Poetry and our spiritual journey from indifference

Yes, we are the unappreciative possessors of a spiritual capacity to travel into the "invisible and unnameable regions of being" that is much, much more than employing our mental processes alone to build a mere body of cognitive knowledge.

Once again, that "information architect", Maria Popova, by investigating how poets come to understand the human condition, identifies "the truth about us” that is exhilarating. She warns of what can be described as the scab of indifference that covers the eyes and ears of our heart, an indifference engendered by submission to the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions.

SPELL AGAINST INDIFFERENCE

by Maria Popova

The rain falls and falls

cool, bottomless, and prehistoric

falls like night —

not an ablution

not a baptism

just a small reason

to remember

all we know of Heaven

to remember

we are still here

with our love songs and our wars,

our space telescopes and our table tennis.


Here too

in the wet grass

half a shell

of a robin’s egg

shimmers

blue as a newborn star

fragile as a world.

It's so true that the wonderful world around us has meaning, should we care to pause and consider who we are and the source of the gift put into our hands.

Like poetry, prayer is an instrument for paying attention. As Paul observes in his letter to the Romans:

For what can be know about God is perfectly plain since God himself has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity—however invisible—have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made [...] to see it was rational to acknowledge God.

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