Emily Dickinson, "I never saw a Moor" (1052)

Let's start with some music: Thomas Tallis, "If Ye Love Me"

If you're a choir geek, this polyphonic work is instantly recognizable. Nearly every choir sings it for good reason. It's short but exemplifies the cathedral as sacred space. The words of Jesus surround you, "if ye love me, keep my commandments," striking the tone of a higher authority. You'll sing this prayerfully, but the effect isn't exactly prayerful, though it is pious and respectful. I remember hearing–we might have made it up in grad school–that some ancient cities sang the law. That's what Tallis achieves, I believe.

Another note on the current crisis

Hi all –

How to communicate the scale of the crisis? On Facebook, a professor posts a crude, colorful, ignorant cartoon. In it, a woman yells about the "rule of law" hoping Trump will be punished, but stays silent about ICE. As if due process and habeas corpus are not currently being run over by a secret police. As if "rule of law" is about the those in uniform and gear jailing those struggling to work, feed their families, and survive themselves. (When, of course, it isn't about the expulsion of children with cancer.)

How to respond to the professor? He should know better. Others trust he knows, that he isn't just parroting cable news.

I'm struggling with these questions, as you can see on the blog. When I was surrounded by newspapers–my family loves newspapers, to its credit–I found myself ranting about The New York Times. The NYT's editorial pages are flooded with pieces which will make you believe kids really have too much self-esteem and everyone wastes money on avocado toast.

Other times, I have been more direct. Everyone should know that the federal government disappears people and abuses protestors. This does respond to people like the professor, but it doesn't explain anything. It states facts but doesn't address why such awful things are happening.

So I'm trying explainers. How does a giant military parade help destroy constitutional norms? How does not knowing who works for POTUS hurt us? I want to show how things work. How incidents we may not consider a priority–a military parade, a White House staff member–are of enormous consequence.

Will any of this make a difference? Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were gunned down by a right-wing zealot. A Senator was battered by law enforcement; a NYC mayoral candidate was detained by federal authorities. Israel unilaterally declared war on Iran and POTUS has authorized plans for a strike, but has not given the final word. The world is spinning out of control.

I do think more information helps, but we have to be opportunistic. I can't convince the professor that the television does not tell him the truth. But someone genuinely curious about how the Trump White House works might be shocked at how extreme those working there can be. An explainer or an inconvenient fact can be very useful in that case. The millions of people who attended "No Kings Day" are an audience who wants to know more and aren't angry about being a preached-to choir.

Opportunism is critical to how we ourselves understand the news. Sometimes we see something and we want to be part of a larger crusade to end all injustice. But giving to the big, grand campaigns doesn't always result in visible change, if any changes at all. I'm hoping we can do small things that make a difference on a local scale. Help the helpers while being conscious of the larger picture. Marfa Public Radio does need your assistance, as does Detention Watch Network, Inside Books Project, and Jesus House Odessa. Those are some causes I support. I encourage those of you reading to form small giving circles for your causes–I'm happy to help with a small donation–and we can begin getting money and, just as importantly, attention where it is sorely needed.

Emily Dickinson, "I never saw a Moor"

Medieval thinkers held you could obtain knowledge of God by means of analogy. Just as we craft laws to operate human institutions, hasn't God implanted a law within Creation? When I reflect on the current crisis of communication, it strikes me also as a crisis of knowing, since cults and fandoms abuse overextended logic. For example, no one denies a healthy diet and exercise aid in preventing illness. But once again, we can look at Facebook, where people we know are saying vitamins are miracle cures and supplements can substitute for health care. The logic they have twisted out of shape: if it's natural, it is good, as if diseases and death aren't natural too. Because of junk like this, the very idea of policy which benefits public health is controversial. If you feel like I'm belaboring the issue, try this: if they're a leader in business, that same skill translates to leadership in politics or education.

You could say the crisis of knowledge in the U.S. is due to cranks cranking out bad new theories and awful new idols all the time. So when I read Dickinson's "I never saw a Moor," it was not lost on me that she sketches analogical reasoning to the breaking point. Her poem, on the surface, is a simple, elegant statement of faith. I never saw a Moor or the Sea, but I can identify their components. Likewise, I never spoke with God or saw Heaven, but I can be certain of where they are, as if I have a ticket to get there.

I never saw a Moor (1052)
Emily Dickinson

I never saw a Moor —
I never saw the Sea —
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given —

In my telling, you can detect Dickinson's dark humor. The analogy isn't quite parallel; we'll speak of how it fails in a moment. For now, I want to emphasize that this can be a statement of faith. Maybe even one we feel we need. It takes a certain kind of faith to know how you can function on this planet. How do you grasp the unknown? How do you open yourself to new experiences?

Let's look for an answer in the first part of the analogy. "I never saw a Moor – / I never saw the Sea – / Yet I know how the Heather looks / And what a Billow be." So, you've heard about the Moor and Sea. Read about both, heard people talk, imagined something like them at times. But how would you recognize either if they were right in front of you? A moor is a large tract of uncultivated land, an expanse. It isn't just a field–you'd have to sense that the pink, purple, and white flowers dotting it as far as the eye can see are another landscape. Similarly, the sea isn't just a lot of water. Waves have a life of their own: force and foam and a hypnotic roar.

The unknown is grasped through the known. Knowing ultimately is accounting for experience, but it must start with recognition, the ability to address the unknown and the not-quite-so known. If you're wondering why I'm obsessed with this topic, it's because I'm reading an early work by Spinoza, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Spinoza spends an enormous amount of time there reflecting, like Descartes, on how we judge which ideas have a greater degree of reality than others. In college and graduate school I tuned out these discussions; now I understand them to be about how we can prevent being overwhelmed by conspiracy theories. How knowledge which seems slightly remote can be felt as our daily reality and not pointlessly relitigated by the dumbest people in the universe.

In this poem, the recognition which links knowledge and experience comes from the imagination. You have to try and place yourself in the hearsay, the words you've read, the abstract definition. You teach yourself to see the moor and the sea. The experience of imagining, then, stands prior to the experience of knowing. In this case, Dickinson points at knowing realms. Untamed wilderness and the kingdom of the ocean.

This is a kind of faith. Faith you can know where you are. And I don't want to dismiss it, but it does break down if you tie it explicitly to God and the afterlife. Dickinson, though, goes there. What smashes the logic is "Heaven:"

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given —

Your imagination grows to encompass your experiences on this earth. You learn the wildness of land and sea because it is at hand, even if you shut yourself in your room and tend to your garden when you feel like it. But where, exactly, is Heaven? How would one visit it? Dickinson says she is "certain... of the spot," but no components or signifiers such as "Heather" or "Billows" are given. Instead, she says it's like having a "check," a railroad ticket.

She draws our attention to a contrast with the realms within the natural world and the technology of organized religion. I hear you: it sounds weird to think of organized religion as a technology, but I'm drawing on more than Dickinson's talk of "Checks." I mentioned that I'm working on Heidegger and this is a persistent theme in critique of modernity. It isn't just that we have lots of technology. It's that the way we worship it isn't disconnected to our worship generally. We look for converts as if the gravest matters require marketing. But what about a more primal recognition, not of an omnipotent God with a governing Providence, but of the essential sacredness of the everyday? You don't have to be a pagan to know that some areas are meant to be wild and untouched. That if we lose that beauty, we've lost any sense of what it means to be in the world.