I'm taking a different road tonight, for a few reason. First, I am dead tired. As in, between Friday and today, I have had multiple people ask if I am tired because I sure look it. And yes, I have been very tired those days. Tonight I am again attempting to go to bed early, but I'm already almost thirty minutes past my ideal bedtime for tonight. I'm going to read my scriptures just normally tonight and not ruminate on prayer quite as specifically. And here comes point number two about changing things up today.
I have actually thought about prayer a lot today, especially in regards to what I'm going to post about. I found a few scriptures, glanced through some talks in the Ensign, but my brain kept going back to the idea of poetry. As a humanities graduate and afficionado, I believe that there are numerous pathways to access divinity, and poetry is one of those. It presents ideas in different ways, making the quotidian meaningful. I looked at a few different poets and poems before settling on this classic by Walt Whitman. My nutshell analysis/interpretation of it is that true knowledge is gained by first-hand interaction with the elements... be it the stars, the heavens, or Deity. And many times those meaningful experiences are marked by a silence, a lack of words and explanations. I suppose it's this essential philosophy that has - in part - undergirded my current quest for first-hand knowledge of God.
Pray. Talk. Go out in nature and contemplate the heavens for yourself. The most learn'd astronomer, teacher, prophet, cannot be a substitute for your own personal study and inquiry.
*I hope this all made sense. If not, leave a note and I'm happy to clarify after I awake from my very long sleep tonight.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
1 comment:
I think this is a great post. I agree with you when you say "true knowledge is gained by first-hand interaction with the elements... be it the stars, the heavens, or Deity. And many times those meaningful experiences are marked by a silence, a lack of words and explanations." That has been absolutely the case in my life. And just today, I was reading a poem by Mary Oliver ("Morning Poem") and was moved to both tears and a deeper desire to pray than I've felt in a long time. There's power, even spiritual, to be found in art.
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