T. S. Eliot and the Widow’s Mite

It was with great excitement a few weeks ago that I began reading “T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life,” by Lyndall Gordon. It would be hard to overstate the importance of Eliot’s words on my life and thoughts over the last few years. I would go so far as to say that no other poet has impacted me as deeply, (except perhaps G. M. Hopkins and Francis Thompson) by making conscious, as in a mirror, my own spiritual aspirations and temptations. His words make present a reality beyond words, striving beyond the articulate for the inexpressible, and almost succeeding in making it present. However, I knew next to nothing about the poet’s life so it was all new territory to me. It is an excellent book, I think, with equal parts biographical research, psychological insight, and literary criticism. The biographical details broaden and deepen understanding of the poetry, but it could also be argued that the biography makes no sense without the poetry.

However, my emotional reaction to the biography was one of deep sadness. He was not what he aspired to in his poetry, for much of his life. No one ever really is, for better or worse. He was selfish in many ways, a lot of his drama was self-inflicted, and he caused a great deal of pain to those closest to him. He aspired to mysticism, holiness, and union with God, but he did so with a callous unconcern for others, which negated his sublime thoughts. Gordon uses words like “complicated” and “gifted” to describe him and his relationships with others. He used the words himself, as if his “giftedness” excused what would simply be cowardice and meanness in a less gifted man.

But what saddened me was the kinship I felt with him. I understand a lot of his aspirations. He was always a man trying to rise above, above his society with its rigid, deathly manners completely divorced (in his eyes) from the real purgatory of true morals. He longed to rise above ordinary speech, wasted moments, the banality of a modern life “measured out in coffee spoons.” He saw himself as a prophet, calling people to abandon their dead conveniences and embrace the refining fire of sacrificial suffering.

That rings true in me. I understand the rabid drive for excellence, to be better today than you were yesterday, and tomorrow to be better than you are today. I understand the ruthless, take-no-prisoners, determination, and the guilt when that determination is simply not enough. I understand falling short of my own aspirations, and the anger that comes from it, and I understand how easy it is to turn that anger outwards at others. I understand how “better than I was” slowly turns into “better than anyone else.” I know the temptation to despise people who live life less intensely that I have have learned to. Worst of all, I understand how perilously easy it is to pursue that private notion of “perfection” at any and all costs to others or to myself, and to look back at the collateral damage with some regret, but more with a feeling of self-satisfaction. At least I was never turned aside from the straight and narrow. Really, what else could I have done? Can’t they see that I am on a SPIRITUAL QUEST!? They shouldn’t have gotten in the way.

It is so easy to feel a terrible sense of righteousness at “things ill done, and done to others’ harm / which once you took for exercise of virtue.”

Giftedness is meaningless. What we are given is not what matters. The only thing that matters is God’s love, which is freely given in the measure in which it can be received, as we heard in the Gospel for the 16th of November. Each servant is given a sum of money, 5 talents, 2 talents, and 1 talent. Lest you feel that the servant with 1 talent was gypped, remember that a talent is roughly equal to 6,000 days’ (or roughly 20 years’) wages for a worker of the time period. The only servant punished at the end was the one who had made no effort.

This comes through perhaps most clearly in the gospel for today, the story of the widow’s mite, which I think is one of the most lovable episodes in the entire gospel. I just want to give that old lady a hug and ask her to pray for me. The poor old lady puts two pennies into the collection box, and that is more pleasing to God than all of the contributions of the great and rich and mighty, because it was all she had. It was an act of total trust. I am sure she was not one of the intelligentsia. She was not likely a scholar of the law, a poet, a hermit, or an ascetic. She was a Saint because she loved God with absolute totality.

Last week I listened to an Artofmanliness.com podcast in which Art of Manliness founder Brett McKay interviewed Vietnam War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, Paul Bucha. During the interview, CPT. Bucha criticized the celebrity culture of America which lionizes “heroes” like the MOH recipients, and expects them to be special, out of the ordinary, different somehow. He not only insisted that MOH recipients were simply ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and did what they had to do, but also that that same potential exists in every single human being. The idea that “heroes” are somehow different from everyone else is a trap for both the heroes and the hero worshippers. It is a way for people to shirk their responsibilities to cultivate true greatness in themselves, within their own sphere of action.

Eliot’s life is a cautionary tale for all of us, I suppose, since we are all subject to the temptation to think ourselves better than others. Few of us have an entire world telling us that we are better, as was the case with Eliot, but we tell ourselves often enough. We can be better than others because we read the bible, or because we don’t practice contraception, or because we prayed for Brittany Maynard instead of bashing her, or because we support one “side” or the other in the Synod on the Family. The reasons for superiority are legion.

But true greatness lies in littleness, in meekness, and absolute trusting surrender to God, like the widow, surrendering her only income to God. She was placing her life in His hands, not as a teeth gritting sacrificial act of will, but as an act of simple trust. She loved Him, and that is all that matters. “For though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, if I have not love, I am a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal.”