The Mount of Olives

From time to time, the New Testament locates Jesus and his disciples in the Mount of Olives. For instance, Luke 21:37 says: "And in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives." When we were in Greece and Turkey a couple of years ago, we noticed olive trees thriving everywhere. A little research tells me that they need a Mediterranean climate: hot dry summers and cool wet winters. To me, they offer a sense of timelessness, stability and peace.

Image by Chikilino, from Pixabay

Writing in the January 1926 issue of The Christian Science Journal, Allan Carson writes (The Mount of Olives) that "as night spreads her veil of silence over [Jerusalem's] activities, we catch another view of [Jesus], as he moves quietly away from the throng to the mount of Olives, there, through the still hours of the night, to commune more closely with God and gain inspiration, understanding, strength, and guidance for the work of the following day. We love to follow him in thought, as he slips unnoticed through the gate of the city wall, down over the brook Cedron, up through the quiet garden of Gethsemane, .... and on to the mount."

The Bible Atlas: a pictorial guide to the Holy Lands (written by Dr. Stephen Motyer, illustrated by Brian Delf, published by Penguin Random House 2001/2025) explains that the Mount of Olives is "just to the east of Jerusalem" and from there anyone travelling from Jericho would have had "a wonderful view" of that city. The double page spread on pages 56-57 of the Atlas describes Jesus' betrayal, death and resurrection in five clear and concise paragraphs, each accompanied by beautiful sketches, and a lovely map of the walled city of Jerusalem.

I especially like the sketch of Jesus and his disciples sitting down on the ground to celebrate Passover - when "Jewish families gathered to remember the night when the Israelites left Egypt for the Promised Land", and also the sketch of Judas' betrayal. The commentary explains that when Judas kissed Jesus, it was a signal to the menacing crowd - who were armed with swords and burning torches - that this was the moment they would arrest Jesus.

Julie Swannell

Doris Peel on angels and Ishmael

I have enjoyed reading the poetry that was selected over the past month and was particularly helped by the final post referring to a piece by Todd Nelson in the Christian Science Monitor of May 18. It reminded me that I am often as nourished by enlightened responses to poetry as I am by the poetry itself. So Thank You, Todd, for amplifying my enjoyment of e.e. cummings’ delightful poem, written with such a special feel for childhood’s adventures and wonders.

Though I am a few days late, I would like to add my contribution.

There is a little treasure of a book called Doris Peel, Selected Poems 1955 - 1975 which I happened upon in my bookcase a day or two ago. The frontispiece to this book is like a light which illuminates my appreciation of Doris’s poems. It reads in part:

 

These poems are deceptively simple. What may seem at first glance to be fragmentary, slight, casual, dipping and wheeling like the flight of a gull, reveals in the context of its fellow poems a remarkable centrality of vision,  a structure of relatedness that is both movement and rest, pattern and unpredictability.

 

Doris Peel’s work brings to mind T. S. Eliot’s definition of wit in metaphysical poetry as “a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyrical grace.” The subsurface tension in this case is between a quick-witted woman and a wide-eyed child - that child who, in New Testament terms, can alone receive the kingdom of heaven.

 

Here is an extract from an early poem.

 

I AM EASILY PERSUADED

                  by the arrival of angels.

The feel of them: the sense of a melodious murmuring

in the air, and the faint stirring

of wings that will shelter me

if I am good.

                 I am much comforted

                             by the intimation of an authority

that has nothing to do with the discipline of nannies.

Angels never scold. Or rap over the knuckles

somebody who has stumbled. Being, themselves, shaped purely

from light, they are all lightness in performance and presence:

with song, not sermon, their special province

                  and laughter (I suspect) more native

to their nature than common--or even uncommon--speech. Not

that they resemble, for a split second, those sanguine earthlings

with their tedious insistence on Sunny-Side-Up. Angels

aren't optimists....

Oh, it is altogether otherwise with angels.

...

                     In what tongue tell

of a murmuring, a stirring, and that sudden incandescent elation

in the air? Or of how, long after the visitants have withdrawn

and room or street appears usual again,

            there is a lingering of intimations

all about, and even the lilt - faint - faint - not yet quite gone -

 

of law caught as laughter:

of power as song.

 

And another excerpt, this time from a poem called

 

WHEN WILL THE FORGIVING OF IT COME TO PASS?

 

Palestinian Village: Occupied Territory

 

This gone-from place,

these windows gaping in a golden glare

of pitiless sun,

      once knew (however poor it was)

life going on.

Once brimmed with breath.

Once throbbed aloud with those

 

who held it, passionately - Ishmael deep -

to be their home.

 

 Marie Fox

Antidote to dullness

 I was reading the May 18 2026 print issue of The Christian Science Monitor. Pages 40-41 feature a poem by e.e. cummings (1894-1962) and an essay by Todd R. Nelson. 

The poem is just wonderful. Here it is:

in Just-

spring     when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles     far      and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's 

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far     and     wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump rope and

it's

spring

and

    the

      goat-footed

balloonMan     whistles

far

and wee

In the accompanying essay, Todd Nelson describes his first encounter with this poem in the seventh grade. He writes: "I look back on that poem as a starting line. I heard the call to poetry... I began to understand that a poet is describing the world, experience, or concepts in a way that antidotes dullness, commonness, and indifference; that stretches the possibilities of language; that sings and beckons. A poem is a discrete vessel of clarity and understanding."

Have a puddle-wonderful day!

Julie Swannell