Absence
I am on a Billy Collins kick of late. I don’t usually choose from the same poet this often, but you’ll have to forgive me: it’s February. And my school is currently a mess. And I feel I’ve been pulled to one of those unexpected and, frankly, uninvited vocational and existential crossroads, where no doubt I will be doing next year the same thing with the same folks in the same place as this year but for whatever reason can’t see that far right now. And it’s February. Did I mention that?
In any event, all of this made me think of Billy’s “Absence,” where – as far as I can tell – finding a chess piece of the white night throws him into a similar unexpected musing on the absence of heroes. I mean, aren’t we all a little uncomfortable with the “salt shakers” who seem to be standing in for leaders at our various institutions both local and national? And don’t we long for someone to come back, walking their familiar walk, to advance heroically back onto our field of play.
But what if, I wonder, there are only salt shakers….
Not just now, but always. What then?
“Absence”
This morning as low clouds
skidded over the spires of the city
I found next to a bench
in the park an ivory chess piece –
the white knight as it turned out –
and in the pigeon-ruffling wind
I wondered where all the others were,
lined up somewhere
on their red and black squares,
many of them feeling uneasy
about the saltshaker
that was taking his place,
and all of them secretly longing
for the moment
when the white horse
would reappear out of nowhere
and advance toward the board
with his distinctive motion,
stepping forward, then sideways
before advancing again –
the same move I was making him do
over and over in the sunny field of my palm.
“Absence,” by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems
Sorry but ‘salt shakers’ is term I don’t have any experience with, can you unpack please.
I am an interim and wonder how this might relate to this ministry.
Thanks and love this poem.
I think Collins is referring to a salt shaker taking the place of the chess piece and David is taking the image one step farther. Think about the image this creates – our leaders are not the heroes we wish them to be.
Sorry for the late, reply, John.
Yes, Patty is right. Collins imagines a chess player, having lost the knight, using a salt shaker in its place. Sometimes we might feel like that – we want a heroic leader but all we have is salt shakers. And what I wondered, though perhaps not clearly enough, is whether we should realize a) that all we have ever had is salt shaker (ordinary people) and b) that’s enough. God will use us as God has used ordinary people in the past.
Thanks, both and all, for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks seems to also fit with this weeks lesson about a fig tree… strange fit and not sure where it will go….
Crucial for interim ministry is that the salt shaker not be empty and the congregation not have unrealistic expectations about the new “white knight” who is to arrive.
Why vainly look for heroic people better than we are, when we need to look to be better ourselves?
As for disappointing heroes, as an inspired preacher quoted from Nehemiah 8 on Fat Tuesday, “do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
for more Billy Collins, see this TEDtalk
http://www.ted.com/talks/billy_collins_everyday_moments_caught_in_time.html
What if Jesus is the white knight and we are the salt shaker(s) doing what he gave us to do until he comes again? Just a thought. Love the poem.
I love it, and I love the interplay that was going on in my mind. Who is the white knight? Are we the chess pieces? Are we the salt shaker?
All those questions rattled through my head- and then I stopped and thought, would Freud have pondered- what if a salt shaker is just a salt shaker?
And I enjoyed this poem so much more after that, because maybe, just maybe, for each of us, the salt shaker, the white knight, and the chessboard are all something a little different. Thanks, DJL!