloon heads
drift and dive above them; the bodies
aren't really there.
As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens,
a woman with crooked heels says to another woman
while they step along at a fair pace,
"You know, I'm telling you, what I love best
is life. I love life! Even if I ever get
to be old and wheezy—or limp! You know?
Limping along?—I'd still ... " Out of hearing.
To the multiple disordered tones
of gears changing, a dance
to the compass points, out, four-way river.
Prospect of sky
wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,
west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range
of open time at winter's outskirts.
As the stores close, a winter light
opens air to iris blue,
glint of frost through the smoke
grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.
As the buildings close, released autonomous
feet pattern the streets
in hurry and stroll; balloon heads
drift and dive above them; the bodies
aren't really there.
As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens,
a woman with crooked heels says to another woman
while they step along at a fair pace,
"You know, I'm telling you, what I love best
is life. I love life! Even if I ever get
to be old and wheezy—or limp! You know?
Limping along?—I'd still ... " Out of hearing.
To the multiple disordered tones
of gears changing, a dance
to the compass points, out, four-way river.
Prospect of sky
wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,
west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range
of open time at winter's outskirts.
won't you celebrate with me, by Lucille Clifton
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
from Carl Feit, Anne Foerst, and Lindon Eaves, "Science and Being" on On Being with Krista Tippett (September 19, 2002) https://onbeing.org/programs/carl-feit-anne-foerst-and-lindon-eaves-science-and-being/
MS. TIPPETT:I wonder if you can describe for me some particular moments in your career as a researcher and a scientist when you came across — you know, when you made concrete discoveries which illuminated your understanding of the nature of God.
DR. FEIT:One of the things that you can’t help noticing as a scientist is that the world is — is almost infinitely complex and intriguing, so it’s — it’s like a giant — a giant jigsaw puzzle or a giant — a giant intellectual game that — that scientists can play. We just keep delving deeper and deeper and we find these new layers of — of meaning and logic and significance. But nature doesn’t give her — give away her secrets easily, and I think that was — I think that’s a paraphrase of — of Einstein, that it’s not all there for the having. You have to search it out, you have to dig it out. It requires a great deal of effort in order to find it. The theological take that I have on that is that God, in his wisdom, does not immediately reveal himself in the world, and so my science, again, does affect my theology because I — I — I go to Jewish tradition and, of course, in Jewish tradition I find basis for — for that. Jewish tradition talks about the hidden face of God. And so rather than driving me to question God’s existence, I understand that if I want to understand the hidden face of God I have to delve into it. I have to work a little bit harder, just like one doesn’t see the atoms and the molecules floating around when you look at the top of the table.
MS. TIPPETT:I think just on the surface there might seem a paradox. Someone might say that — that precisely the problem you work with of cancer is — is an aspect of creation which — which might seem to be a sign of the absence of God or — or the recklessness of God.
DR. FEIT:That’s — I — I understand that that’s the — that’s the part of nature that God left for us to finish up…
MS. TIPPETT:Yeah. You’re right.
DR. FEIT:…to find the cures.
MS. TIPPETT:I wonder if you can describe for me some particular moments in your career as a researcher and a scientist when you came across — you know, when you made concrete discoveries which illuminated your understanding of the nature of God.
DR. FEIT:One of the things that you can’t help noticing as a scientist is that the world is — is almost infinitely complex and intriguing, so it’s — it’s like a giant — a giant jigsaw puzzle or a giant — a giant intellectual game that — that scientists can play. We just keep delving deeper and deeper and we find these new layers of — of meaning and logic and significance. But nature doesn’t give her — give away her secrets easily, and I think that was — I think that’s a paraphrase of — of Einstein, that it’s not all there for the having. You have to search it out, you have to dig it out. It requires a great deal of effort in order to find it. The theological take that I have on that is that God, in his wisdom, does not immediately reveal himself in the world, and so my science, again, does affect my theology because I — I — I go to Jewish tradition and, of course, in Jewish tradition I find basis for — for that. Jewish tradition talks about the hidden face of God. And so rather than driving me to question God’s existence, I understand that if I want to understand the hidden face of God I have to delve into it. I have to work a little bit harder, just like one doesn’t see the atoms and the molecules floating around when you look at the top of the table.
