Noticing such things

Christian Century, Oct 25, 2000 by Martin E. Marty

IN THE REDRESS of Poetry, Seamus Heaney brings to our notice Thomas Hardy's poem "Afterwards," a poem about our ability to turn ordinary things into extraordinary by noticing them. If this column does you no other favor this year, it will have done one by reprinting this poem so that you may savor and memorize it:

   When the Present has latched its
      postern behind my tremulous
      stay,
   And the May
      month flaps its
      glad green
      leaves like
      wings,
   Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk,
      will the neighbors say,
   `He was a man who used to notice
      such things'?

   If it be dusk when, like an eyelid's
      soundless blink,
   The dewfall-hawk comes crossing
      the shades to alight
   Upon the wind-warped upland
      thorn, a gazer may think,
   `To him this must have been a familiar
      sight.'

   If I pass during some nocturnal
      blackness, mothy and warm,
   When the hedgehog travels
      furtively over the lawn,
   One may say, `He strove that such
      innocent creatures should come
      to no harm,
   But he could do little for them, and
      now he is gone.'

   If, when hearing that I have been
      stilled at last, they stand at the
      door,
   Watching the full-starred heavens
      that winter sees,
   Will this thought rise on those
      who will meet my face no
      more,
   `He was one who had an eye for
      such mysteries'?

   And will any say when my bell of
      quittance is heard in the gloom,
   And a crossing breeze cuts a pause
      in its outrolling,
   Till they swell again, as they were a
      new bell's boom,
   "He hears it not now, but used to
      notice such things'?

Now let me tell you of a tree worth noticing, an oak believed to be "as much as 500 years old," with "the widest branch span of any tree in the Midwest at 87 feet."

According to the local paper, the tree needed care, and the registered arborist who cared for it thanked the people on whose property it stands for letting him treat it. "It was an honor," he said.

As a lover of oaks, I would go many a mile to see that tree. I, who as a historian tries to teach people to notice the ordinary in the past, a part-time journalist who must notice the extraordinary in the present, a sometime theologian or preacher who notices the ordinary and extraordinary in God's creation, would certainly stand in awe.

How surprised I was, then, to read that this tree is right across the street from us. Not one at-home day in 36 years have I not seen it from my study or our living room window or when I've walked or driven down our street. Yet I had not noticed this officially designated "Illinois Historical Place" among the other oaks lining the street. It took an arborist and a journalist to awaken me. In answer to Hardy's question, "Will the neighbors say, `He was a man who used to notice such things'?" the neighbors would have to say no.

You can be sure I will from now on, however, having learned one more lesson about God's creation and human response. As the grandchildren would say, "Awesome!"