More than Words

Yesterday I offered the message during chapel services on campus. I'd been asked to do this in my official capacity as director of the Center for Women's Studies, because the student who's interning with the Center this semester is also very involved with Campus Ministries. I would have said no if I'd thought I could get away with it--but, alas, I knew I couldn't.

I stand up in front of people and talk for a living, so it's not performance anxiety that was freaking me out yesterday morning--I lecture in class, I give readings of my fiction, I give talks on the writing process. But I don't talk about my faith very often. The truth is, I feel like a bit of a faith phony. I grew up going to church, but I never liked going. In fact, I really hated church. I had to get up early on Sunday morning and dress well and act nice; I had to listen to things that didn't make sense to me, and then I had to pretend that I believed them. Faith felt completely irrelevant to my life, and no one really seemed to care--as long as I was getting up and going to church on Sunday morning.

I stopped going to church as soon as I'd left home, and I didn't go back again until I was almost forty years old. I've actually enjoyed church as an adult--mostly because of wonderful colleagues in the Theology department at my university, people who've encouraged me to understand that my faith is personal, that it involves both what I believe in my heart and what I know in my head. I can get on board with the idea of an intellectually respectable faith. I even enjoy Bible study, which now seems like a natural offshoot of what I do as a literature professor.

So yesterday, when I was asked to speak in chapel, I brought the two together. I talked about a poem by W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening," and I tied it to our scripture reading on the greatest commandment. (The full text of the poem is available here.)

Here's the text of my talk:

"A few weeks ago, my good friend Dr. Metereau reminded me of a poem I’d read many years ago and forgotten. It’s a poem I love—W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” It’s a pretty long poem, so I’m not going to read you the whole thing today, though I do hope you’ll look it up. Basically, it’s about a person who goes out for a walk one evening and overhears someone singing of undying love for a partner—telling this partner, among other things, “I’ll love you till the ocean/is folded and hung up to dry/And the seven stars go squawking/Like geese about the sky.”

But not long after this, the speaker of the poem hears another song, as “all the clocks in the city/began to whir and chime,” and their song is much less optimistic: the clocks sing, “O let not Time deceive you;/you cannot conquer Time.”

The clocks continue this song, encouraging the lover to acknowledge their much greater power and to understand that no human being will ever win this battle: human love, unlike time, will come to an end. When it does, it will leave us with a feeling of emptiness—of empty time—where that love used to be. I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling at one point or another. It’s the feeling of loss that makes us question whether love is even worth our while.

The clocks in this poem offer three images of that kind of despair. They say “' . . . plunge your hands in water, /Plunge them in up to the wrist;/Stare, stare in the basin/ And wonder what you've missed.” And then: “'. . . look in the mirror,/ O look in your distress:/ Life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless.” And lastly: ". . . stand at the window /As the tears scald and start;/You shall love your crooked neighbour/ With your crooked heart.’”

Those last lines are my favorite. I think it’s interesting that Auden doesn’t say “You must love your crooked neighbor”—that would be a commandment. Nor does he say “You should love your crooked neighbor”—which would suggest that we don’t, and we need to get busy. Instead, Auden just says “You shall love your crooked neighbor.” It’s a statement of fact. It recognizes a very simple truth: human beings can’t avoid connecting with each other, even though we know that imperfect human love is going to leave us wanting.

Of course, Auden also points out that we’re going to love our crooked neighbors with crooked hearts. So what we have in common with one another, it seems, is our imperfection. And maybe that’s why we can’t avoid loving each other—because to love an imperfect person is to prove that you, as another imperfect person, are also worthy of being loved. Maybe we use our connections with each other to escape from the fact of our shortcomings.

The scripture reading for today tells us that we are to love our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves—but we all know that loving ourselves isn’t always an easy job. We live in a culture that’s devoted to pointing out our shortcomings. Women, in particular, are constantly being convinced that they need products that will make their imperfections less noticeable to others—which will make them more beautiful and, by extension, more loveable.

We also live in a culture that views some kinds of love as less perfect than others. Auden himself was a gay man, and a Christian, and he struggled to reconcile his faith and his personal identity, because he’d been taught that this kind of love was sinful—and yet, no matter how hard he tried to change his heart, that kind of love was what he found there.

I don’t think it’s an accident that, in contemporary culture, to be heterosexual is to be called “straight”; we used the word “crooked” to describe a person who is dishonest or immoral. But maybe, if we understand the “crookedness” Auden is talking about in this poem to be symbolic, not of immorality, but of the path that each of us walks through life—sometimes headed toward God, sometimes headed away from God—then we can begin to understand how crookedness is something we all share, no matter who we love.

In fact, sometimes the people we love the most—our friends, even our family—are the ones who lead us away from God. They do this by offering negative assessments of us, and they often claim to do this for our own good. Sometimes, our self-image is so warped by the negative messages we’ve taken in that they become a part of us: we honestly can’t imagine how anyone, even God, could love us. Our hearts move toward those negative assessments rather than toward God’s love of our glorious imperfection.

When we get to that place of self-loathing, we often lead ourselves even farther away from God. Auden, for instance, declared himself an atheist—but his poetry shows a consistent devotion to Christian faith, and he did eventually turn back to God and reconcile with the church.

Here’s a more contemporary example: in light of the recent decisions made by the ELCA’s church-wide assembly, many members of my congregation have simply stopped worshiping with our church family. They’ve just walked away. Before those decisions were made, I thought a lot about what I would do if I disagreed with the outcome of the church-wide assembly, and I thought I might leave the church. But I couldn’t get around the fact that we walk away from God anytime we’re too confident in our understanding of anything.

The truth is, I don’t know if the church-wide assembly made the right decision. I believe they did—I believe they acted out of love for their neighbors. But I don’t know. And I try to remember that I don’t know (which is hard for me, because I’m a professor, and I’m used to being the person in the room who knows things) so I’m not compelled to act unkindly toward my neighbors who disagree, because I’m called to love them, too.

What I do know is this: our imperfect human love is the best thing we have to offer each other, and it’s the only way we have to fulfill the greatest commandment: Love the Lord, love your neighbor, love yourself. None of these things are easy, but Auden seems to believe they’re inevitable. You will love your crooked neighbor, he says. Only remember that, when you do, you love with an equally crooked heart."

I got through my talk and hoped I hadn't made a fool of myself--that was really the only goal I had in mind. The adrenaline I'd built up left me shaking for a good half hour afterward. I got lots of hugs and pats on the back from my students and colleagues, but friends will say you've done well just because they know they should. It's what friends do.

But then, after I'd headed off to class, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, but I didn't see anyone I recognized. A young woman was walking toward me--but because I wasn't sure I'd heard my name, I wasn't sure if she was just walking in my direction or walking up to me. I must have looked very confused, because she said "It's okay, you don't know me." She introduced herself, then said, "I just wanted to tell you that I really like what you said in chapel. It got to me." She was all choked up as she said this. I thanked her and patted her shoulder, and then we parted ways.

That young woman is the person who let me know I'd done more than just get through my chapel talk. I'd touched the heart of a complete stranger--someone who didn't know me at all, who had no reason to feel compelled to say anything kind. She gave me hope that my words make a difference in the world. And she can't possibly know how much her words meant to me.