Here On This Darkling Plain
There are seasons of life. In the late 1970’s I was a student learning to swim in the vast ocean of philosophy. With a bit more focus next I studied at Garrett Evangelical Divinity School in Evanston. I assumed the professional end of all of the study was to become a Christian minister. For reasons that are now clear, I was to apply the lessons learned from many wonderful teachers known personally to me, and those unknown who authored books –to my one life, as a business man, a father, a husband, a human being. I have no regrets just gratitude.
The path of each life is quite unpredictable. So much is determined by serendipity, chance, luck. Perhaps a word spoken unintentionally. Or the remembered kind act of a professor. Such moments can shape a life.
I had cause to visit the Garrett campus this morning. The physical appearance seems to have changed very little. The beauty and transcendence of the architecture are still evident. Yet very much has changed in the world and in our country in the intervening years since I was a student.
We may have our 21st century version of “Caligula” in the White House. Houston has just been drowned in a multi-day deluge from a hurricane. It is an open question how long it will take and to what extent will Houston recover.
While on campus I visited the Howe Chapel. Inside the tiny sanctuary which is always open for reflection, I thought of Matthew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach.
DOVER BEACH
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.Matthew Arnold
