Ecce Quam Bonum: Happy New School Year

(What follows is a devotion I gave this morning at the beginning of Faculty Forum at The Westminster Schools)

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
         For God’s people to dwell together in unity!  (Psalm 133)
         

I have been studiously avoiding the news recently.  Adjusting to a new job has helped give me a decent cover story for neglecting the newspaper, the news websites, and the TV news—I’ve been just too busy.  "It been crazy around here," I’d say, "…so much to do and so little time."  I might even swear to the impossibility of paying attention to anything outside Westminster’s zip code.  "I have to get ready, you see, the beginning of the school year will be here in a second and I don’t have a second to spare."

This approach would not stand up to scrutiny, however, so today’s devotion is as much of a confession as thought for the day.  The truth is that making the move to a new school over the summer provided a tremendous amount of time to reflect on, or pay attention to anything I wanted.  I could have become a current event expert.  Staying at the Homewood Suites until the house was ready and while my wife and daughter wiled away the summer at her parent’s lake place in Tennessee, I had plenty of time.  I did make use of it.  I read a lot…and I rarely missed Sports Center. 

Here is the truth, I didn’t have the stomach for much of the news this summer, so I let myself off the hook and just avoided it.  In the world we live in, however, avoiding the news is an almost impossible task.  Some hotel elf in the middle of the night would put a USA Today outside my door, and even though that paper has less information in it than an average post-it note can hold, it still pointed toward a world with its seams apparently pulling.  On XM radio on my way down the dial to the “Outlaw Country” station or “The Loft” or “Deep Cuts,” I would delay a bit too long on the CNN channel.

...And even this week, without knowing exactly how it slipped into my consciousness (because I am really busy now!) I have been hearing about the stock market, Syria, Somalia, and London.  Even the small doses of these stories make my legs feel heavy and make gravity seem like an oppressive force, one that is somehow gaining in its strength as humans pull from each other in stunning and remarkable ways.

As I think about the troubling momentum of our recent headlines, the work of the psalmist came to mind for me, and in Psalm 133, I stumbled back upon a thought is certainly relevant and might perhaps be helpful.  It at least might help me keep my priorities more straight as we make the run into the school year.

 ¹ Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
         For God’s people to dwell together in unity! 
         
 ² It is like the precious oil upon the head,
         Running down on the beard, 
         The beard of Aaron, 
         Running down on the edge of his garments.
 ³ It is like the dew of Hermon,
         Descending upon the mountains of Zion; 
         For there the LORD commanded the blessing— 
         Life forevermore.

I was familiar with the first line—"Behold how good and pleasant it is/for God’s people to dwell together in unity”—as its first three words, Ecce Quam Bonum, provide the Latin motto of my undergraduate school, and it has become a habit of some of my Sewanee friends to sign emails to other graduates with the letters EQB.  What interested me when I spotted it earlier this week is the rest of the psalm, however, in which we find the idea that God’s people dwelling in unity is “like” an ordination.  Dwelling in unity is like the oil running down Aaron’s beard, and such oil was used in ordination ceremonies and marked the newly ordained as closer to God.  In other words when we dwell together in unity we are closer to God, we are closer to the eternal. 

In the next verse, the psalmist amplifies the point.  Here the dwelling together in unity is like the “dew” that “descends” from the highest mountain to the lesser peaks, connecting them upward toward God.  I find this fascinating as it points out that coming together and working to find connection is a gift from God. 

Placed in relief by the frightening events from which I have recently averted my eyes, Psalm 133 reveals that we have a rare opportunity in this place and in this school, and rather than warn you against the dangers of squandering the opportunity, I would like for us to think about how we might strengthen the ties that bind us, and use that strength to serve and to lead students so that they might serve and lead beyond Adams Gate.  I do not know the future, but I think I do know that, whatever way it tilts and spins in the days, months and years ahead, the world will need such people as this place strives to graduate.  It will need them not only to meet the world’s gaze but also to engage it with empathy, determination, and integrity. 

So… this morning I offer a happy new school year toast… “Behold how good and pleasant it is for God’s people to dwell together in unity.”  Ecce Quam Bonum.  

A Way of Seeing: Learning to Make Photographs

                            Headed toward Stressa on Lago Maggiore (Ross Peters)

In advance of a trip to Italy two summers ago, my wife bought a entry level DSLR camera.  We were going to be there about a month, so the idea of having a decent camera with us made sense.  I never felt much interest in the aspect of travel that involves documentation--being there always felt like enough.  However, something happened to my perspective during that trip that fundamentally changed the way I viewed the purposefulness of carrying a camera along.  The camera redefined my way of seeing what was around me.   The camera became something beyond a means by which we would document our trip  (though it served that purpose well enough too).

