an evening with augustine

I'm reading Confessions with my students, and they are responding so thoughtfully. Because of a scheduling conflict, one of my students is reading it independently of the class; today she walked into my classroom at the end of the day and told me that she loves it.

Those simple responses really make my day. I personally feel conflicted in regards to Augustine's confession, especially his penchant for self-punishment, but I respond quite deeply to his ability to envision spiritual restitution.

"But just as it commonly happens that a person who has experienced a bad physician is afraid of entrusting himself to a good one, so it was with the health of my soul. While it could be healed by believing, it was refusing to be healed for fear of believing what is false. It resisted your healing hands, though you have prepared the medicines of faith, have applied them to the sicknesses of the world, and have given them such power." Confessions VI.iv.6

I read that tonight and responded in the spirit of this poem:

There will be a book that includes these pages,

and she who takes it in her hands

will sit staring at it a long time,

until she feels that she is being held

and you are writing.

(you guessed it)

-Rilke

the rest of the poem

I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough

to make each hour holy.

I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough

to be simply in your presence, like a thing -

just as it is.

I want to know my own will

and to move with it.

And I want, in the hushed moments

when the nameless draws near,

to be among the wise ones -

or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.

I never want to be too weak or too old

to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.

Let no place in me hold itself closed,

for where I am closed, I am false.

I want to stay clear in your sight.

I would describe myself

like a landscape I've studied

at length, in detail;

like a word I'm coming to understand;

like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime;

like my mother's face;

like a ship that carried me

when the waters raged.

Poem after poem, I encounter the weight of his bare desires and simply spoken images.