REACHABLE FROM HERE
A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich
All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City
March 1, 2015
The current artist in residence at the 77th Street station of the 6 train is a middleaged white man with an electric guitar and a fondness for Pink Floyd. I’ve seen him
perhaps a dozen times over the past number of weeks, usually during the middle of the
day as I’m on my way to or from appointments elsewhere in the city. With only a couple
of exceptions, the song he’s been playing as I’ve passed through his concrete concert hall
has been the Pink Floyd anthem “Comfortably Numb.”
Especially during a month that was the coldest February in 80 years and the
second coldest in 130 years, “Comfortably Numb” seems the right song to be singing,
except for the “comfortably” part. Mostly, we’ve just been numb. It’s been so cold that
even the “it’s so cold” jokes have died of hypothermia.
The first time I heard the 77th Street troubadour play “Comfortably Numb,”
however, was back during the balmy days of mid-December. For weeks, I had been
hearing nothing but Christmas carols everywhere I went. I heard “Silent Night” in the
bank and “Joy to the World” in the drugstore. Set in this context, I heard “Comfortably
Numb” as a protest against the commercialized cacophony of Christmas.
No matter the context, the song reminds me that there are experiences to which
all of us would like to feel pleasantly indifferent or, as Pink Floyd puts it, comfortably
numb. This is especially true with experiences of pain. Sometimes the pain is physical,
but more often it is emotional, or social, or professional, or even political. In order to
survive and even flourish as individuals, we sometimes numb ourselves to the pain
within us and around us.
After all, none of us can comprehensively engage, every minute of every day, the
full emotional pain of an addiction, or the betrayal of a spouse, or the death of a child, or
the sabotage of a friend. None of us can fully engage how we as individuals have failed
those who count on us. None of us can fully engage how we as a nation have sanctioned
privileges based on gender identity, and race, and sexual preference that add up to
institutionalized violence against people who aren’t male, and white, and straight. None
of us can fully engage the brutality of Boko Haram, the viciousness of ISIS, the cynical
duplicity of the Saudis, or the moral depravity of the weapons dealers and arms traders
who profit by keeping the world dangerous.
When the pain in our lives and our world becomes pervasive and persistent, who
doesn’t want to become numb to it, even comfortably numb? Comfort is a good thing,
and if we must numb ourselves in order to be comfortable, so be it.
~1~
© 2015 Galen Guengerich
The problem, of course, is that when we are numb to something we are mostly
dead to it. The word “numb” derives from an old English term meaning “taken” or
seized,” and it applies when all feeling has been taken from someone. To be numb is not
to feel anything.
We experience this condition as comfortable only because the pain has stopped,
not because anything good is happening. Unless we become completely and thoroughly
numb, which is to say dead, we eventually want to experience something other than
numbness. We want to feel something other than the absence of pain.
To do so, however, requires us to grapple with whatever caused the pain in the
first place. And whether the cause is our own personal failure or loss, or the moral
depravity of others, or political malfeasance in high places, it’s hard to find a way over or
around the problem – or even through it. We might as well be marooned on a desert
island with the answer in some far distant country. There seems no way to get there
from here.
On Thursday of this past week, Poetry Ireland Review published a special issue
celebrating the life and poetry of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel prize-winning Northern
Irish poet who died about a year and a half ago. Heaney was, in the words of Vona
Groarke, editor of Poetry Ireland Review, “our best poet, by a country mile.” For this
special issue, she approached 50 poets, asking them to choose their favorite Heaney
poem and write about what it is they take away from the text.
While I am neither Irish nor a poet, I do have a favorite Heaney poem, and I’d
like to tell you what I take away from its text. The poem is titled “The Cure at Troy,” and
it’s based on a play titled Philoctetes, by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. I
studied the play many years ago as part of my classics education in college, and it has
stayed with me ever since. It’s about the interplay of pain and possibility.
In the play, Sophocles tells the story of a soldier named Philoctetes, who was on
his way to join the Greeks in their fight against the Trojans when he suffered a terrible
accident. He wandered by mistake onto a sacred shrine, and a serpent guarding the
shrine bit his foot. Philoctetes’ foot became infected, and he began to cry out in pain. In
response, his fellow soldiers abandoned him on a deserted island with nothing but his
bow and arrows.
For ten years, the Greeks battled the Trojans in Troy, while Philoctetes hobbled
around his island in pain, near starvation. Finally, a messenger from the gods told the
Greeks that they couldn’t win the war without Philoctetes, who carried the famous bow
and arrows of Hercules. Hearing this news, the Greek champion Odysseus went with
several companions to bring Philoctetes and his weapons back to Troy.