                         On the day we left from Milan to head home (Ross Peters)

In the late eighties and early nineties as a climbing instructor at a summer camp in Western North Carolina, I had a somewhat similar experience of having my way of seeing the world altered.  I found that the physical intensity and the logistical challenge of climbing and belaying others intensified the beauty of the panoramic views from Devil’s Courthouse and Looking Glass Rock.  My appreciation for being in a beautiful place increased as I recognized the effort necessary to reach these stunning locales and the privilege borne of that effort.  I came to associate the big view that moments of reflection between climbers and peanut butter sandwiches allowed with the Big View in my life.  For me, the Big View is the one where I can begin to see my life and feel its meaning and relevance beyond the engagement in and at times, static of my daily life.

This summer, while hiking with a former colleague of mine from Asheville School, Ed Maggart, on Black Balsam and Tennent Mountain—spots high enough that I could identify virtually all the major ridges and mountaintops relevant to my time living in that area—my mind went back to 1989 and 1990, and even better, my mind went to what amounts to the Big View for me.  From up there in one of the rare spots in the Appalachian chain above 6000 feet one can feel as if that is where the weather is made, as if somehow that altitude allows one to stand above day to day-ness.  The life I lead, most of us lead, is far below--so standing at those heights amounts to a full Time Out of sorts.  My experience in that Pisgah region of North Carolina helped recreate my way of seeing, and this summer the echo of all that time re-centered me.  The day also gave me this photograph:

                          Photo: View from Tennent Mtn. June 2011 (Ross Peters)

If climbing and being in those mountains gave me a way of seeing the Big View, photography taught me and will continue to teach me how to bring the scale of what I witness into my own internal sense of balance.  I taught Louise Gluck’s latest collection of poetry, A Village Life (http://www.amazon.com/Village-Life-Poems-Louise-Glück/dp/0374532435/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312727997&sr=1-1 ) last spring as part of my 21^st Century Short Fiction and Poetry course, a senior English elective I designed at Hawken School.  It is an amazing piece of work, and in the first poem, entitled “Twilight,” she includes this line: “In the window, not the world, but a squared-off landscape/representing the world.”  I find this an accurate encapsulation of the way I have come to see photography.  With a photograph one is able to both “square-off” the “landscape” and “represent the world.”  When this is done well, in particular by hands and imaginations far surer than my own, a photograph can be a uniquely powerful tool.  A friend and classmate of mine from Sewanee, has made a career of making just such photographs.  The work of Stephen Alvarez (www.alvarezphotography.com), now a renowned photographer with a long resume of projects for National Geographic and other publications, provides a unique example of creating a new way of seeing, particularly his photographs of some of the world’s largest rooms in caves.  Stephen figured out how to light these giant rooms, some far larger than the Super Dome, and as a result, gives others a way of seeing what has not been seen before.  Stephen is now working on a project to create panoramic photographs of some of the great cities in Europe.

While Stephen’s work reaches a world-wide audience, for me the trip to Italy with my new camera—it quickly became mine as I became more and more obsessed—was a personal revelation of what it means to “square-off” the “landscape.”  Through photographs, I could take an experience of a place and a time and represent it through a photograph. Note that I did not say capture it.  Because capturing it would be impossible in all its fullness and scope, a photograph gives me a way of “representing” the truth of that place and time, and thus with a camera in hand I found myself seeing what was around me differently.  It made me more observant because I think I was looking for what framing would best allow me to symbolically hold what my wife, daughter and I were seeing and experiencing.

I have a great deal to learn about photography, and I have an ever-increasing respect for the people who do it well, a group by the way which includes my father, John O. Peters, whose latest book, for which he wrote the text and provided all the contemporary photography, is entitled, Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery (http://www.amazon.com/Richmonds-Hollywood-Cemetery-John-Peters/dp/0615391923/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312744222&sr=1-2 ) and my sister, Margo Millure, who has a travel site called “The Travel Belles” (http://www.travelbelles.com/ ).  

This summer I had several moments when I actively sought a particular photograph.  At those moments I was hyper-aware of the weather and the light.  My choice for the best of the bunch are below. 

    

View from above Norris Lake, TN after one storm and before another, July 2011 (Ross Peters)

                        

           Another view above Norris Lake between storms, TN, July 2011 (Ross Peters)

The Comfort of Poetry during the Move to Atlanta

We have to wait for just the right day, and unfortunately for an English teacher trying to work with some sort of course plan, I cannot identify that day until it arrives on the lawn, buried in an assortment of leaves.

