“…I Forget The Mystery”

“Primary Wonder” by Denise Levertov

Via: Richard Beck

Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; cap and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it.

Attention is a precious gift of perception. Its castle door always under siege. Sometimes problems and distractions wear colored clothes and clown hats. Other times they follow us around in a cloud of frantic toil. The attention-robbed frenzy prizes pride and cynicism toward emotion like sadness, fear, and joy.

In this bit of the penultimate chapter of Jane Eyre, Rochester explains to Jane his conversion toward humility and surrender, on the night when he broke the stiff air with prayer and the repeated name of his beloved. Consequently, this path leads him back to Jane. In the end, he highlights the “singular mood” that replaced his frenzy and sullenness.

Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower — breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane — only — only of late — I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

“Some days since: nay, I can number them — four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy — sorrow, sullenness.