Tuesday, April 30, 2013

News at Eleven: In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War,

[T.S.] Eliot published the cycle of four long poems he called "Four Quartets." It is the fullest expression of his deepest religious feelings and ideas. For me, it belongs firmly in the canon of 20th-century spiritual literature and can be read contemplatively for spiritual direction and affirmation. The poem confronts the paradox of permanence and change; time cannot exist without timelessness; there can be no order without chaos; no movement without stillness. And the stillness is the key. At the intersection of linear, chronological time--the time in which we all have to live--and eternal time, the time in which we all hope to endure, lies the still point. As Eliot describes it, "The light is still/At the still point of the turning world."

from The Georgia Bulletin: Poems Chart T.S. Eliot's Spiritual Evolution

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