The Resonance: Seeking Reconnection
Charles Taylor speaks of the "resonance" we all chase in connecting with something beyond us. We encounter this both in poetry and in fiction. Taste and see.
Lots of News!
Several things to share with you this week:
I wrote an article for the website Christ Over All, in which I defend what we call “revelational epistemology.” That’s a fancy way of saying, “we know whatever we know because God has revealed himself to us.” Click HERE to read the article.
I talked with David Schrock and Stephen Wellum about the article in a podcast interview. You can have a listen HERE.
I was on Moody Radio this morning to talk about my TGC article, “Where Loss Leads.” You can listen to the radio interview HERE.
Karen Swallow Prior interviewed me for her series on writing, publishing, and platforms. You can read the interview HERE, and follow along in her series to get some exposure to lesser-known (and very talented) Christian writers.
Hope these things are a blessing to you in some small way!
Charles Taylor’s Cosmic Connections
Charles Taylor doesn’t seem to write any short books. But that’s okay. I enjoyed working through his latest tome: Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. In some ways, the book was a response to his celebrated work A Secular Age. If, in a secular and disenchanted age, people tend to feel hollow—void of higher purpose and meaning—then they may start reaching out for reconnections with transcendence: with God and the broader “cosmic order.” Charles Taylor calls this a desire for resonance. Here’s how Harmut Rosa defines that:
The mode of resonance can be defined as a mode in which the self is moved, touched, “meant to be” or “addressed,” but also feels capable of reaching out and touching or moving the external world (51).
Taylor argues that as we read certain poetry, we feel connected to something greater than ourselves; we feel “some movement of sympathy between us and our niche” (50). There is, in other words, a “revelatory and connecting power of poetry” (85). He examines this resonance mainly in the work of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century poets.
What struck me throughout the book was how this resonance appeared in so many poetic forms—all from poets I grew up reading and appreciating (Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Rilke, Eliot). It also made me think of the attempts I’ve made at resonance through my own poetry. Let me share a poem that I wrote in the collection Borrowed Images that seems to suggest this same sense of resonance. In reflecting on the death of my father, I was able to see both the transcendent (what happens outside of the little frame of life we experience) and the immanent (a call to go and garden).
Gardener to Son
Boy, death is no un-weeded garden.
Stop pulling pieces of thought
growing in around me.
Don’t turn me demigod
with the rest of the dead.
My sacredness
covers your hands;
don’t let them sit idle.
The wheelbarrow is broken,
tire turned up,
leaf wrapped and heavy with boredom.
Don’t be the barrow.
Let your thoughts grow, boy;
let me go here.
Wash my metal-jeweled dirt
from your peeling hands.
Let me lay under light awhile.
You go.
You go and garden.
Resonance in The White Door
The White Door launched on August 15th! As I reflected on Charles Taylor’s book, I thought of the different images of “resonance” or “reconnection” that I had written into the story. I thought I’d share one with you. Note the connection between the hope (transcendence) and a flight of starlings (immanence).
Cancer had been a giant who always struck him dumb. It took his dear father, then his grandmother not long after. Then his favorite high school teacher. Then a childhood best friend. It had an endless appetite. And now it was threatening to take those closest to Shannon.
Seth's mouth felt pinned closed. Everyone in the room seemed saturated with submission. But a holy hatred stirred in Seth, an ember of resistance. And he could choose now, in this moment, to fan it into a flame or let it dim into dust. And for the first time he could remember, he chose the former.
"Light shines in darkness," he said. The words slipped out before he'd had a moment to think. And as soon as the sounds hit the open air, he realized he had nothing to follow them with. Shannon gave him a look—not to embarrass him but as if to ask, "What are you doing?"
"Sorry," Seth said. "It's just something Shannon and I read with a friend, and now I can't get it out of my head."
"Sounds like a professor problem," Dale said with a smile.
"Maybe it is. It's just—" Seth took a deep breath before the plunge. "You both know I lost my father to cancer, and many relatives."
