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"Love is a place, yes is a world"

Message by Rev. Laurie Bushbaum
Oct. 4, 2009

When I was in high school, there hung above my minister’s desk - a poster. To this day, I remember it vividly: the background was all black and in soft, rounded white letters it said just this:

be of love ( a little)
More careful
than of everything

This was my first encounter with the poetry of e.e.cummings. By the time I left high school, and the Presbyterian minister of my youth, these words were etched into my mind.

be of love (a little)
More careful
than of everything

The second time I recall meeting the poetry of e.e.cummings I was in seminary. I went to visit my friend Jane, who was preparing to be a Congregational minister. On her apartment wall hung a poster with the poem that I read earlier:
i thank you god for most this amazing day…

Looking back, I find it interesting that my first two memories of meeting the poetry of e.e.cummings both stand out so clearly in my mind - and that on both occasions the meeting was in a religious context. Several years back, I saw in a colleague’s newsletter that e.e.cummings was Unitarian and I vowed that I would someday learn more about him. Since his birthday is Oct. 14, this seemed like a good month to consider his life and work.

e.e.cummings’ loved his parents. In both his poetry and prose, he describes the heritage of heart and mind, his spirituality, his world view as the legacy of his parents. He describes each of them with unbounded love. I’ll share some of cummings’ own words about his parents, so that you will get more of a sense of his language.

Of his father he writes:

He was a New Hampshire man, 6 foot 2, a crack shot and a famous fly fisherman and a first rate sailor... and a woodsmen... and a canoeist who’d still paddle you up to a deer without ruffling the surface of a pond and an ornitholigist and taxidermist... and an expert photographer... a painter ( in both water colors and oil) and a better carpenter than any professional and a plumber who just for the fun of it installed his own waterworks and (while at Harvard) a teacher with small use for professors by which we were literally surrounded (but not defeated) and later as a Unitarian preacher... horribly shocked his pewholders by crying “the Kingdom of Heaven is no spiritual roofgarden: it’s inside you.” My father sent me to a certain public school because its principal was a coal-black negress... and my father was a servant of the people who fought Boston’s biggest and crookedest politician fiercely all day and a few evenings later sat down with him cheerfully at the Rotary Club and my father’s voice was so magnificent that he was called on to impersonate God speaking from Beacon Hill.”

Some of you may know that our UU headquarters are in Boston, on Beacon Hill.)

Of his mother he writes:

She could no more have told a lie than flown over the housetop...Never have I encountered anyone more joyous, anyone healthier in body and mind, anyone so quite incapable of remembering a wrong, or anyone so completely and humanly and unaffectedly generous. Whereas my father created his Unitarianism (his own father being a Christian of the hell fire variety) she had inherited hers; it was an integral part of herself; she expressed it as she breathed and as she smiled.

Edward Estlin Cummings was born at home, of these two remarkable people, in Concord, Mass. on Oct 14, 1894. His father became a UU Minister after his first career as a Harvard professor. His mother was a third generation Unitarian.

I could not find in any of the materials I read about him, whether or not he continued to be an active Unitarian as an adult. I rather doubt it; he was a confirmed skeptic and fierce critic of human institutions. ( More on that later.) Still, his poetry ( at least the ones that I can understand -) is filled with echoes of what UU’s hold dear.

After steeping myself in cummings’ words for weeks, I hear four themes in his work: 1. the ultimacy of love; 2. what cummings saw in nature; 3. his fierce challenge to be an individual in an age of conformity; 4.his ideas about knowledge and truth. It is even a bit difficult to sepearate each of these into individual themes, because they are so connected.

2.

You’ll notice that you have copies of some of his poems in your Order of Service. This is because many of cummings’ poems have to be seen as well as heard. One of the distingusing characteristics of him as a poet was his unconventional use of language. As we go through the poems you will notice that he invents words by adding prefixes of suffixes to ordinary words, that he arranges words in unusual ways, uses parentheses and punctuation unconventionally. He did this not only to push the possiblities of poetry, but to push the reader to new ways of seeing and hearing.

