12/6/2

 Saturday, December 6, 2025

1273 Thomas Aquinas, thought to have had a mystical experience in Naples, refused to continue his work "I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me"

1950 Pope Pius XII published encyclical Mirabile illud

2013 Pope Francis gave his assent to a proposal to create a permanent post on the Pontifical Commission on cases of sin and sexual abuse of minors

2017 US President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, announcing plans to move the US embassy there

2024  A US court of appeals upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required the China-based company ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19 or face an effective ban on operations in the United States. 

In bed at 8:45, awake at 3:30, and up at 4:30.   26°, wind chill 17°, high 28°.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 7:30 a.m. 

 To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.

 So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

 

I'm pretty sure I first read William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis in high school.  In that era, I suspect all high school students were required to read it and I suspect that almost all of them, like me, hated it.  Who, in their mid to late teen years, wants to read a poem about death?  The 'last bitter hour,' 'the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, / And breathless darkness, and the narrow house . . .'  I'm also pretty sure that this morning is the only time I have read the entire poem since those high school years, though I may have been required to read it again in a college literature course; I can't recall.  At age 84, having made contractual arrangements for my "green burial," the poem is more meaningful to me that it was in my teens.  We are told that Bryant may have written the poem when he was 17 years old.  If that be true, he must have been a very unusual teenagers.  In any case, I'm struck by his description of the  consequences of a green burial, mixing forever with the elements and especially "The oak / Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould."  A little less graphic, please???  And that description of Earth as "the great tomb of man" and "the sad abodes of death." Yuck!  In the first two segments of the poem, he paints such a dark picture, it's hard to imagine following his concluding  counsel to so live that you will approach death 

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

A comforting image, but realistic?  I think of the competing image drawn by Yeats in the third stanza of his Vacillation:

No longer in Lethean foliage caught

Begin the preparation for your death

And from the fortieth winter by that thought

Test every work of intellect or faith,

And everything that your own hands have wrought

And call those works extravagance of breath

That are not suited for such men as come

proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb. 

A fanciful image, coming proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb."  Ha, ha, ha!  Fuck you, Death!  But it's Yeats who's talking, not minister John Donne:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

 Done was a believing Christian.  He believed in Heaven, Hell, salvation, redemption, and eternity.  No so for Yeats, a believer in faeries and somesuch, who also wrote in Vacillation:

I - though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb - play a pre-destined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Such are the kind of thoughts prompted by waking up at 3:30 and lying awake until 4:30, thinking about congestive heart failure and a million related thoughts.