MS. TIPPETT:I think just on the surface there might seem a paradox. Someone might say that — that precisely the problem you work with of cancer is — is an aspect of creation which — which might seem to be a sign of the absence of God or — or the recklessness of God.
DR. FEIT:That’s — I — I understand that that’s the — that’s the part of nature that God left for us to finish up…
MS. TIPPETT:Yeah. You’re right.
DR. FEIT:…to find the cures.
“The Volatile Standing at Sinai,” in The Particulars of Rapture, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, p 264.
A certain human standing (ma’amad), an existential posture is disrupted at the very moment that is called ma’amad har Sinai: the Standing at Sinai. This becomes stance as oscillation, a motion that rocks them to the very roots of being. The Torah was given, says the Talmud (Berachoth 22a) “in dread and fear and trembling and shuddering”: this was the foundational experience of their encounter with the Torah and, since these emotions can be experienced at all times, the Torah may be learnt at all times, even in periods of impurity. This terror, however, which is registered in the spontaneous recoil of a nation which had recently been avid with desire, becomes in Rashi’s account, part of a vital dialectic. Like the systolic and diastolic rhythm of the heart, the people oscillate: angels are at work, perhaps God Himself assists in the reconstitution of the human position.
The extreme polarities of their response to Revelation are seen by Haamek Davar as expressing a moment of immense growth. The people are stretched to the limits of their strength. The effect is to release a new sense of their own capacities, a new awareness of their ability to contain previously unknown extremes. On this reading, when Moses reassures the people in this vein: “Do not be afraid, for in order to test (le-nasot) you, God has come to you ([Exodus] 20:17) and when the word le-nasot is translated by Rashi, “to exalt you,” Ha-amek Davar develops the idea: it is a human spiritual greatness that is God’s purpose in revealing Himself—the ability to endure suffering, in the immense amplification of inner resources that is the heritage of the ordeal of Sinai.
The implications of this reading are quite radical: the purpose of Revelation is to develop human qualities. What is enacted at Sinaiis the revelation of the human being in larger range and strength. A new consciousness is born in this revelation; the Israelites endure an initiation that ensures them against the extremities of history: God comes at Sinai, so that the human may come fully into its own.
A certain human standing (ma’amad), an existential posture is disrupted at the very moment that is called ma’amad har Sinai: the Standing at Sinai. This becomes stance as oscillation, a motion that rocks them to the very roots of being. The Torah was given, says the Talmud (Berachoth 22a) “in dread and fear and trembling and shuddering”: this was the foundational experience of their encounter with the Torah and, since these emotions can be experienced at all times, the Torah may be learnt at all times, even in periods of impurity. This terror, however, which is registered in the spontaneous recoil of a nation which had recently been avid with desire, becomes in Rashi’s account, part of a vital dialectic. Like the systolic and diastolic rhythm of the heart, the people oscillate: angels are at work, perhaps God Himself assists in the reconstitution of the human position.
The extreme polarities of their response to Revelation are seen by Haamek Davar as expressing a moment of immense growth. The people are stretched to the limits of their strength. The effect is to release a new sense of their own capacities, a new awareness of their ability to contain previously unknown extremes. On this reading, when Moses reassures the people in this vein: “Do not be afraid, for in order to test (le-nasot) you, God has come to you ([Exodus] 20:17) and when the word le-nasot is translated by Rashi, “to exalt you,” Ha-amek Davar develops the idea: it is a human spiritual greatness that is God’s purpose in revealing Himself—the ability to endure suffering, in the immense amplification of inner resources that is the heritage of the ordeal of Sinai.
The implications of this reading are quite radical: the purpose of Revelation is to develop human qualities. What is enacted at Sinaiis the revelation of the human being in larger range and strength. A new consciousness is born in this revelation; the Israelites endure an initiation that ensures them against the extremities of history: God comes at Sinai, so that the human may come fully into its own.