At the core of cummings’ work is immense love; his first discovery of the Universe, he says, was “the immense and creative love of his parents” : their love for each other, for Life, and for him. He wrote dozens of love poems: to his wife, to the earth, to his readers in general, to Life. Let’s look at several of his love poems.

Here is one for his parents:

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one... It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my
swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
and the whole garden will bow)

Did you notice how he sometimes implies a word but doesn’t really say it? The way he flips the meanings of words? In this poem, Heaven is not a “pansy heaven,” a frilly place with harps and angels. To cummings, heaven is constructed of “blackred roses.” Heaven is the blood and guts, the joy and courage of love. Heaven is when we can bow to the great love in us, and to the great love in another. We create heaven by bowing in love.

And here is a love poem for his wife….

i carry your heart with me ( i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it ( anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate ( for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world ( for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life: which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart ( i carry it in my heart)

This last love poem that I will read, reveals cummings theology of love. Clearly, he believes that love is not just a feeling, but a power we are called to make manifest in the world:

love is a place
and through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
and in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds

For cummings, love makes room for all. Love is all. Love is both visible and invisible; the possiblility and the reality of the world. It is “a” place, as well as “all places.” In the second stanza, cummings articulates that we must particpate in the making this world of love. Remember that cummings was the son of a minister; I expect that he was well acquainted with the Bible. Each time I read this poem, I wonder if this
4.

isn’t cummings’ paraphrase of the Biblical injunction to love your enemy, to be the Good Samaritan. Anyone can love those who are just like you and who are easy to love. The real challenge is to make your love so large that there is room for everyone.

Edwin Marham was another UU poet, a contemporary of cumming. He wrote a poem that I am almost certain cummings knew and which also echoes the UU sentiment that love is large. Markham wrote:

“He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.”

If cummings’ first great discovery was love and its core place in the structure of the world, the second great mystery revealed to him was nature. Edward and his sister, Elizabeth played in a wooded area near their homes called Norton’s Woods. “Here, as a very little child,” cummings said, “I first encountered the mystery who is Nature. Here my enormous smallness entered her illimitable being.” In his poetry, images from nature are used to express the glory and mystery, the wonder, complexity, and even the paradoxes of life.
Though cummings was a poet who tried to speak a profound “YES” to life he was no Pollyanna. He was well acquainted with the dark side, of both nature and human nature. Still, for cummings nature was a holy book, filled with testimonies of the glory and wonder of life. He studied nature ( like the Transcendentalists - Thoreau, Emerson etc...) and saw nature as a teacher, as an inspiration, even as evidence of some kind of god. There is no better example than a piece that we have already met: i thank you god for most this amazing day…

Here is avery different poem, that on a most obvious level, is about seasonal change:

out of the lie of no
rises a truth of yes
(only herself and who
illimitable is)

making fools understand
(like wintry me) that not
all matterings of mind
equal one violet

5.

Out of the darkness and no-ness of winter comes the”yes” of spring. And I suspect that cummings is suggesting something else: that humanity needs to humble
itself in context of the whole universe. “not all matterings of mind equal one violet,” he wrote. Is he saying that despite our intellectual powers we sometimes think places us above the rest of creation, in reality don’t “equal one violet.” - With all our intellectual prowess, we cannot create the exquisite beauty, mystery and complexity of the blooming violet in springtime. Ought we not humble ourselves at this altar of creation?

The following poem speaks his point.

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but)...
thy rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring.

I hear cummings’ prophetic voice warning us of the dangers of idolotry - of worshipping incomplete, human knowledge separated from the largeness of Life.
These 5 lines from another poem have the same ring to them:

mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile.
6.
For cummings, love must come before knowledge. If we do not use our knowledge in the service of love, what good is it? We may be capable of space travel and study, of capturing photogrpaic images from space, but that these do nothing for a child who has lost a mother. These five lines seem clearly to echo the words of Paul in the new Testament book of First Corinthians:

If I have all the eloquence of humans of of angels, but speak without
love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of a prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everyting, and if I have faith in all its fulness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I posess... and martyr myself, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.

