Ash Wednesday, TS Eliot

Ash Wednesday and I am re-reading TS Eliot’s poem of the same name, I was thinking about how he’s come into my life unexpectedly.  Many of the lines in the poem talk about ‘hope’ and I’ve had a strange relationship with the idea of ‘hope’ over the years.  I kind of lost it really.  A tough few years in the early days of living here and I persuaded my husband to take our house name down…’Hope Cottage’.  I felt like it was a cruel reminder, every day, that I’d lost mine.

Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to be true to myself and inhabit myself ‘properly’.  Discovering the history of this house recently was a revelation. I had felt, from the start, the presence of what I imagined to be ‘a kindly old man with a large nose, glasses and a mischievous smile; and wearing a three piece suit’ (call it clairsentience, or one of the ‘clairs’ - I am still not fully out-of-the-closet admitting this yet!) Whatever all this is, it has brought me a lot of comfort and understanding.  ‘Hope’ has returned and is opening me up to good possibilities. Eliot’s poetry has been leading me gently to somewhere exciting.  So rather than giving up chocolate or wine for Lent, I was thinking I’d like to give up on ‘giving up’.  It may sound like a cop-out but so often, we don’t realise the negative patterns we’ve fallen into. 

Eliot’s letters to this house were playful (one letter to Polly in 1936 was dated ‘Ash Wednesday’ and shows a different side to him that we don’t often see) That’s where the mischievous smile comes from.   This playfulness appeals to my nature and even Eliot’s addressing of the envelopes bore his humorous wordplay: ‘Hope & Glory Cottage’, Hopeless Cottage, ‘ope Hope Hope Hurrah Cottage, Hope Against Hope Cottage, Faith, Hope and Charity Cottage…

It’s like he was playing with the name as a signifier, as I had done… indicative of my state of mind for years… So I think I’m going to ditch ‘Hopeless Cottage’ for Lent and embrace the positive, and who knows, one day I may just put the sign back up.

“Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18-20