Friday, January 5 - Being Caught

Malcolm Guite's book Waiting on the Word features a poem by Luci Shaw called "Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany."  It begins by setting us in a railroad car, seeing mountainous views:

The steel rails parallel the river as we penetrate
ranges of pleated slopes and crests - all too complicated
for capture in a net of words.  in this showing, the train window

Shaw expresses a sense of epiphany over these events and observations, hoping for "each sweep of view" will flash:

and flash again its unrepeatable views.  Inches.  Angles.
Niches.  Two eagles.  A black crow.  Skeletal twigs' notched
chalices for snow.  Reaches of peak above peak beyond peak

Finally, after metaphorically (and sacramentally) suggesting a worship service - the sun burning "silver birches" into "brass candles" - Shaw reflects on epiphany again.  She "mind-freezes for the future:"

this day's worth of disclosure.  Through the glass
the epiphanies reel me in, absorbed, enlightened. (Guite, Waiting on the Word, 147)

Guite reflects on the way Shaw begins and ends the poem by holding the idea of 'capture' before us.  At the beginning, she can't "capture" the images in a net.  At the end, she herself is 'reeled in', caught in the net:

"There is a final and beautiful turn at the end of this poem.  It is customary to speak of the flashing and moving images that go past a train or car window as something that we 'reel in', or pictures that are reeled into us.  But this is Epiphany, and what we see in Epiphany is always greater than what we are.  Luci Shaw's last line reverses the flow.  We do not reel in the epiphanies; they pull us out into themselves.  There is perhaps some long reach between the image of the net at the opening of the poem and that of the reel at its close.  It begins with a confession that we cannot do the catching - our 'net of words' will never be adequate for the reality that slips through them - but it ends with a confession that we ourselves are caught, and glad to be caught, to be reeled in to a reality beyond us." (Guite, 150)

Guite concludes his reflection suggestively by alluding to the passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells the disciples that he will teach them to fish for people.  The disciples thought they were choosing him, and though in a sense they really were, what Jesus says suggests that he had also chosen them. "You didn't choose me, but I chose you." (John 15:16)  We come to Jesus often as Nathaniel does early in the Gospel of John, anticipating something less than excitement, trying not to get our hopes up too much, and not having much great expectation of what we'll find.  Then, when he meets Jesus, he finds that Jesus had already met him in what he thought was a private moment alone with God.  Nathaniel immediately confesses that Jesus is King.  Jesus had already found him.  Jesus had already loved him.  Like Nathaniel, and like Coleridge in Thursday's post, we go off trying to catch an epiphany.  Then, like Luci Shaw, like Malcolm Guite, and yes, like Nathaniel, we realize that, instead, we've been caught in one.