Sovegna Vos

"Be mindful...." Does Arnaut Daniel (in Purgatorio) seek to warn Dante of the poet's fate--working out his sins in sorrow--or is the reader meant to find hope that the fires of redemption may one day refine him as well?

I've been reading T. S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday" again, as it is nearly Lent (although I do not celebrate Lent in the traditional high-church sense).

It has been a journey of sorts, this once-a-year pilgrimage, and although I feel I shall never fully comprehend the vast complexities of allusion here, each reading brings me one step closer.

Tonight, I am struck by the multiple themes of redemption ("Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream") depicted in the poet's rejection of his former life in anticipation of finding inheritance as one purified and planted in the Garden "where all loves end." It is the seeking of purity rather than the lusts of the flesh; it is a willingness to forget so as to be drawn near to God; it is the never-ending struggle to avoid turning back to what once was.

It is Dante and Beatrice; it is the bones of Ezekiel and the faith of the centurion; it is life and death. It is the rejection of idolatry. It is light and beauty and hope and restoration.

But most of all, it is all the other moments ("Here are the years that walk between"). Sovegna vos. Be mindful.

Eliot gives us images of the "dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying," the space between the yew trees, the interdependency of "now" and "at the hour of our death." All hope (yet also, all uncertainty) hinges on the present. We find ourselves on a desert journey in which we realize all we can do is echo the poet's plea ("Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still").

Or as C. E. Chaffin puts it: "Teach us to care about others and the kingdom and not to care about ourselves or the result; teach us to wait for your hand, O God."