On Poetic Knowledge...

The other day our eight year old son called our attention to a bird perched on the back fence. "What is that again?" he asked. "Oh, a mourning dove. Aren't they usually on the ground?" Well, yes, we affirmed. "How did you know that they're usually on the ground?" his Dad asked him. He answered, "I don't know; I just know." 

The conversation continued into a little more clarity, and we shared memories from our old house watching the graceful, softest-grey little pairs milling around on the ground in our back yard. I recalled when once there was a single dove making its usual rounds, and this was unusual, and I wondered what it would do having apparently lost it's life-mate. Sometimes, as we have noticed before, these simple creatures offer a most beautiful portrayal of the very best things in life - pointing to and echoing the more perfected human experiences of virtue. This current bird was near its mate, and they've made a nest in the old pear tree - happily for us granting easy observation through our kitchen windows.

Our son was simply remembering seeing this type of bird more often on the ground, though what he answered at first satisfied us for good reason. It may not be much of a thing to say, to "just know because you know" - but it later struck us as profound, reflecting the kind of way we've come to see things especially over the last several years. Akin to poetic knowledge - in some ways the sense of "just knowing" things reflects the combination of knowledge based in common sense, intuition, imaginative insight, memory, and reason connected especially to simple experience of the real. When you are in touch with reality, you are more capable of knowing things unmediated, undistracted. The Gradgrinds of the world can apply science and the strictest of factual stricture to all, and sometimes to apparent proficiency; however more often we are reminded that a childlike and less sophisticated approach (blossoming organically out of the simple experience of a thing) yields a more lasting and sensible knowledge, bound to a worldview steeped in faith, towards wisdom. We don't eschew instruction or guidance or direction, and certainly not books; we just try at all costs to avoid "murdering to dissect" in the ways of learning.
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Incidentally, and perhaps related - at least in the matter of natural beauty and the gifts of wonder this life avails - we had taken some of our church's old Easter lilies last year and put them in the ground. Most people told us they won't flower again, it's a waste of time, but we let the green stalks die off late in autumn and cut them to the ground. This spring, they sprung up again, and just this week we were gifted with the first of many beautiful blossoms to come. In this weary world it is a welcome sign of hope - especially as we come to the end of Mary's month of May, celebrate the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost tomorrow, and begin the magnificent month dedicated the Sacred Heart of Jesus in June. These lilies sing like small lovely trumpets and point as signs to Him, to Whom we should turn our hearts. May He reign in glory, and may we always recognize, adore, and serve Him in a world raging against His most beautiful heart!