The Dry Savages

Sometimes it’s helpful on this journey to listen to a different voice - it can help us come at an idea from a new angle that opens up a whole new world. So today we’re going to read a piece of a poem by the late T.S. Eliot. As you read it, reflect about what we we’ve been learning this week about hearing God in different situations, especially from people different than you as well as in the small miracles in our daily lives.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.

- T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets: 3.II (The Dry Savages), 1942