Looking at 2020 Through the Eyes of T.S Eliot’s Poetry
A reflection on how churches handled a time of crisis
I originally wrote this in March 2020. Given some recent rumblings in this crazy world, I decided to update and share it in hopes that we won’t forget what it felt like to see the church doors barred against us and a barricade (six feet in diameter, of course) erected around the Sacraments.
In his poem “The Hollow Men” T.S Eliot wrote that,
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw
Eliot was referencing modern man, who projects an image of self-sufficiency and happiness, but is actually starved for a reality that gives purpose to both his body and his soul. Shortly after writing this poem, Eliot was baptized into the Anglo-Catholic church and believed that Western Civilization’s only hope for redemption was in embracing a sacramental way of living oriented around Christ.
One commentator writes “two different types of `hollow/stuffed men´ are presented: he who lacks a soul . . . and he who lacks a real body . . . representing both physical and spiritual emptiness.” Eliot understood that Christianity was the solution to modernity’s sense of separation between physical and spiritual reality. No matter how weak and hollow we are as individuals, the church is where we find,
The dripping blood our only drink
The bloody flesh our only food (East Coker 4.167–168)
Like Eliot, my former church follows the Anglican tradition and emphasizes the importance of corporeal worship. My church believed that modern Christianity’s individualized “just me and Jesus” faith fails to embrace the fulness of God’s plan for His Church. Our pastor preached “incarnational ministry” and taught that, although our world is increasingly virtual, we should never forget the importance of living out our faith in our bodies in a physical community. We too often forget the power of physical acts and ritual. We forget that what we do with our bodies affects our spirits. The church is where we find what Eliot called, “sound, substantial flesh and blood” (East Coker 4.170). As the rest of the world encourages us to embrace convenience over meaning and self-satisfaction over self-sacrifice, my church was the foundation on which we stood to face and transform our daily lives.
But then someone coughed, and my church came crashing down.
Although Ohio’s government deliberately excluded churches from shut-down orders, my church decided that the CDC’s word was infallible and moved all services to online video call. We formerly shared a Common Cup for Communion. We always assured those concerned about germs that we observed basic sanitation processes, but that we also trusted that the nature of the sacraments is such that God’s power works in and through His Body — Communion and the Church.
But then a virus came, and I learned that there are limits to sacraments.
We saw our fellow church members only through a screen. Pre-packaged Communion wafers at our kitchen table replaced the Eucharist on our knees. The Body had become scared of its own physicality.
It is like this . . .
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone
On Sunday mornings parishioners now worshipped alone. As we curled up on the couches in our living rooms, our lips formed prayers to iPad screens. Our connection to the Body, which a few months ago our pastor had told us was the most important part of our lives, had become dis-embodied in the virtual world.
For Thine is the Kingdom
Eliot intersperses this verse between the poem’s last few stanzas. Jesus told us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Election procedures changed, the DMV closed, but corporate worship doesn’t belong to Caesar, it belongs to God. Caesar has no power here. I thought that my church was where hollow men were filled, but when the CDC began to blow, all I saw was straw scattered by the wind.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
My former church barely let out a whimper. There was no pitched legal battle between the church and state. The state hadn’t even made an official order. There was no fiery furnace, no threat of prison. When the CDC issued a warning and some guidelines, my church decided that “incarnational ministry” could just as easily take place over email and video. Christ’s Body and Blood were not as essential as protecting our bodies from the virus.
If this is how the church defends its beliefs when the CDC makes a suggestion, how will it respond when the Emperor gives a command?
Read the full poems:
