T.S. Eliot again

T.S. Eliot came alive for me last night.

Why?

Because I heard Eliot himself reading aloud from "The Wasteland" on "A Map of British Poetry" on BBC Radio 4.

It was so completely different to be listening rather than reading, and it helped to know that this was the author's own rendition and thus what he heard in his mind as he wrote it. It sounded like a conversation you might hear in a pub on a Saturday night - nothing special - no doubt there were millions just like it last night.

I suddenly understood that part of what the poem is about is glorying in the everyday conversations we hear around us. If we stop long enough to notice, even the most mundane things become beautiful. How amazing that we can communicate our thoughts with one another and how intriguing to wonder what might be behind the offhand comments we overhear! I have to remind myself of this often so that I don't slide through my days, merely skimming the surface of all that I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. God has given us all this physical particularity (indeed, God became a particular physical human being); may God help me to notice it more often.