The Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese text containing the fundamental truths and beliefs of Taoism. The text is, by no means, a clear-cut set of beliefs that just anyone could understand upon their first reading. I am not sure that one could even understand the message after reading the text twice. This type of literature considers the principles of Taoism and of Eastern culture, and requires close reading and analysis. It also requires an open mind.

Throughout the poems that make up the Tao Te Ching, I have found there to be some consistent themes. Many poems refer to “The Way”. Now, The Way is not clearly defined, but is rather described using clever metaphors, similes, and images. Another consistent topic in the Tao Te Ching is the idea of Harmony.

I am fascinated with many of the poems, but specifically am digging deeper into “The Following.” The particular section that I am taking a closer look at reads, “When the great man learns the Way, he follows it with diligence: When the common man learns the Way, he follows it on occasion; When the mean man learns the Way, he laughs out loud.”

The theme of this section is the goodness that prevails when one follows “The Way”. The author refers to the man who choses to follow the way as “great.” He even says that he will follow it with diligence, being careful and persistent. The common man, will only follow it on occasion, therefore he is lower than the great man who is persistent in following the way. The man who “laughs out loud” at The Way is considered mean, therefore, I think that the author holds “The Way” to be true, and great, and ultimately to be the way of life. Later the poem reads, “the finest harmony appears plain”. Here it is interesting that the author takes something so sacred as perfect harmony and pairs it with the word plain. The point that the author is trying to make is that one who has harmony with themselves will not appear as puffed up, proud, or busy, but rather, will appear plain because they have integrity and are content with themselves. We were originally designed to pursue four harmonies, and when we follow The Way, we experience these four harmonies. If one follows the way, they pursue harmony with God, grace; harmony with oneself, integrity; harmony with nature stewardship; and harmony with others, peace.

Anna Akhmatova's-Lot's Wife

Anna Akhmatova experienced much hardship and distress living during the Cold War in Russia. I can only imagine the fears and the worries that filled Akhmatova’s mind; how strong a faith she must have had to even sleep through the night. It makes sense that Akhmatova would chose to write the poem “Lot’s Wife” because she could relate to living in a place going through much turmoil as Sodom and Gomorrah were in Biblical times. Through Akhmatova's poetry, she found peace, love, and tranquility in her life.

            In the poem, Akhmatova refers to the Biblical story found in the first book of Genesis where the town of Sodom was destroyed. Thankfully, the Lord had mercy on Lot, a just man, and warned him and his family to leave the town as He said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed!” (Gen 19:17).  The cities were destroyed. Lot’s wife did not obey the Lord’s command. The moment she took her final glance into the past, she became a pillar of salt. God, who is loving and merciful, gave Lot and his family time to leave the city.

Akhmatova’s line “And the just man trailed God's shining agent/ over a black mountain, in his giant track/ while a restless voice kept harrying his woman/ "It's not too late, you can still look back,” particularly struck me. Akhmahtova talks about the struggle of Lot and his wife as they leave their hometown and past life behind. Lot is the “just” man she speaks of. Lot served the Lord and was righteous in God’s sight. Indeed, he was an “agent” or “servant” of the Lord. The “black mountain” that Akhmatova speaks of is not necessarily the landform that one may think of when they hear the word mountain. Rather, perhaps Akhmotova uses the metaphor of the “black mountain” to describe the dark, uphill struggle that Lot’s family had to blindly endure as they left behind all that they knew, to follow the Lord’s command. The “restless voice [that] kept harrying his woman,” refers to the women’s temptation to take one final glance back to the town that the Lord said would soon be put to ruins. However, there is a deeper meaning to this “restless” voice. Perhaps it is a clever metaphor that Akhmatova gives us for the time when we are tempted into doing things that go against God’s will. Lot’s wife “looking back”, and subsequently suffering death is a metaphor for the fact that we should not look back on our past, because God is with us in the present.
Akhmatova wants us to have sympathy on those who look back to the past. Akhmatova will "grieve for this girl [Lot's wife]," for not keeping the Lord's command. Although in the Biblical story, Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking back to Sodom, we can have hope today that this will not happen to us. Although we are called to be righteous, and to keep the Lord's commandments, if we make a mistake, we can be forgiven through the mercy and love that is in Christ Jesus!