Sick and exhausted, Philoctetes was delighted to see his visitors. Philoctetes
asked them to have compassion for him and help him, seeing the trouble life had
brought him, troubles from which no human is safe. For his part, Odysseus planned to
trick Philoctetes by saying they were going home, and then he would take him to Troy.
~2~
© 2015 Galen Guengerich
One of Odysseus’ companions, a young soldier, found himself moved by
Philoctetes’ pain. The soldier realized Philoctetes’ troubles could have easily beset him
instead, and similar ruin could strike him at any moment. Sobered by this realization, he
told Philoctetes the truth. Eventually, the young soldier’s compassion and honesty made
Philoctetes willing to go to Troy, where his weapons ultimately enabled the Greeks to
defeat the Trojans.
Seamus Heaney recounts a version of this tale in his poem “The Cure at Troy.” In
one key passage, Heaney writes:
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured…
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
Given the pain that persists through time, Heaney observes, history says we
shouldn’t hope for anything different on this side of the grave. The best we can do is to
comfort ourselves with poems and songs, even as we are tempted to exact revenge, the
self-defeating Trojan horse of justice. But once in a while, Heaney writes, hope and
~3~
© 2015 Galen Guengerich
history will rhyme: the great sea-change for which we long will, like a tidal wave, carry
us from the land of pain to the land of promise. Our role, Heaney insists, is to believe:
“believe that further shore is reachable from here.”
I don’t know what pain you feel most persistently today. It may be a destructive
habit, or a demoralizing failure, or a debilitating loss. It may be the cynicism of our
politics, or the ruthlessness of our economics, or the narcissism of our foreign policy. It
may be seeing people each day, whether delivering takeout in your building or
languishing in a refugee camp across the seas, whom you know will almost certainly be
left behind. You see pain in their faces, and you feel pain in your heart. As you close the
door or switch off the television, you’re tempted to let the feeling go numb, so you can be
comfortable again.
Instead, Heaney says, you have to continue to believe. Believe that further shore
where hope and history rhyme is reachable from here. It’s reachable from here.
Pink Floyd’s song “Comfortably Numb” appears on an album titled The Wall,
which is the third best-selling album of all time in the US. It tells the story of a fictional
protagonist named Pink, who endures repeated losses and increasing isolation. Pink
suffers from a domineering mother, an absent father, a dysfunctional educational
system (hence the song “We Don’t Need No Education”), a manipulative government,
and destructive personal and professional relationships, among other insults. Each
becomes another brick in the wall of his isolation. Pink also becomes an addict, hence
the song “Comfortably Numb.”
In the end, however, Pink tries to fight back against the wall his pain continues to
erect. “Stop!” he says. As a result of this defiant act, Pink is put on trial. The prosecutor
says to the judge, “The prisoner who now stands before you was caught red-handed
showing feelings — showing feelings of an almost human nature. This will not do.”
After hearing the evidence, the judge says, “The evidence before the court is
incontrovertible; there is no need for the jury to retire. In all my years of judging I have
never heard before of someone more deserving of the full penalty of law.”
The judge then turns to Pink and says, “Since, my friend you have revealed your
deepest fear, I sentence you to be exposed before your peers. Tear down the wall!”
Pink ends up being saved not by remaining numb to his feelings, but by
expressing them — by revealing his deepest fear. His sentence turns out to be his
liberation: the wall of emotional isolation and numbness that separates him from the
experiences that matter most gets torn down.
No matter how far the land of promise lies from the shores of your present pain,
Seamus Heaney says, “believe that further shore is reachable from here.” He continues:
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
~4~
© 2015 Galen Guengerich
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
The miracle, Heaney insists, is that human beings have the capacity to feel both
the depth of life’s pain and the extent of its promise. This double-take of feeling, which
reveals both ourselves as we are and our world as it could become, enacts the miracle:
the ability to believe that further shore is reachable from here.
When that happens, Heaney goes on to say, the result can be astounding – so
astounding that it’s easy to think God has shown up to speak or to act. Instead, a
different miracle has occurred: “someone is hearing the outcry and the birth-cry of new
life at its term.”
Whatever further shore you seek, it’s reachable from here. You begin by
acknowledging your own pain and the pain of people and the world around you. You
begin by tearing down the wall. Shift your focus from what’s painful to what’s possible.
Then miracles will start to happen. Hope and history will have a chance to rhyme.
You’ll hear the birth-cry of new life — your life. And you’ll set sail for that further shore,
now reachable from here.
~5~
© 2015 Galen Guengerich