{"id":108295,"date":"2024-12-15T16:27:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-15T23:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=108295"},"modified":"2024-12-15T16:29:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T23:29:33","slug":"the-turn-of-the-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2024\/12\/the-turn-of-the-tide.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Turn of the Tide”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
\u201cHonor be to God in the heights, and peace to people of good will on the Earth! He became human for the sake of humans, a king born in poverty, a child in order to defy the powerful.\u201d
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even among those who love his writing \u2014 and I am definitely among them \u2014 C. S. Lewis is little known as a poet. \u00a0Here, though, I share a poem of his (\u201cThe Turn of the Tide\u201d) that was written for Christmas. \u00a0It\u2019s worth a slow and thoughtful reading, I think:<\/p>\n

Breathless was the air over Bethlehem; black and bare
\nThe fields; hard as granite were the clods;
\nHedges stiff with ice; the sedge, in the vice
\nOf the ponds, like little iron rods.
\nThe deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem; it was shed
\nWider each moment on the land;
\nThrough rampart and wall into camp and into hall
\nStole the hush. All tongues were at a stand.
\nTravellers at their beer in taverns turned to hear
\nThe landlord\u2014that oracle was dumb;
\nAt the Procurator\u2019s feast a jocular freedman ceased
\nHis story, and gaped; all were glum.
\nThen the silence flowed forth to the islands and the north
\nAnd it smoothed the unquiet river-bars,
\nAnd leveled out the waves from their revelling, and paved
\nThe sea with the cold, reflected stars.
\nWhere the C\u00e6sar sat and signed at ease on Palatine,
\nWithout anger, the signatures of death,
\nThere stole into his room and on his soul a gloom,
\nTill he paused in his work and held his breath.
\nThen to Carthage and the Gauls, to Parthia and the Falls
\nOf Nile, to Mount Amara it crept;
\nThe romp and rage of beasts in swamp and forest ceased,
\nThe jungle grew still as if it slept.
\nSo it ran about the girth of the planet. From the Earth
\nThe signal, the warning, went out,
\nAway beyond the air; her neighbours were aware
\nOf change, they were troubled with doubt.<\/p>\n

Salamanders in the Sun who brandish as they run
\nTails like the Americas in size,
\nWere stunned by it and dazed; wondering, they gazed
\nUp at Earth, misgiving in their eyes.
\nIn Houses and Signs the Ousiarchs divine
\nGrew pale and questioned what it meant;
\nGreat Galactic lords stood back to back with swords
\nHalf-drawn, awaiting the event,
\nAnd a whisper among them passed, \u201cIs this perhaps the last
\nOf our story and the glories of our crown?\u2014
\nThe entropy worked out?\u2014the central redoubt
\nAbandoned?\u2014The world-spring running down?\u201d
\nThen they could speak no more. Weakness overbore
\nEven them; they were as flies in a web,
\nIn lethargy stone-dumb. The death had almost come,
\nAnd the tide lay motionless at ebb.<\/p>\n

Like a stab at that moment over Crab and Bowman,
\nOver Maiden and Lion, came the shock
\nOf returning life, the start, and burning pang at heart,
\nSetting galaxies to tingle and rock.
\nThe Lords dared to breathe, swords went into sheathes
\nA rustling, a relaxing began;
\nWith rumour and noise of the resuming of joys
\nAlong the nerves of the universe it ran.
\nThen, pulsing into space with delicate dulcet pace,
\nCame a music infinitely small,
\nBut clear; and it swelled and drew nearer, till it held
\nAll worlds with the sharpness of its call,
\nAnd now divinely deep, ever louder, with a leap
\nAnd quiver of inebriating sound,
\nThe vibrant dithyramb shook Libra and the Ram,
\nThe brains of Aquarius spun round\u2014
\nSuch a note as neither Throne nor Potentate had known
\nSince the Word created the abyss.
\nBut this time it was changed in a mystery, estranged,
\nA paradox, an ambiguous bliss.<\/p>\n

