In his essay, “In Topsy-Turvy Land," G.K Chesterton describes what he sees as he walks around in a particular metaphor (and, if you ask me, metaphors are always meant to be walked around in). Chesterton writes, “I took the tumbling of trees and the secret energy of the wind as typical of the visible world moving under the violence of the invisible.” He asks “That man that talks to me, what is he but an articulate tree? That driver of a van who waves his hands wildly at me to tell me to get out of the way, what is he but a bunch of branches stirred and swayed by a spiritual wind, a sylvan object that I can continue to contemplate with calm?” This metaphor haunts him and I’ve found it haunting me too recently. In my Greek class this semester, we translated the portion of Mark where Jesus heals a blind man. When asked what he sees, the blind man responds “I see people. They look like trees walking around.” And then Jesus heals him fully of his blindness. I couldn’t shake the metaphor all semester. It was always in the back of my vision, along with my professor’s question: why is this intermediate stage of seeing necessary? After reading Psalm 1 recently, which compares those who delight in the law of the Lord to “a tree planted by streams of water,” I had had enough of merely thinking and decided I needed poetry. So I wrote this poem:
“To see darkness as photons waiting for sight
And light as atoms now converted right.
If light and love are particles we breathe
Then man, like trees, convert ones into threes,
Can stand in soil and yet, reveal as royal
The hidden depths dim logic tries to spoil
For trees are men and men are trees--
Something only a blind man sees.
Conversion requires action-- lame roots must walk.
Inversion requires fraction-- strained stalks must knock
On the water’s edge, the kingdom’s ledge,
Only here must man dredge his roots.
The blind man from Bethsaida saw in men
The growth of leaves instead of tendon,
The beating hearts of trees with roots for knees,
And shoots for keys to find new worlds with ease.”
Chesterton writes, “Gradually this impression of the woods wears off. But this black-and-white contrast between the visible and the invisible, this deep sense that the one essential belief is belief in the invisible as against the visible, is suddenly and sensationally brought back to my mind.” I can’t help but link this to his Christmas poem titled “The Wise Men,” in which he writes:
“We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,”
In his essay, “In Topsy-Turvy Land,” he writes that the people of his age have a tendency to “believe that the material circumstances, however black and twisted, are more important than the spiritual realities, however powerful and pure.” We have the tendency to lose the wood among the trees. We get caught up in the individual particulars of our material circumstance, the trees, and take them to be more important than our very spiritual essence, the wood. When this line of his poem is linked to his essay (the meaning is apt to change when informed by something else), I don’t think that he is using the term “wood” to refer to the collective identity of a pack of trees forming a wood (then he would be asserting that we have the misled tendency to favor our collective identity over our individual, which I do not think is his point), but rather I think he means “wood” in the sense of essence-- a tree is made of wood. Thus, in saying that we have too often lost “the wood among the trees,” I think Chesterton is urging that we too often disregard our essence, disregard what we are truly made of-- our spiritual identity, and in turn place too much emphasis on our material circumstance. In the framework of my poem, trees and men both have purpose: “If light and love are particles we breathe/ Then man, like trees, convert ones into threes.” Not in a strictly scientific sense, but in my semi-scientific-informed-poetic-dreaming, trees convert darkness to light, emanate air, and men convert darkness to light in a different sort of way; they emanate love and not just emanate but multiply (“convert ones into threes”). I like to think of light and love as akin to the wind in Chesterton’s image-- invisible but always at work, like the spiritual realm, cloaked in mystery, hidden and holy. Even light itself, which usually reveals things to our vision, can also hide things from our vision. Light can be so bright that it blinds us.
In his poem, “The Wise Men,” Chesterton continues:
“We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.
The Child that was ere worlds begun
(... We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone...)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.”
It may be interpreted that the “trick of words” is keeping us from seeing what is “too large for sight” and speaking what is “too plain.” The “trick of words” is clearly related to the “tortured puzzles” and “labyrinthine lore” which he spoke of earlier in his poem:
“Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.”
Indeed, it is by these tortured puzzles and tricks of words that we lose the wood among the trees. It may be that Chesterton is showing how all these things are keeping us from the “simple road,” which leads us to Christ. But I think there’s something more here. I don’t think Chesterton is saying that these are the only things keeping us from seeing what is “too large for sight” and saying what is “too plain to say.” Regardless of our tortured puzzles, indeed even if we disregard them to walk on the “simple road,” furthermore, even if we hold fast to the wood among the trees, something will still be too large for sight and too plain to say. Mystery will be with us this side of heaven. Elusive and holy, it will always be one step ahead of us, just beyond our
grasp and just out of sight. For “[w]e are little children
walking through the snow and rain.”
And this is why Chesterton entreats us to “go humbly.” All of those “tricks of words” and “tortured puzzles” are rooted in pride; they have no place in the hearts of those walking on the “simple road.” Bending words from truths into tricks requires that we take matters into our own hands and always results in an exaltation of our own expertise.
“Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed...
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.”
My own speech is always meant to be kept lower and softer than my seekings to understand what I do not know. If we are seeking, our lanterns must be lit and our own words quieted. Humility and seeking go hand in hand. So this “simple road” is the road which will lead the wise men and us to Christ, but then one must also wonder why Chesterton speaks of that “old and strange house that is our own” while he is in the middle of describing the birth of Christ. “We need but walk a little way,/ We need but see a latch undone…” Not only will this “simple road” lead us to Christ, but it will lead us home. There is a latch undone. Home is expecting us. And we get there by walking humbly with voices low and lanterns lit, just as the wise men found Jesus. But then we have to ask, what does Jesus have to do with this old and strange house? I think perhaps Chesterton is telling us that Jesus is the latch and he has undone himself so that we may come home.
(Photo credits go to my friend, Madison Hablas :)