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COMMENTARY
July 6, 2005
Advice to the poor
Having passed through two heat waves, without air conditioning in an urban apartment with a western exposure, I am now convinced summer is here. We'll leave global warming for another day. It is the prospect of summer, that I would put before my reader -- and our arrival once again at that peculiarly Canadian moment after the parade of St. John Baptist, and whatever they now call the federal holiday; when the trumpets have been blown for our children graduating; and the events of another year (the skewed one that corresponds to that school year) are complete. The cottages have all been opened, those who own them now take them for their homes.The traditional church calendar, too, is clear of earth-shaking occasions: Easter and Pentecost have swung out of view, Advent is in the still-distant future. Such holy days as the Transfiguration, and Assumption, are floating islands in the expanse. The Sundays in the season of the Trinity become hard to tell apart, so that it seems as if God himself is taking a vacation. And on the farm, up here so high in the northern temperate, now that the sun has definitively arrived, the crops may be left to grow. Some are at play, and some are at work, but alike embarking on a ship voyage. The last hint of land sinks behind the horizon, and there is only open ocean ahead -- that kind of freedom. And above, "the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing and is nowhere and is endless.” In the cycle of our year, day is night, and summer corresponds to restorative sleep. We no longer hibernate in winter, the supermarkets are too well stocked. Midwinter has become the short pause, a shivering nap between fashion statements. Summer is the long pause, when everything is reset and resettled. More than one Canadian columnist has welcomed the departure of our politicians from Ottawa this year, suggesting they were overdue for a rest -- and if they never return, I won’t be waiting. Summer and sleep release your thoughts, you let go of trouble. It is good to have a season, even in the media, wherein nothing of significance is expected to happen. What happened has happened, it is now all behind us. By August, almost anything might appear in a newspaper, or on the box (Philip Larkin again: “Ears to transistors that seem tame enough / Under the sky”). Pity the editor reaching for a lead -- although the Internetters have begun to forget that there are seasons. I would myself fall into the summer trance; am trying to recover from the bitterness I feel over what was done in our House of Commons. Bitterness is not a policy, nor a principle, nor a way forward: one’s poise and balance should be restored. It is the old wisdom to suffer losses in retirement, and let time sweep over the wound. Don’t escort the big chariot; You will only make yourself dusty. Don’t think about the sorrows of the world; You will only make yourself wretched. That, from the Book of Songs, the one collected by Confucius, giving advice to those who fill their heads with affairs of State, and written long before the common people had any business doing so. The citizens of a democracy are all “at court”, and according to the theory, all of the time. But in summer we retire even from democracy. Rich and poor alike: and there is no good reason to be rich in summer. I have myself been reduced near to penury by events beyond the ken of the reader, but this is the least of the things I have lost. “Great riches are a great burden,” and in summer we may walk in sandals. Clothes we need only for modesty, food in this country is plentiful and cheap. The roads beckon in every direction, God has filled all the earth with beauty. To stand a moment, in the rain or the sun -- this is how we receive our birthright, which no man can take away. To be free, especially, of the burden of envy -- a weight people carry like their own gut -- is to begin to have everything. The less you seek to own, the more of the earth seems to belong to you. Then gradually unpack the burden of sin, cast it away on the shores of eternity, and be free even of the fear of death. This is the promise of age, which all religions have preached and shown, to deaf ears and sightless eyes. I wrote above that in summer, it is as if even God has taken a holiday, but of course, he never does. And in the dance of summer, his retreat beckons our advance. This is something the world does not understand, or pretends not to understand; but in summer we may hear and see for ourselves. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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