Midlife Meditation

Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware More and more, from the first similitude. --Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book VII My father was a poet, from a family of poets. His generation of Andersons wrote many things in verse. At holidays and birthdays, gifts were usually accompanied with a bit of verse, written especially for the occasion and recited by the giver before unwrapping could commence. In my memory, these poems had an archaic quality to them, sounding very turn-of-the-twentieth-century; but it was the principle, more than the form, that mattered: giving thought to the significance of an event, a gift, a holiday, then translating that significance into couplets. However profound or mundane their own attempts at poetry might be, the Andersons appreciated the poetry of others. My father’s ...

Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware         More and more from the first similitude. --Elizabeth Barrett Browning   I'm fairly certain this is my father's favorite poem. At the very least, it's one I heard him quote multiple times in sermons. It's actually a fragment of a much larger work: Aurora Leigh, an epic poem/novel that deals frequently with the intersections of nature, art, and spirituality. I have a suspicion that my father was fond of this passage because it mentions plucking blackberries, an activity he always loved and recruited all of his sons to share with him. Blackberrying was an outdoor pursuit with a tangible reward, so it appealed to both his naturalist impulses and his Puritan work ethic. All of these qualities actually put it in opposition to the Browni...