"for everything...which is yes"

If e.e. cummings were a theologian, he might have helped us understand the mystery of Easter. As a poet, he comes close. His poetry points to realities that our intellect cannot fully grasp, though we may know intuitively. Reading his words, “deeper is life than lose,” makes me think about all that is beyond what we can know, even beyond all the unfathomable and often heartbreaking facts of our existence. Somehow, in cummings’ mind, they still add up to something good.

“I thank You God for most this amazing day,” he writes, exuberantly, about today; “for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.” Easter is the great “yes” to everything – even the worst things. It’s a “yes” beyond intellectual understanding. Cummings warned, “life is more than reason will deceive.” It’s a “yes” to every “yes” we get to say in our time on earth. Let’s try to have as many as we can.

e.e. cummings was not a theologian; he was a poet and artist, but he was also a Unitarian. His father was a prominent Boston Unitarian minister, and successor to the pulpit of Edward Everett Hale. Though cummings rebelled against the straight-laced intellectual propriety of his family’s society, he never abandoned his religious tradition.

His poetry offers readers a fresh perspective on what Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau had written a generation earlier. He associated God with nature and spirituality with being true to himself. “may I be I is the only prayer,” he once wrote; “not may I be great or good or beautiful or strong.”

What I find interesting in cummings’ work is how readily he takes on themes that have always been difficult for Unitarians. The concept of god is a big problem for many of us, but not for cummings. He asks, “how should…human merely being doubt unimaginable You?” If we opened our eyes to look around and see the wonder of the world, we would have no doubts, he insists.

The resurrection is another problem for Unitarians. Our tradition is rooted in the denial that Jesus is the son of God, and nobody else is expected to be raised from the dead either. But cummings ignores that literal-minded approach to death and life. “I who have died am alive again today,” he writes. Well, why not? A poem isn’t something to prove or debate; it offers images to show us truth in new ways.

cummings was not trying to convince people to believe in the resurrection – at least, not the resurrection as told by the gospels. But he was trying to show how death is not the end of life, how Easter is right before our eyes. If we open them we can see for ourselves. What is real is everything … which is yes.

Which brings us to Pi and his predicament. As I read earlier in the service, young Pi has taken up going to three houses of worship, apprenticing himself to the priest, the imam, and the pandit, and throwing himself into enthusiastic practice of all three faiths. None of the adults can understand what has happened to him.

Neither can the other children. “So, Swami Jesus,” his older brother teases him, “will you go on the hajj this year?” … “Does Mecca beckon?” … “Or will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?” … “At the rate you’re going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.”

Pi is up against some stiff opposition to his religious commitments. Not only must he endure the taunts of his brother, but he is also chased away from his places of worship by his angry mentors. But Pi is undeterred. He is convinced that something – life, God, everything – is worthy of his fervor.

The criticisms of the others annoy him. “As if this small-mindedness did God any good,” he grumbles. “To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity,” he concludes. Like cummings, Pi casts his lot with the great “yes,” no matter what life dishes out.

And Pi’s life dishes out some spectacular challenges. I won’t talk about them today; in case you ever read the book. But what I can tell you is that his capacity to say “yes” to dignity, not depravity, has a lot to do with his survival.

To say “yes” to life is to exercise the religious imagination. It is a choice to see dignity, not depravity, and beauty, not ugliness. It is a conscious movement towards what is good, wherever that good may appear.

For Pi, goodness comes in many religious forms. Each speaks to him of God, and he makes no distinctions. His imagination readily takes in different expressions of faith, without concern for their contradictions, specious claims, or provenance. Though others may ridicule him, the reader immediately senses that he is onto something important. He is.

He is onto the same path as cummings, never swerving from the conviction that “life is more true than reason will deceive.” We are all part of something that is deeper and more sustaining than we allow ourselves to see. It is everywhere. Every expression of reverence attests to it.

And that is also what Easter shows us. Although we Unitarians have rejected the Christian account of the resurrection, we can accept the fundamental affirmation that gave such power to this story in the first place. It is the affirmation of life: not only of life over death, but of “yes” over “no,” of dignity over depravity. “deeper is life than lose,” wrote cummings. It is the celebration of the human capacity to sense and to imagine a reality that sustains us and helps us to live. That reality is “everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”

But what about the big “no,” you ask. What about all that is ugly, wrong-headed, and inhuman in the world. What about the suffering and the injustice, the struggles that do not cease. What good can come of untimely death or our limitless capacity to do the wrong thing? It’s all there – we see it.

It is all there, and probably more than we know. The big “no” looms large and threatens our faith. But to say “yes” to life is not to ignore or abandon the task of building a better, more humane world. To say “yes” to life is to remember – when all we see is ugliness and we fear all our work is for naught – that there is still something beautiful, something sustaining, something infinite, that never wastes our good will or our effort. Rather, it gathers in our good will and our effort, and gives them back to us as new hope and new life. To say “yes” is to give to that beautiful, sustaining, and infinite presence the power to make us new again. And in that “yes” we have our Easter.

The Life of Pi was written by Yann Martel and published by Harcourt, Inc. in 2001.