This Milky Way of Souls

I have been reading The Road to Vatican II by Maureen Sullivan, OP, in two ways these past few weeks. Sister Maureen was one of my professors in college, and I’m glad I went ahead and bought this book, as it’s teaching me a great deal and introducing me to people and circumstances about which I had known nothing.

What do I mean by “in two ways”? When I first started in, I filled the edges of its pages with flags, so I could come back and copy down what I found interesting, important, and/or incriminating. Then, realizing that this is really a lousy way to work through a book, I went back to the beginning, with a pen in hand and a new journal open on the desk in front of me. So now, I continue reading the book where I left off, so I can get a basic understanding of the material, then go back to wherever I left off in my second go-round, reading slowly and carefully, underlining as I go and writing in the margins, before I turn to the journal to get down any important points and my thoughts about what I just read.

My new journal, a Paperblanks in a smaller size than I use for my reading journals, is turning out to be an interesting amalgamation of my thoughts and forays into this, that, and the other. I try to review it every day or two, because—while the act of writing, in and of itself is important—it seems silly to never look back at where I’ve been. A little while ago, I turned to what I jotted down on the 28^th of June, and found lines of poetry. First, there are these, from a poem titled “Broadway,” written by Herman Hagedorn, a name with which I am unfamiliar:

How like the stars are these white, nameless faces—
These for innumerable burning coals!
This pale procession out of the stellar spaces
This milky way of souls!
Each in its own bright nebulae enfurled,
Each face, dear God, a world!

Stars are everywhere for me now.

What does he mean by the line about the burning coals? Is he saying that all these faces are destined to suffer, either here on earth or in the afterlife? What’s that line from the Bible? Oh, yes, it’s from the Book of Proverbs, 25:22, where it says to give your enemy food if he is hungry, drink if he is thirsty, “For in so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” This is from the Old Testament, which tends to take an “eye for an eye” approach to enemies, so I find this swivel interesting. Is it a veering from the overriding message, though? It almost sounds like we’re being told to be good to our enemies just to spite them.

Well, since I don’t really know what to make of it, I’ll move on. The speaker is comparing human beings to the stars in the sky, and that reminds me of God’s message to Isaac (an iteration of the message God first spoke to Isaac’s father, Abraham) about his descendants being as numerous as the stars in the sky. “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Gn. 26:4).

The most important lines in this excerpt from “Broadway” are the last two: “Each in its own bright nebulae enfurled, / Each face, dear God, a world!” The speaker reminds us that we are talking about individuals, each one unique and unrepeatable, created in the image and likeness of God.

What about the second poem on the pages in my little book? They come from “The Star-Splitter” by Robert Frost, which happens to be a favorite poem for both my daughter Bridget and for me. It’s a relatively lengthy poem (99 lines), about an unsuccessful farmer who burns down his house for the insurance money so he can buy a telescope and then goes to work for the railroad, which gives him enough to live on and plenty of time for stargazing. His upright, Protestant-work-ethic-motivated neighbors don’t get it.

Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren’t the least imposed on,
And he could wait—we’d see him tomorrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.

That’s an awfully timely reminder from a poem written about 100 years ago.