Heaven danced to it and burned; such answer was returned
\nTo the hush, the Favete, the fear
\nThat Earth had sent out. Revel, mirth and shout
\nDescended to her, sphere below sphere,
\nTill Saturn laughed and lost his latter age\u2019s frost
\nAnd his beard, Niagara-like, unfroze;
\nThe monsters in the Sun rejoiced; the Inconstant One,
\nThe unwedded Moon, forgot her woes;
\nA shiver of re-birth and deliverance round the Earth
\nWent gliding; her bonds were released;
\nInto broken light the breeze once more awoke the seas,
\nIn the forest it wakened every beast;
\nCapripods fell to dance from Taproban to France,
\nLeprechauns from Down to Labrador;
\nIn his green Asian dell the Phoenix from his shell
\nBurst forth and was the Phoenix once more.<\/p>\n

So Death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless\u2019d
\nNothing greater could be heard
\nThan sighing wind in the thorn, the cry of One new-born,
\nAnd cattle in stable as they stirred.<\/p>\n

\"J'lem<\/a>
I received this photo just before Christmas 2017 from friends at Jimmy\u2019s Bazaar in East Jerusalem. BYU\u2019s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies \u2014 you can see it here in the upper left, with the tower of the Augusta Victoria Hospital to its right \u2014 had just turned on its Christmas lights for the first time that year.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m very fond of today\u2019s Christmas music selection, \u201cWhat Wondrous Love is This?\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s a Christian folk hymn from the American South that was first published at Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1811 and that has sometimes been called a \u201cwhite spiritual.\u201d \u00a0Here it is, performed by a Mennonite choir and orchestra: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u_0AX5Opgs0<\/a><\/p>\n

1 What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
\nWhat wondrous love is this, O my soul!
\nWhat wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss
\nto bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
\nto bear the dreadful curse for my soul.<\/p>\n

2 When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
\nwhen I was sinking down, O my soul!
\nWhen I was sinking down beneath God\u2019s righteous frown,
\nChrist laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
\nChrist laid aside His crown for my soul.<\/p>\n

3 To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
\nto God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
\nTo God and to the Lamb who is the great \u201cI AM,\u201d
\nwhile millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
\nwhile millions join the theme, I will sing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have I pointed out yet that every single example of Christmas music that I\u2019ve shared here, and every single example of it that I will<\/em> share here, can be found in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122? \u00a0Yup. \u00a0It\u2019s true. \u00a0Every single one.<\/p>\n

For those, however, who desperately crave a holiday season that\u2019s untainted by all of the silly, oppressive, and offensive religious nonsense that theists have attempted to impose upon it, here\u2019s a poem by the American academic, poet, and translator Joseph S. Salemi that shouldn\u2019t offend their tender sensibilities. \u00a0It\u2019s about the lusty commercialism that can easily (and often does) replace \u201creligion\u201d at the heart of the Winter Solstice holiday, and it\u2019s entitled \u201cThe Corporate Christmas Carol\u201d:<\/p>\n

God rest ye merry businessmen,
\nStart markups on your trash!
\nRemember that this holiday
\nIs when you rake in cash!
\nIt saves you from those creditors
\nYou owe from that last crash . . .<\/p>\n

Oh, tidings of bottom-lines grown fat, ever so fat!
\nOh, tidings of bottom-lines grown fat!
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

From commerce wonks in Washington
\nThere comes this press release:
\n\u201cJust keep the boobs in spending-mode
\nSo cash flow doesn\u2019t cease!
\nA Christmas without splurging means
\nThat profits won\u2019t increase . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, tidings of credit lines gone wild, ever so wild!
\nOh, tidings of credit lines gone wild!<\/em><\/p>\n

The euro\u2019s going down the tubes;
\nThe E.U. too,\u00a0en masse<\/em>\u2014
\nWe owe some fifteen trillion bucks
\nThat we don\u2019t have, alas!
\nIf China calls our paper debt,
\nWe might as well take gas . . .<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Oh, tidings of bankruptcy and loss, ever such loss!<\/em><\/div>\n
Oh, tidings of bankruptcy and loss!<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That\u2019s why we need this frenzied rush
\nOf buying gone berserk!
\nAt Christmas you must drum into
\nThe head of every jerk
\nThat he should spend and spend and spend
\nTo keep us all in work . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oh, tidings of avarice unrestrained, unrestrained!
\nOh, tidings of avarice unrestrained!
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Posted from Newport Beach, California<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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