Jane Hirshfield, "I sat in the sun"

“Draw not nigh hither,” says the Lord to Moses; “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus, 3, 5). There is, then, a sacred space, and hence a strong, significant space; there are other spaces that are not sacred and so are without structure or consistency, amorphous.

— Eliade Mircea, “The Sacred and the Profane”

You're struck by the distant fire. It worries you. Will it spread? Will it consume all the brush? I'm just a shepherd on watch; I don't get paid enough for this. And then, you're transfixed for a moment. It doesn't seem to be spreading. You can't see any smoke. It is replete with a number of colors you have not experienced. Not just a familiar orange, but reds and neon pinks and yellows which gleam like gold. You begin to approach, wondering what royal phenomenon descended upon a poor pasture.

Commands issue. Stop. I am here. You will not approach. The power is the mystery. You do not know who speaks to you. Do they actually have power? Or are they are vulnerable? Hiding? How to know a voice from a voice? No shoes here. "The place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Usually, we imagine the terror and beauty of the divine as governing this moment. What we use to clothe or hide ourselves does not make sense and is discarded.

Eliade's comment is meaningfully brazen. "There is, then, a sacred space, and hence a strong, significant space," as opposed to other spaces "without structure or consistency." Following this, I believe something else governs this moment. What creates structure and consistency for an encounter between the human and divine? Why, exactly, do clothes not matter? Heidegger's emphasis on aletheia as truth–not just "not forgetting," but also "unconcealment"–emerges here. You realized people should be free, and that truth alone took over your life, burning like a fire which liberates more than consumes.

Space alters when Moses encounters the burning bush, creating a (if not the) world-historical moment. The fire is the Exodus: the will to confront a tyrant, demand freedom, and establish a code of neighborly living. It dictates the ground around it, dictates a specific set of actions and attitudes. Perhaps, to go back to Eliade's comment, this is too "strong" a space. Are there sacred spaces no less significant, but more personal?

Jane Hirshfield opens the sacredness of the everyday in "I sat in the sun." The poem is simple enough: "I moved my chair into sun / I sat in the sun / the way hunger is moved when called fasting." She presents a sentence which builds an analogy. She moved her chair and sat in the sun just as hunger changes when labelled fasting. For Medieval European thinkers, analogy served as a way of thinking about the divine. How could this work in our modern moment, where I would move my chair into the sun and text furiously for the next few hours?

I sat in the sun (from Poetry)
Jane Hirshfield

I moved my chair into sun
I sat in the sun
the way hunger is moved when called fasting.

I confess I am struck by Hirshfield's monastic awareness. She is opportunistic concerning the sacred. I feel my mind going blank trying to think through her attitude. I rarely find people opportunistic about the good. "The good," I realize, sounds too loaded for a discussion of our daily lives, but all I mean are opportunities to do useful things for ourselves or others as opposed to settling into semi-permanent states of comfort or panic. I mean, I know so many people who are anxious about leaving the house for an hour. How can I conceive of someone who is serious about exploring the sacred?

You're scoffing. "It's not hard," you say, "you just have to follow the text." That's true and also not true. I can follow the text and imagine a more meditative, contemplative attitude in this world. But I'm reaching toward that attitude as it is, in a way, beyond me. I'm surrounded by a great number of people who want that dulled sense of awareness the television offers. A blue flicker which commands the couch in front of it. I can't tell you that I fully understand the prerequisites to a sacred approach. Jane Hirshfield and Moses have experienced the transformation of space. I, on the other hand, have known a lot of people who declare that "God" agrees with every single thing they say because they said it. One could be forgiven for believing the endgame of prophecy is atheism.

A few details stand out to me. Hirshfield says she moved her chair "into sun," recalling Basho's haiku where a frog jumps into the sound of water. It might strike some as ridiculous–too large, too overblown–until we consider how difficult the everyday is for many people. We know those who are anxious to leave the house, but what about those who are terrified? Who might leave for a moment, enjoy themselves, and then immediately feel guilty they had any fun? The change involved is another world for them. They might as well be moving into sun, into sound.

This is true for those of us who are not as panicky about those specific affairs. The difference between secular and sacred is the consciousness of things such as sun and sound, the things which enable experience. To move and sit in these, I believe, is to value the possibility of the world. It is a world full of suffering, where permanence stands as a concept which loves to taunt us. A moment in the sun seems indulgent, as far away from sacrifice or fasting as one can get, but it points toward loss as much as gain. One day, we know, our lives will be different.

Does this mean everything is sacred? Yes and no. The scene Hirshfield describes is much less sacred, say, if vodka tonics are moved near the chair. We understand that is not happening. Small indulgences depend on one's consciousness of the matter, and the matter here is wholly sacred. The space has been transformed. A few hours in the sun bring us to consciousness of that flame which illumines the whole world. We make part of it ours; note the difference between "sun" and "the sun" in the first two lines, the difference between universal and particular. This does not entail possession as much as alteration. The alteration is the recognition of our need, a space we can be within.