"Seth, I don't think this is the right time to—" Shannon started, but Seth pushed through the resistance. He had something to say. He didn't know where it was coming from, but the call was clear, like sunlight filling the end of a tunnel. He decided to make a run for the light.
"And I know most people would think it's morbid to talk about that at a time like this. But here's the thing: nobody is gone."
Beth looked confused, and Dale matched her, his thin face peering into Seth's eyes, trying to catch the faint color of hope.
"What do you mean?" Dale asked. Shannon nodded. She had no idea where her husband was going with this and prayed inside that it would bring some comfort to her best friend.
Synapses lit up in Seth's brain. Thoughts linked arms. And the truth dawned inside him and shot rays of light through every inch of his body. He knew exactly what to say, and he could hardly get the words out fast enough.
"You know how in John's Gospel it says 'the light shines in the darkness'?"
"Didn't know you were a church type," Beth said. She and Dale were faithful church attendees, but they knew Seth hadn't been to church in a while and rarely talked about anything faith-related. They also hadn't seen Seth in church lately because they were home-bound until Beth could recover from the side effects of increased chemo—the fatigue that battered her limbs like waves against a beaten hull, the bruising and bleeding with every bump or trip or stumble, the nausea that seemed attached to her throat like leaches, the throbbing pain in her tongue and throat with every swallow, the intense mood changes—from gratitude to gaiety to grief, as if her soul were a popsicle stick tossed on great currents beneath her.
"Well, I am. I am. And maybe that darkness is like a disease of doubt. It's all around us. It's inside us. We can't seem to get away from it. Because we're so worried that one day—one day we'll be gone. But then . . ." he paused. Everyone was tuned in to his words now, marching after him as children down a wild path in the woods. "Then God comes to us—a light in our doubt, burning away the black. And he tells us that those who have come before us—they're not gone. Not really."
"Because everyone is immortal. C.S. Lewis said that, didn't he," Beth's voice whispered, surprising everyone. She was tracking with Seth, holding on to his coattails and happily refusing to let go. "In 'The Weight of Glory.'"
"Yes! Exactly!" Seth had forgotten about that essay, but it jumped into view now, and it was perfect. "And if we're immortal, then we're not gone after death. We just have to choose the direction: light or darkness."
"But God is Lord of the choosing," Beth said with a smile.
"Spoken like a good Presbyterian," Dale said, grinning at his wife.
"Yes—he's in control of everything," Seth said, with the giddiness of a child who's just discovered colors for the first time, who can hardly take in the things around him because the whole world is swollen with meaning and beauty. His heart was like a peony head warming in the sun after a heavy rain—heavy and heavenly.
"But my point is, if God really does shine in the darkness, if the light is who Jesus Christ is, then we'll never be gone. We'll be with him, at least, if we follow. He'll be . . . inside us somehow."
"The light shines in the darkness," Dale said pensively. "So, darkness is just an arena for the light."
"Yes! And the light is our home," Seth said, almost breathless. He hadn't got out everything he wanted to say, in the way he wanted to say it. But, as a writer, he knew that this was evidence that the message was true. It was uncontainable, as it should be. Truth is a wild thing.
They all turned towards the window in that moment, as they heard an intense chorus of birds—thousands of them. A giant flock of starlings swung down in the trees right in their front yard, just outside the window.
"Honey, look!" Dale said. "Kids, come here and look at this!" The kids ran into the room searching for the excitement. Dale pointed out the window. Then he turned the couch a bit so Beth could see. As if on cue, the massive flock lifted like a cloud, the thudding flutter making its drumming felt even inside the house. The giant, circus-tent-sized flock began waving and twisting right above their house. Bending, breaking, gathering, diving. Everyone stood in the living room mesmerized. So very many, all moving as one. It was a great, harmonious, unyielding flag in the blue sky.
"Nobody is gone," Seth said as they stared. "Nobody is gone."
A tear trickled down Beth's cheek. She grabbed Dale's hand, and then Shannon's. And they all watched, as the wild God of the world waved his bird flag for them.
