Reciting T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday from Memory – Taylor Wilson
Last year Ron Dart suggested that the Contemplative Order of the Sons of the Holy Cross should read and reflect on T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday during Lent. I did as was suggested and found the poem was insightful in a manner that I could not grasp immediately (on account of the heavy use of symbolism).
In the spirit of Lectio Divina I decided to memorize the poem so that when I recited it I could dig a little further into the language that Eliot uses. Over the course of months, I did memorize the poem and have been influenced deeply by it. Often I dream of different verses within the poem as I sleep, and my hope is that it has penetrated to levels of my self beneath the level of the conscious awareness.
As Eliot says in Burnt Norton, "It is only by the form, the pattern, that words or music reach the stillness." This year during lent I am again spending time with Ash Wednesday while supplementing the poem with repeated reading of the book of Ecclesiastes supplemented by Gregory of Nyssa's commentary on the book, and Dante's La Vita Nuova, both of which figure prominently in Eliot's Ash Wednesday.
God’s Gonna Cut You Down — Johnny Cash
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