aha(!) moments

So have you ever been sitting in class when all of a sudden you have an 'AHA!' moment? Well, I had one of those moments today. It was in my Postcolonial Lit class and we were discussing "Little Gidding" by TS Eliot. As I was scribbling down notes with my teacher lecturing in the background, all of a sudden something clicked and a light bulb went off in my head. Things that had once been unclear and seemingly irrelevant made complete sense now. During that moment of pure enlightenment, I had the urge to put down my pen and proclaim to the class and my teacher, and even to Eliot, "I GET IT!!!!" But, I resisted the urge, and instead am going to proclaim to the blogging world that "I GET IT!!!!"

For any of you that have ever read any Eliot you can probably relate to this feeling of enlightenment after finally figuring out what the heck he is talking about. His poetry is beautiful, but the subject matters he deals with and the language and form that he uses are usually very obscure and abstract. (This can be attributed to his religious beliefs, wordly education, and his role in the modernist movement of the early 20th century.) I'll give you an example:

"Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England."

Say what? (haha.) This sounds so beautiful and important, but I could not tell you what Eliot is trying to say here. This is how I felt after my first few readings of "Little Gidding" while I was preparing for class. I enjoyed reading these cool sounding phrases and tried to appreciate it, but I had no idea what he was talking about. At first I was frustrated with myself for not being able to understand. But then I actually became frustrated with Eliot for being too elaborate and pretentious and for what I perceived to be out of whack with reality. Now, I'm definitely not opposed to abstract or obscure thinking, but I sensed that he was being obscure on purpose and that annoyed me. It annoyed me because this purposeful obscurity and abstraction caused him to be out of touch with reality. He was so focused on abstract ideas that he was missing out on the experience of 'the right now.' He was missing out on life. And my reaction to this feeling? It made me want to live in the right now; to throw out any arbitrary, pointless rituals in my life and focus on emersing myself in the present. I didn't want to be like Eliot and be out of touch with reality by focusing on things that seemed too abstract and ritualistic just because society told me that's what I was supposed to do.

But then I had the AHA! moment. The feeling that I got from reading "Little Gidding" was exactly what Eliot wanted his audience to feel! (BRILLIANT!) He purposely used obscure and elaborate language and diction to add to the poignancy of his conclusion- that we need to focus on the present and not on process.

But this isn't even the coolest part of it. To understand that, first you must know a little bit about Eliot. Eliot was a deeply religious man and member of the High Anglican Church in England. (He was orginially a Unitarian from Mid-America, but on his quest for meaning and spirtual discovery he moved to England and became a member of the Anglican church.) He devoted the latter half of his life to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding Christianity and God. He yearned, struggled, and searched to find the essense of God and Christianity on a daily basis. "Little Gidding" deals with his struggle to come closer with God by overcoming his doubts and sense of unworthiness. And here's the cool part. The whole point of this poem, through all of its complexities, is that God accepts us and wants a relationship with us RIGHT NOW, just the way we are. Throughout the poem, Eliot is concerned with being good enough for God. He thinks that he has to prepare himself for God by performing a ton of rituals. He thinks he has to understand God before he has a relationship with Him. But as the poem goes on, Eliot realizes that God will accept him right now just the way he is if Eliot is willing to submit and live for Him. All of the religious rituals that are part of his life (that he thinks he has to do to prepare himself for God), are actually just pointless words and actions without the presense of God in them. This is why he uses the obscure language throughout the poem. Just like the rituals, they are beautiful, but don't really mean much without the presense of God. He also realizes that the only way he can truely understand God, is by having a relationship with Him, not the other way around.

This is a long poem and has many other cool ideas, but I thought this was the AHA! moment of Eliot's life. He finally realized that the relationship with God that he was yearning for can happen right now. He didn't have to prepare for God because God accepts you the way you are. So, maybe Eliot's ideas weren't so abstract after all. You don't have to live a perfect life, be a certain way, grow up in a certain place, know all sorts of Bible trivia, or how to perform Christian "rituals"  for God to accept you or for you to start living for Him. First of all, none of that stuff means anything without the presense of God in your life. And secondly, God wants a relationship with you right now. The only way to understand Him is when you have a personal relationship with Him.

So, the moral of the story is that you don't have to live a perfect "Christian" life or understand everything about God for God to accept you. He will take you just the way you are right now. So don't focus on the preparation, focus on the present. God wants to show you His love and for you to experience His awesomeness right now. Then your real transformation will begin as you come to understand Him. Trust me, this is a relationship that you don't want to miss out on.