In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare asks us to look out into autumn, a particular moment in autumn, mind you, in order to see inside the heart of his speaker—a neat trick, particularly in iambic pentameter. The speaker begins matter-of-factly: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold,/ When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

Among the reasons I love Sonnet 73 is that I remember reading it at different stages in my life. Indeed, we must bring the context of our own lives to poems we read: we cannot avoid it. Edward Hirsh notes in his bestselling book How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry that, “reading poetry is an act of reciprocity,” meaning the relationship of poet and reader is, “a highly concentrated and passionate exchange… .” Just as Shakespeare uses this “exchange” to challenge us to look outside to the natural world in order to see inside his speaker, so too does great poetry challenge us to look out into the world in order to see inside ourselves or, perhaps even better, inside something greater than ourselves. The truth is both simple and profound: I am different than I was when I first encountered these fourteen lines; however, the lines will be the same as “long as men can breathe or eyes can see” (Sonnet 18).

John Fleming, who is Louis W. Fairchild Professor Emeritus at Princeton, echoed this point in a recent blog post, in which he reviewed this summer’s production of King Lear in New York: “The reason you cannot step into the same river twice is because the river is always changing. The reason you cannot read the same book twice is because you are always changing.” (http://gladlylernegladlyteche.blogspot.com/2011/07/ripeness-is-most-of-it.html ) Fleming and I share an Alma Mater, Sewanee-The University of the South. A Rhodes Scholar, Fleming spent his career at Princeton where for many years he was English Department Chair. A couple of years ago he spent a day at Hawken School where I was Upper School Director, and I had the pleasure of seeing him not only as a scholar but also a master classroom teacher working with our ninth grade Humanities students. In his most recent post, entitled “Grace Abounding to the Least of Bloguistes,” Fleming reflects on Charles Grovsner Osgood’s Poetry as a Means of Grace. That post can be found at http://gladlylernegladlyteche.blogspot.com/2011/07/grace-abounding-to-least-of-bloguistes.html . Reading his blog leaves me envious of the students who for decades populated his classroom.

Hirsch argues, “perhaps poetry exists because it carries necessary information that cannot be communicated in any other way.” Here, Hirsch makes a statement not only about the relevance of poetry, but more importantly, about the necessity of poetry—it can reveal what no other form of communication can. To place this statement in the context of our sonnet, we understand some things about the speaker in Sonnet 73 that we cannot come to understand about another human being in any other way, or even more notable, we can understand something about ourselves or others that we could not apprehend without this poem.

A number of years ago now, Rick Chess, Literature Professor at UNC-Asheville and recipient of the 2002 North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence, led leading a reading and discussion series at the West Asheville Library as a complement to Edward Hirsch’s visit to Asheville to discuss his book How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. Chess, a fine poet himself, expertly guided discussions of poems, including a number by Hirsch. Often at the heart of the discussion of an individual poem was the idea that poetry can provide us a kind of insight that no other means of communication can. Hirsch quotes Percy Shelley to emphasize this point; Shelley states in his Defense of Poetry that the language of poetry “is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension.” In my course, Sonnet 73 provides an apt platform upon which my students can discover that truth for themselves.

It is a confluence of reasons that brings me back to Sonnet 73 today not the least of which are the entries I referenced to John Fleming’s blog. Interestingly, my wife will be teaching King Lear this fall at Oglethorpe University, and she has asked me to stand in for her one day and provide a lecture on the play, so Fleming’s blog about Lear arrived at the right time. There are other reasons as well, ones that are harder to articulate. Recently, I attended a funeral service at Sewanee, and during the service in All Saints Chapel and later at the graveside, I glimpsed a number of the professors I had when I was a student in the 80s. For me Sonnet 73 was a natural resting place for my reflections about that day even though the weather was steamy mid-July not that of “yellow leaves, or few, or none.”

The final reason I have stumbled back to Sonnet 73 is that I am making a transition to a new school and new town this summer. The boxes are still largely waiting to be unpacked, as my wife, my daughter and I stand in this strange middle place not having fully arrived in the new place though we have definitely left the old one. When we are between one stage of life and another, it somehow makes sense that we would reflect on things that are outside of time, such as Sonnet 73. The poem remains even though so much else seems to be moving, vanishing or appearing before our eyes. As a result, there is comfort in Sonnet 73 even though the poem itself captures the transience of our lives.

One day (many years into the future, I hope), in a moment as brief as late Fall, I will be the perfect speaker for Sonnet 73. I will be the embodiment of autumn, and my students might just see “that time of year…in me”—but not yet. Hirsch reminds all of us that the poem will forever be what Osip Mandelstam calls “the message in the bottle,” waiting to provide the solace of sound and meaning even when at last “that time of year” is beheld in us.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the deathbed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. [Some portions of this post are reused from a piece I wrote for the Asheville Citizen Times around 2003].