To Paraphrase …
“The movement of the universe is toward symmetry
according to Archibald MacLeish,
and that according to his physicist friend––
very young, and very brilliant––
who offers mathematical reasons
MacLeish does not understand.”
From a conversation with Archibald MacLeish and Bill Moyers, March 7, 1976
What he did understand was love.
While there is nothing in symmetry to which one would turn
with a broken heart
(“You don’t weep on the bosom of symmetry,” he said.)
the real vocabulary, it seems to me, in which one
can catch the nature … of the spirit, the entity
that has to do with our lives and their meaning,
that perhaps knows the meaning of our lives,
is very much closer to ourselves through the channel,
the medium of love.
And to me the fundamental truth of Jesus
is that he does move love into the center
of human experience. Love is the answer
to the mystery of the Universe––a bit more childish
than I want to be and yet, there is something there.
There is something there.
