T.S. Eliot

Tonight was the final meeting of my summer book club, and it didn't disappoint. Neither did the words of T.S. Eliot, whose Four Quartets we discussed. I sometimes forget how much I miss discussion of great books and ideas until I am doing it and can't imagine how I did without before. Nevertheless, tonight was harmonious. We discussed everything from Shakespeare to Anglo-Catholicism to Terrence Malick and film, and everything in-between.

However, it seems strange to be commenting on something just as or after it has happened (a subject we discussed tonight), and so I am going to end this post here with a section from the Four Quartets, though it also seems a crime only to read a section.

IV 

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error,
The only home, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.

~T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding