Kingston University London

Reflection for Eastertide
In a little known work, The Buried Life by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold, there come the author speaks of...
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
This seems to be a good picture of the journey of faith we embark on, a pilgrimage of the heart, which beckons us to track our true and original course.
There is a sense here of seeking to discover what is already there, an unfolding of a strand of reality that has always been there but, for a myriad of reasons, we find difficult to attend to. The poet describes it as an uncovering of the ‘mystery of this heart which beats so wild, so deep.’
Perhaps this points to an important point about faith. Is it less a process of accumulating (knowledge, insight, wisdom, virtue etc) and more a process of giving away (those things that prevent us from knowing the truth about ourselves). Religion derives from the ancient phrase re-ligare, meaning to connect with again, or to bind back to (ligare shares its etymology with ligament, ligation, liable, all of which mean to bind). Being bound to our true course is a way of understanding this.
The poem The Buried Life, cited above, continues
Only – but this is rare –
... there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.
Those rare moments when an unexpected calm descends upon us and that ‘elusive shadow, rest’ is experienced (how elusive it seems in this frenetic and anxiety-ridden age) hint at the object of faith.
In the Christian faith, Eastertide is a time when the newness of life, or perhaps the new discovery of life that is eternal in nature, is celebrated. This, Christians believe, is the sea where we all go, the prospect available for all people, not just those in a holy huddle in the churches. It is a good time of the year for all of us to discover afresh the lulls in this ‘hot race’ and attend to the ‘hills where our life rose and the sea where it goes.’