It may be on the longer side, but the meaning of Holy Week has never been expressed more beautifully. From the second of his Four Quartets (1943):
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood –
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
This is wonderful!
Wow. Thanks DZ. This is a lot to take in. I may need some help. What I'm hearing from Eliot is so good and so offensive at the same time. Our only health is the disease? Jeezy peezies.
He may or may not be articulating one of my deepest thoughts and fears about what it means to be a Christian on this earth. (But then again, I might be reading my own thoughts into it.)
What does he mean by, "To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not…"
Is it coming to grips with the depravity and death that is our "life" in our sinful nature? We enter through the door of death – crucified with Christ – so that what was our life is shown to be the rubbish that it really is? Maybe like Rom. 7:9-10…
"Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death."
So we become theologians of the cross and give up the glory road. Is that what he's saying maybe? I don't want to paraphrase too much, but I do want to understand.
Then the line about obeying the dying nurse: Is the dying nurse the law or Jesus? I kind of see it as Jesus bringing the law, like in the Sermon on the Mount. I have often thought about this after reading a bunch of Bonhoeffer. (Don't mean to make all the Lutherans uncomfortable, but…) Perhaps it is not only in our disobedience that we are brought to the cross. For Jesus it was his obedience that led him there. When he turned the other cheek, he got the $#@& kicked out of him. Sometimes I fear our hopeful talk of "Grace in Relationships" gives way to a kind of prosperity gospel, where the good fruit seems to guarantee good life. I mean, I know we're not saying that, but sometimes it comes across that way.
So all I mean is this: For Christians, perhaps it is not just the sinful parts of us that are leading us to the cross. As our faith bears the fruit of the Spirit, and as we by some miracle in our hearts begin to unselfconsciously pray for our enemies, turn our cheeks, don't ask for our stuff back, and give away what we have, our sickness may grow worse.
I mean that in two senses: 1) We might go hungry and/or get crucified by the world. 2) The best of us will become increasingly convinced of how bad we are, as the worst of us enjoy the comfort of "doing just fine".
So even in our (true) obedience, what if the nurse's care is not to please but to remind us of our curse, so that we continue to carry our cross and hope in restoration, in his resurrection and in our resurrection to come.
"The whole earth is our hospital, wherein, if we do well, we shall die…"
And then at the end…It seems he is saying we Christians are cannibals or vampires who hardly realize how vile, disgusting, and embarrassing our survival really is. And it seems not to get any prettier as long as we are on this earth, celebrating the day we murdered the only actual Healer.
Gosh, I am having dark thoughts today! Am I reading the wrong stuff into this?
Thanks, Ross–Are you still on this planet in 2023?
This excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” beautifully explores the complexities of human existence and the paradoxes of life, including the idea that sometimes one must embrace suffering to find healing and that true understanding often comes from acknowledging our limitations. Eliot’s words offer profound insights into the human condition during Holy Week.
[…] For more, check out: Emily Dickinson’s Good Friday Poem, and T.S. Eliot’s East Coker musings on the Wounded Surgeon. […]
” Suffering. ” It’s root structure is from the Greek: path-, meaning “experience, undergo, passage.”
An experience is not always painful.
[…] “East Coker“ by T.S. Eliot: Reading Eliot’s Four Quartets for the first time, I felt lost, frustrated that I couldn’t crack the code of this modern poetry collection that everyone who’s anyone admired. The lightbulb turned on for me in the second quartet, “East Coker”, in one of the only sections of his poem that is rhymed and metered. Here, the master poet described the Christian life of death and resurrection in all its beautiful, counterintuitive, upside down glory. It has remained dear to me for nearly 15 years, a staple of my Holy Week reflection: “The dripping blood our only drink, / The bloody flesh our only food: / In spite of which we like to think / That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood – / Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.” – Bryan Jarrell […]