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Evangelical

Poet of the Descending Road: T. S. Eliot

June 19, 2011 by Daniel Harrell

Continued from Page 2

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

Eliot was also a playwright, pursuing drama in part because he believed that drama attracted people who unconsciously seek religion. His Murder in the Cathedral, a play based on the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the 12th-century archbishop of Canterbury, reiterates how faith can live only if the faithful are ready to die for it. Eliot employs a chorus in the classical Greek manner and here the chorus sings just as the king's men prepare to murder the archbishop. Hear in this last piece how it encompasses all of Eliot's theology and life: the necessary move to absolute bottom, the stark decision, the final surrender to Jesus.

The agents of hell disappear, the human, they shrink and dissolve
Into dust on the wind, forgotten, unmemorable; only is here
The white flat face of death, God's silent servant,
And behind the face of Death the Judgment
And behind the Judgment the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell
Emptiness, absence, separation from God
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, . . .
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones
No colors, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death
We fear, we fear. Who shall plead for me
Who intercede for me in my most need?
Dead upon the tree my Savior
Let not be in vain Thy labor
Help me Lord, in my last fear
Dust I am, to dust am bending
From the final doom impending
Help me Lord for death is near.

I'm always struck how people will watch other's suffering and feel their faith toward God wobble. "How can God coexist with such evil in the world? How can he let these bad things happen? Is the Lord even there?" However these same people, in the midst of their own suffering, suddenly find their faith and find their voice:

Dead upon the tree my Savior
Let not be in vain Thy labor
Help me Lord, in my last fear
Dust I am, to dust am bending
From the final doom impending
Help me Lord for death is near.

Such is the way of descent. No one wants rock bottom, but everyone wants solid rock. "You must lose your life to save it," Jesus said. And so you must. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live," Paul wrote to the Galatians, "but Christ lives in me. Whatever life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Page: 3 of 3

6/19/2011 4:00:00 AM

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About Daniel Harrell

Daniel M. Harrell is Senior Minister of The Colonial Church, Edina, MN and author of How To Be Perfect: One Church's Audacious Experiment in Living the Old Testament Book of Leviticus (FaithWords, 2011). Follow him via Twitter, Facebook, or at his blog and website.

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