Nahomi Shihab Nye's- The Traveling Onion

“The Traveling Onion,” is a poem written by Nahomi Shihab Nye which, on the surface, tells the tale of not only the onion that she cooks with, but also the life that all onions live. Now, others swear that the poem is talking about more than just an onion; however, my imagination has only stretched so far as to recognize the onion.

Nye was feeling very compassionate for the onion that she had used in stew the night that she wrote “The Traveling Onion”. That is, if she actually did make a stew that day, as she talks of in her poem.

She uses such words and phrases to describe the nature of the onion that I actually felt sorry for not having given the vegetable more credit earlier! It is clear that Nye feels that people do not give onions the glory that they deserve. At mealtime, she says, we comment on the “texture of meat or herbal aroma but never on the translucence of an onion” (Nye).

            Nye does well to get her point across that she will not downsize the beauty of an onion. She does not want them to be “something so small and forgotten” (Nye). Nye writes, “When I think how far the onion has traveled/ just to enter my stew today/ I could kneel and praise all small forgotten miracles.”

These small and forgotten miracles are so abundant that we often over look them; however, we could praise even the miracle of the onion plant sprouting from a seed. We could praise the plant bearing the onion for its own sake and ours. We could praise the safe and unharmed travel of the onion from its home to ours. Nye talks about the onion’s history when she writes, “the way knife enters onion and onion falls apart on the chopping block, a history revealed”. Onions are composed of “pearly layers in smooth agreement”. Their layers tell of the history of its growth.

Helen Oyoyemi's- The Icarus Girl

The Icarus Girl is a novel by Helen Oyoyemi, which tells the story of Jessamay Harrison, an imaginative, and inquisitive girl of only 8. Her mother is an author who left Nigeria in search of an English education in literature. While studying, she met Jessimay’s father who is from England. Jessimay’s parents are concerned because Jessimay does not play with the children in the neighborhood and struggles with emotional outbursts at school. Whether it is for this reason, or because Jess’s mother wants her to experience Nigeria and her family there, they leave England to go to Nigeria. It is in Nigeria that Jess’s feelings of friendlessness subside, as she and Tilly Tilly cleverly cross each other’s paths and become friends.

Since Jess is a very lonely person, Oyeyemi tries to reveal Jess’s experience of meeting a new friend for the first time. Oyeyemi articulates Jess’s emotions through figurative language. For example, Oyeyemi writes, “it was a peering through good and pretty colored glass, this gladness, this feeling that someone had been around the compound, knowing who she was and wanting to talk to her” (Oyeyemi 50). Oyeyemi’s figurative language makes Jess’s experience more concrete.

Her word choice is exciting because it makes one stop and reflect on the true beauty of colored glass, which can bring such gladness to a person. This metaphor conveys that Jess was feeling the emotions of joy and gladness. Jess felt these colorful emotions because she had never had a close friend before, especially one she really liked. Through Oyeyemi’s metaphor, the reader is able to paint a picture in his or her mind or feel the sensations that Jess was feeling “glad that she had been eager to be friends with somebody for once” (Oyeyemi 50). 

One of the blessings I think I so often forget to count in my life is the beauty and peace within the chapel of the college I attend. Beauty lies within the stained glass windows that escalate up the sides of the chapel. I try to make a point of walking through the chapel in the afternoon just to see the sunlight pouring through the colored glass, reflecting tiny spots of colored light along the shiny wooden pews. I would say that the feeling the colored glass brings me is similar to the joy that Jess feels when she and Tilly Tilly became friends.