Yes

 

Yes to the Give Way sign flattened at the school corner on my walk this Bloomsday morning. Yes to scoured concrete paths, chipped and repaired and etched with twig landings, that I walk along from my local library visit, off the train. Yes to the deceptive elegance and reach of the eucalypts that stretch across the street, teetering on blossom time this Bloomsday. Yes to different fences of weathered brick, white palings streaked at nail point, multi-shade pillars upholding the transit of a multi-shade cat giving highly original mrkgnaos. Yes to the Give Way sign that points the way home along the hillside, thoughts of why is Ulysses an experimental novel in a way no other book is an experimental novel that hundreds read every day with regular enthusiasm? Yes because it’s already, in the very process of being written, not a novel with a start or an end, but a creative structure that is about styles, borne on by the body. Yes to the winter sun hard-lit on the roads and against the night-cold walls. Yes gives way to new, it has to anyway, change there is for sure, and we changing with that. Yes to the door opening and the borrowed books falling out of the bag and conversation with late-risers who soon will go out into Bloomsday, whatever that is, this day, almost the winter solstice for us. Yes to lunch of reheated frittata with mustard, views of the rooves grooves and grids, thoughts about what else to extract from the forest of scribble in my Bloomsday paper. Yes to the litter of words across the pathways of paper, odd letters that never even find a way into the tomorrow paper. Yes to afternoon at home, the therapeutic washing-up, the catnap next to the napping cat Obsidian, the browse of hand-me-down old issues of the London Review of Books. Yes to the needle in the groove, the irresistible truth of I’m Only Sleeping, the inexplicable majesty of Tomorrow Never Knows. Yes to the Voice. Yes to everyone who grasps the elementary decency of the Voice, the dignity of the Voice. Yes to the necessary next step that must be yes. Yes to where that begins at the place where slowing down is required, giving way, watching for Give Way signs, listening to the glistening trees in sunlight. Yes to the birds high above our kinds of windows, turned inwards against cold, square to keep the warmth in. Yes to the small words starting up a story half-forgotten, returning in inexplicable humility from the groove days of Good Day Sunshine. Yes to the interludes agreed to, timeout from not seeing the forest for the trees. Yes to this LRB writer who, notice, says in her great rambling poem going over several columns, open your eyes. Yes to the regular punctuation mark of Bloomsday that is yes, somewhere on pages litterly every place, right there in front of you, yes in your face, giving way.       

Cat

 

When making the bed, is the cat simply trying to help? It is a truth of domestic life that no sooner has the human arrived at that moment where the bed from the night before must be set in order for the night to follow, than the cat arrives and proceeds to stand in the middle of the bed, pressing his (or her, as may equally be the case) paw onto the mattress, for what purpose no book has yet explained. Theories doubtless abound, such as the cat is testing for monsters below the surface, a mouse or the like, like their ancestors. Perhaps they are marking the place where they will later curl up in tranquillity, an improbable theory given the extensive period it takes them to hold up progress setting the bed on its return to tranquil unrumpledness. Determination to be under the doona before the doona is even squared and smoothed is an added conundrum. They might frolic and pounce. They might rest quietly (he, she, any of them) beneath these coverings, pretending nothing is happening. Their human is stopped in its tracks, interrupted in the shake and fling of bed-making. The cat has no skills in this area. Its presence seems designed only to provoke annoyance and certain acerbic remarks about feline motives; feline used here in its negative sense. The cat has never done a day’s work in its life and certainly never once while anywhere in the precinct of a bed. Gallantly sheets are tucked into corners and under the trim yet piled mattress. Pillows are made plush and covers puffed to airy lightness by their human, no thanks to the clawing and tramping of the one true possessor of this queen-size quadrangle of languorous linen. The burrowing form curves beneath the spreads, unsettling all efforts at perfect turnouts. A telltale tail curls below the unsheeted sheet, pyramidal ears poke from an unexpected quarter, it is impossible! There’s nothing for it but for the human to fetch its quarry, lifting the nonchalant charmer from its fun and delicately plopping the cat on the floor in a graceful four-point soft landing. Is the cat a creature of ritual? At the very least, this temporary stoppage to the domestic routine must occur some hundreds of times in a given lifetime, cat and human alike. The human frets, the cat licks its fur. The human huffs, the cat stands and stares, giving a brief thought to its next move. The human must hurry or the cat will hop gaily into the centre of the bed again, else preen a while in anticipation. The human has one minute, the cat has all day. Duty duly done, the cat’s human gives the edges a final brush and is out of there, for the thousandth time this lifetime, leaving her (or equally, him) to sharpen claws against the bedpost before ascending the bed and choosing a snug area whereat to turn into a snoozing curl and turn in for a few hours of undivided at long last tranquillity. Humans, what to make of them?     

Thanksgiving

 

New Testament scholars are like other people, searching and reflecting and revising. Some of them write poetry. Richard Bauckham, whose work 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' is an important revisionist view of the Gospel narratives, has just published a book of poems called 'Tumbling into Light'. He tries different forms, including the perennially popular haiku. Steeped in scriptural understanding, his poems join in on the subject of today's readings about Faith and Thanksgiving.

 

Genesis 12 tells of the call of Abram, God’s promise to make of him a great nation and to bless him abundantly. At each step of the way into Canaan, he sets up an altar, an act of thanksgiving for all that has been provided.

After paradise

not even Lot’s wife looks back.

Memory turns round

is how Bauckham encapsulates Genesis, saying of God

God is the endlessly unexplored

garden

of the house where I belong. 

 

Psalm 50 declares a God of might who speaks with strength to his people. Righteousness is with the Lord. Although sacrifices are acknowledged, the people are reminded that every living thing is his, and that their sacrifice, or gift, should be one of thanksgiving and paying of vows. To do so assures them of his care in the day of trouble. The poet finds ways of giving thanks through words, as when he describes creation

Here among the trees

green

is a whole rainbow of colours

even asking of the Psalms themselves

If there were glory

only, praise like the last psalms,

would that be the end? 

 

Romans 4 reiterates these passages, emphasising that like us, Abraham “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God.” Paul says that “his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness,” the same message being sent to us who attend to his Word. Bauckham says in another haiku:

Posing as righteous

even to myself I lie.

You are Otherwise.  

 

Meanwhile, Matthew 9 gives different expressions of faith through story. Matthew the tax collector simply gets up and follows Jesus when called, a moment that segues into accounts of Jesus hanging out with others of Matthew’s ilk, sinners and who knows what. In this case, mercy is the teaching, as distinct from simply making sacrifices. Similarly, it is faith, whether expressed in words or silence, that leads to cure for the women in need of restoration.   

Truly to face God

without looking at oneself

facing God – Jesus!

 

Too clever by half

are the foolish. The wise know

the folly of God.

 

[Pew note reflections by Philip Harvey on the readings for second Sunday after Pentecost, St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne.]