In my previous post, I introduced a long, T.S. Eliot-inspired poem I wrote back in the 90s entitled, The Seven Circles of Eternity’s Garden. Here is the link to that first post, in which I briefly explained the concept of the poem, as well as provided a general overview of Circle 1: The Blood of Eden, and Circle 2: Rome. In this post, I am going to share my readings and a general overview of Circle 3 and Circle 4. And, as I did in my first post, I’m providing a PDF of the entire poem at the end of the post.
A Brief Summary of Circle 3: Death of Water
In part 1, there is the scene on Mount Carmel, when Elijah the prophet confronted the prophets of Baal in I Kings 18. The contrasting picture between the prophets of Baal and Elijah fits in with the general imagery of the poem. The prophets of Baal are begging their god to send nourishing and cleansing rain, to the point that they are cutting themselves and bleeding as they pray to their false god. Yet no rain (or salvation) comes. By contrast, Elijah prepares his sacrifice, and not only does YHWH send a devouring fire that burns up, not just the sacrifice, but the entire altar, but He also sends rain. In the description of the cloud, there is an obvious allusion to the crucifixion. Part 1 ends with a quote from Peter Gabriel’s song, “Here Comes the Flood.” And hence the strange paradox. The rain that brings cleansing also brings about a flood, the water in which there is baptism, which is symbolic of death.
Part 2 begins with an initial scene in which the mermaids in T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” are singing a song. They sing of God’s longing for reunion with man and the tragedy of the Fall. The song is actually inspired by the song “Circle Dream” by 10,000 Maniacs. The second scene is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s story, The River, in which the child, Bevel, attempts to “baptize” himself and drowns. Yet this drowning will someday lead to a rebirth, for Bevel left behind the sins of the world—the swine of a false paradise. The third scene in Part 2 is of Peter walking out on the water to Jesus in the storm and his beginning to drown. What is the point? All too often, we want the Lord to save us, yet deep down we don’t believe He will. All too often, our Christianity fails to go any deeper than mere Christian platitudes. Our faith is far too weak, yet God’s will is for us to shape our destiny, work out our own salvation in the way He has planned it for us. We don’t seem to have enough faith to allow Him to work through us.
Part 3 consists of two scenes concerning the sexual confusion of young people today and the tragic consequences of listening to the fragmented, twisted answers society gives concerning sexuality. The longing for sexual union without a spiritual union ultimately becomes self-indulgent and narcistic. We are left with a society that devours all morsels of desire, only to find the hunger has increased. And yet, this sexual confusion and frustration that everyone goes through in some form or another is inevitable. It is part of what it means to grow up into adulthood. We yearn for a spiritual and sexual connection with someone that gives us that sense of wholeness and union. Ideally, that is what marriage between a man and woman accomplishes—it is a living icon of the union between Christ and the Church, between God and humankind through Christ. Thus, it “echoes” that union of Adam and Eve in Eden, but that union was childish and not fully mature. What we yearn for is the recovery and maturation of that union. And with every conception, with every newborn child, there is the memory of that Edenic union. But like life itself, one must journey from that union and experience suffering and confusion if one is ever to achieve maturity and a transformed union in Christ.
A Brief Summary of Circle 4: The Olive Garden
Part 1 is Christ in Gethsemane. The olive trees in Gethsemane, along with the “tree” of the cross, symbolize the true Tree of Life. Yet it is a Tree of Life that first allows death. The picture of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, therefore, is a picture of his recapitulation of Adam. The cat is symbolic of Christ, the rat is symbolic of Judas, the eagle is symbolic of Rome. The black, newborn cat was actually inspired by a literal cat I came across during my time in Israel in 1992, while I was a part of Volunteers for Israel and worked for three weeks on an Israeli medical supply base. One evening, near the barracks, we found this black, relatively newborn cat that had been abandoned. Despite our attempts to feed it, it didn’t take anything, and eventually just crept away.
Part 2 is the center of the entire poem. Therefore, because Christ is at the center of human history, because of what he did to transcend history, because everything that will be saved revolves around him, all one can say is, “Holy, holy, holy.”
Part 3 begins with Christ on the cross. The white bird obviously reminds us of the phoenix. It burns up in flames only to rise out of its ashes. Hence, the promise of resurrection. Of course, at that moment, the moment of Christ’s death, there is the question, “Will the resurrection really happen, or is this truly the end? Is there actual hope, or is there no hope now?” The way Christ’s voice is described echoes the description of God’s voice in Circle 1. When Christ, the incarnate Word, came into the world, he could only cry out as a newborn—sound, but without an intelligible voice. Yet here on the cross, Christ the Word cries out in a voice that is heard and understood. And the fact that he “roars,” shows that he is no longer a newborn cat, but a lion—and that foreshadows something to come.
What is emphasized at the end of Part 3 is that the cross is bloody and cursed. Yes, it is the true Tree of Life, but it echoes the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—Christ becoming sin for us. The whore at the cross is the prostitute, Mary Magdalene. Christ came to save the sick and lost, not the ones who think they are healthy. Finally, at the very end of Circle 4, we have Judas speaking as being the one who abandoned the black, newborn cat. Clearly, he feels regret and is longing for forgiveness and salvation. In that sense, it is also a picture of each one of us, who in our own way, are like Judas. We will go back to the garden tomb, where Christ was laid, to see if somehow we can recover the life of another Garden, a transformed Eden.
