Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Charlie Bickford
Connection
Keeping Quiet
By Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.– Book of Common Prayer p. 815
What I want to say to you, E. M. Forster wrote in two words, Only Connect.
Fifty-five years ago when I was studying in London, I spent many weekends and vacations in Amsterdam with a Dutch family. I enjoyed taking a break from England and spending time with their youngest son, Frans. When I married, I asked Frans to be my best man. He agreed. However, since my wife was German and his parents had suffered grievously during the war, he could not come. When I left England, we communicated for some years, but eventually lost touch.
Over the years, when I traveled through Amsterdam, I tried to track down the family, but failed. Now however, in the midst of this pestilence, I had time, space, and quiet to try again. I succeeded. I wrote and Frans replied that it was an odd coincidence. The week before he had cleaned out a desk and found my letters from that time. These odd coincidences abound, but are seldom noticed. When I was in Thailand years ago, I felt a strong need to call a friend in Maine. When I reached the number, her daughter answered that her mother was dying, “she is sending out her spirit.”
During this pandemic as I picked up the phone to call someone, time and time again, that person responded “How strange I was just ready to call you,” or “You were the next person I wanted to talk with.” How often I was thinking of someone, and then we reconnected.
Now that there are fewer distractions—fewer cars, planes, public events—we have the solitude to hear the unspoken palpitations which always hover around us. We can listen to our hearts and hear other hearts beating. So too does God always call out to us, to reach for us.
Perhaps our present confinement allows us new freedom and access to another world. Could it be that all we need do, as Pablo Neruda suggests, count to twelve and Only Connect.