DEATHLESS PRESENCE
Reflecting on Turning to the Mystics with Jim Finley, Season 10, T.S. Eliot: Dialogue 2: East Coker, October 7, 2024:
T.S. Eliot's East Coker poem is about a town.
Parry Sound-- where my parents live is a town.
It strikes me T.S. Eliot's town East Coker could be the town of Parry Sound.
I'm in my grandmother's dining room in Parry Sound in awe of seeing the huge velvet tapestry of the Last Supper (or maybe it was of the Wise Men and Camels?) hanging on the wall. Anyway, reflecting on T.S. Eliot's East Coker poem, Finley explains that tapestries were hung to cover alcoves in houses in Eliot's time.
What secret alcove does my grandmother's tapestry cover today?
Maybe like the people in Eliot's poem who are dead now, the tapestry covers all my dead relatives who sat around my grandmother's table? And like the disciples at the Last Supper, maybe it covers the table we ate at, fought at, loved at, doubted at, and betrayed each other at too?
With the above in mind, from my secret alcove east of the city of Toronto, God pulls the tapestry back and I see them all-- my parents, brother, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins-- not really gone, just absent. And not really absent either, just somewhere else.
Next. I think of Finley telling us where T.S. Eliot's East Coker poem is heading-- it's heading to the resurrection: "When it was evening on that day..., and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews (for fear of each other), Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'" (John 20:19).
Behind the tapestry in my grandmother's dining room-- we show each other our wounds, we drink wine and eat.
This upcoming weekend is Thanksgiving-- I'm grateful for poetry, scripture, memory, and "the deathless presence" (JF) of loved ones.