The fourth theme that I mentioned was cummings’ emphasis on individuality. Over the course of decades years and the ridicule of many, he established himself as a noted poet by developing an utterly unconventional voice. He continually warns us as readers to keep alive our own hearts and minds and imaginations. He said:

Nobody can be you for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. There’s the...repsonsibility; and the most awful repsonsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it and be. If you can’t, cheer up and go about other people’s business.

In this passage, cummings treats giving up one’s individuality and going about other people's business lightly. Ultimately, though, this was a topic of grave seriousness for him. He felt strongly that individuals who gave up their individuality, their freedom, their own immediacy of heart and mind, will be manipulated and controlled by others for their purposes. It ‘s important to know here that cummings came of age during WW 1 and during the war spent three months in a dingy prison cell, accused of treason. The evidence: writing friendly letters to his favorite professor at Harvard, who happened to be German, and for refusing to say he hated all Germans. In WW II cummings then witnessed the terror of Naziism, and saw millions of people killed for the sake of "racial purity". Using fear tactics and false knowledge, Hitler, trapped millions into abandoning their own power and conscience, abetting murder and destruction beyond comparison.

The following poem tells of the value that cummings placed on an open mind, and his mistrust of those who claim to have the absolute truth
whether it be in politics or religion.

7.
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

Notice the phrase, “even it it’s sunday may i be wrong.” I assume the refernce to “Sunday” refers to churches and religions. He seems to be saying, that even in the case of religon, one must never be sure once and for all ; we must always be open to greater truth and growth and wisdom.

Unitarian Universalism is built on the basic premise that what holds us together is not just WHAT we believe, but HOW we believe. Our Principles and Purposes are our guide not for what we must believe in order to be a member, but how we ought to conduct our search for truth and meaning in order that we serve the cause of love and justice along the way.

e.e.cummings was an institutional skeptic. He saw too much confomity for humanity’s good; conformity that destroyed creativity and integrity and justice. He was too skeptical of human institutuions to pledge allegiance to them. Though I could not find any infromation that confirmed his participation in UUism as an adult, I know this:
when he died in 1962, The Rev. Dana Greeley, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, led the funeral service in Boston. Given that at the time of his death, cummings was one of the most notable and treasured Amercian poets, it says something that he trusted us with
his funeral.

I would guess that those of us here ARE here precisely because, like cummings, we value our individuality and demand that our religion value this, too. Can we hear cummings’ other challenges :

Will we thank god for most this amazing day, and live in practiced gratitude?
Can we be like the lark and lift our lives from all the dark and sing to yes ?
Even if it’s sunday can we be wrong , open and growing in mind and soul?
Will our heart always be open to little birds, to the small graces of life?
Will we remember that out of the lie of no rises a truth to yes?

And most importantly, can we be of love a little more careful than of everything else ?

8.

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one... It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my
swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,

and the whole garden will bow)

i carry your heart with me ( i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it ( anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate ( for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world ( for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life: which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart ( i carry it in my heart)
________________________

love is a place
and through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
and in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds

out of the lie of no
rises a truth of yes
(only herself and who
illimitable is)

making fools understand
(like wintry me) that not
all matterings of mind
equal one violet
__________________

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon thier scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but)...
thy rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring.
________________

mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even it it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

______________

nine birds (rising
through a gold moment) climb:
ing i
-nto
wintry
twi-

light
(all together a
manying
one
-ness) nine
souls
only alive with a single mys-

tery ( liftingly
caught upon falling) silent!

ly living the dying of glory

E. E. Cummings died after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at Joy Farm. A few years later, Cummings' companion, Marion, was buried beside him with the marker, Marion Morehouse Cummings, 1906-1969.

  

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