Perhaps it is that calm before the storm or that sensation of water recessing back into the ocean in anticipation of a bigger wave building but yet to come, but the days before a new academic term always fills me with both expectation and a bit of dread. This is heightened this fall due to the fact that I was on sabbatical last term in Oxford and wondering how to keep a Sabbath mindset alive as the rush of the academic year crashes onto shore. I mused a bit about my thoughts of standing at the podium on my first day of class in a previous blog posting, but this experience of drumming my fingers on the desk, picking over my syllabi by tweaking bits and bobs in the text, and fingering the pages of the core texts for references I need to make sure to lift up during the term are all the signs and symptoms of deep thrill and panic all teachers face before the plunge of that first day.
One of the voices that continues to challenge and shape my understanding of Sabbath attentiveness is the poet Pablo Neruda. Recently I heard Sylvia Boorstein on Krista Tippit’s podcast On Being reading a Neruda poem entitled “Keeping Quiet” and was struck by how necessary it was to stop and ‘keep quiet’ midst all the energy, excitement, joy and dread that goes into these final hours before I meet my students. It is a good reminder on this Sabbath day and some wonderful words to sit and reflect upon.
“Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
Now we will count to twelve
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
—from Extravagaria (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st ed., 2001 translated by Alistair Reid, pp. 27-29)
