Sacred Verses: Prologue ('When We Were Young') and Part One (The Journey Begins)

By Gene Jackson

This is the first of four volumes of "Sacred Verses". The entire work is an approximate modern adaptation of Dante's "Divine Comedy". In this volume a young man suffers a great loss in his life and in addition, the loss of innocence and certitude that is characteristic of youth. This leads him to seek meaning in the world and in his life by an exploration of the nature of the physical world. In the following volumes he will travel through the philosophy of the centuries, and then the entire history of the spiritual world. In each of these journeys he will have a mentor (for Dante these were Virgil and Beatrice). In this volume the mentor is Stephen Hawking, a pre-eminent modern physicist.

In future volumes the young man ages as he seeks (and eventually finds) a resolution of his quest. This is the first, and being concerned with the physical world (without spiritual values) may be considered equivalent to the Inferno of Dante.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462001293

Gene Jackson

Gene Jackson is the author of “Reflections Along the Way,” which appeared weekly in two Alabama newspapers; Good Times, Bad Times, Ugly Times: That’s Life!; The Pew Warmers: Thorns Among the Wheat; The Arrangement; and is the founder of the Rocky Mount (NC) Writers’ Guild. He has a varied vocational background in the fields of education, agriculture, private enterprise, the Christian ministry, and served in the military during World War II and Korea. A graduate of California Baptist University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, he has served churches in Florida, Alabama, Washington state, California, and North Carolina.

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Copyright © 2011 by GENE JACKSON

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-0128-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-0129-3 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 4/12/2011

Contents

Author’s Note

PROLOGUE

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

THE MAN WHO COUNTED NUMBERS

THE ANCIENT ENGINEER

THE MAN WHO LOOKED AT THE STARS

THE MAN WHO MADE THE EARTH MOVE

A MIND UNEQUALED AND INFINITE

THE KINDLY UNCLE

ENLIGHTENMENT AND UNDERSTANDING

To Chris:

"…for he was like, had he been tried,

to have proved most royal."

and, To David,

the Spartan.

Author’s Note

The Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheiri was written in a strict rhyme scheme of Terza Rima. This is feasible in Italian, but is not possible in English. Therefore all of these verses are written in the form of sonnets. By far, the majority are Italian (or Petrarchian), but each chapter ends in one or more Shakespearean sonnets. As far as I am aware this represents the longest sonnet sequence in English literature. The verses are titled as Sacred, not in the sense of Holy or Devout, but following the classical meaning of relating to the spiritual or intellectual universe, instead of the body and the physical world, which would be Profane.

"Only to gods in heaven

Comes no old age or death of anything.

All else is turmoiled by our master, Time.

Earth’s glory fades,

And mankind’s strength will go away;

Faith dies, and Unfaith blossoms like a flower.

And who can find, in the open streets of men

Or secret places of his own heart’s love

One wind blow true forever?"

Sophocles

Oedipus at Colonnae

"But soon we too shall die,

And all memory of those we loved will have left the earth,

And we ourselves shall be loved for a while and then forgotten.

But the love will have been enough;

All those impulses of love return to the love that made them.

Even memory is not necessary for love;

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead,

And the bridge is love,

The only survival,

The only meaning."

T. Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

PROLOGUE

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

When we were young and time was like eternity,

And I believed, as you once used to do,

That to remain both virtuous and true

Was destiny that God reserved for me;

Then I assumed that I would always be

The person that for years I thought I knew,

And that my friends would stay and hold onto

Their membership in our fraternity.

But at the midpoint of my life I found

That I had lost the straight and easy path

That I had followed somewhat thoughtlessly;

When I discovered what in life was sound,

My new awareness and its aftermath

Revealed my former instability.

Now come and sit with me, and I will tell

Of my own journey to enlightenment,

Of fall and rise, of stumbles and ascent,

A pathway that would first descend to hell,

And then, by way of wisdom would dispel

The errant trail of thought, the negligent

Conclusion that prevents the subsequent

Ascension to the holy citadel;

And I would find some stations on the way,

Positions that were halfway in between

Where I could rest and weigh what I had learned.

It was so easy to be led astray,

Because so many things were unforeseen,

And every understanding was hard-earned.

If I believed that I could ever turn

Again into the one I used to be,

I would not speak; nor could I easily

Disclose to you the things I had to learn.

But since I know that no one can return

To innocence and faith once lost, and see

Again a world without complexity,

I’ll share with you my newly found concern.

For early in my journey all seemed clear

And faith was simple, life was infinite;

It did not seem essential that I know

Much more than what I saw around me here

Nor could I, at that early time, admit

That much within me I would soon outgrow.

We were, when young, like skaters on a pond,

Delighted with the smooth, new-frozen ice;

Then leaps were confident and turns precise

And skates bit smoothly, forces would respond

With equal opposition, thus the bond

Between the blade and surface would suffice,

Ensuring perfect gliding, and entice

Illusions of tomorrow and beyond.

Our strength was then sufficient to correct

Small errors that arose, adjustments made

Were imperceptible and automatic;

Then any outside force that might affect

Stability was easy to evade,

The future was unbounded and ecstatic.

No one attempted fancy figure-eights

Or patterns that required a smooth precision;

Whoever tried to leap might risk collision

With others in somewhat unsteady states.

Vitality, the strength that animates

A youthful spirit (now beyond my vision)

Is powerful and overwhelms decision

Which, being immature, miscalculates.

For there were dangers