I’m not sure.

Some say that one day God will redeem the broken world. Yehoshua November’s poem “Exile for the Sake of Redemption” concludes with this teaching:

…the mystics say,
God seemingly recedes
back into Himself
until suddenly,
after centuries,
redemption comes,
and a Divine light—
more radiant than the world
has ever known—
illuminates the universe
that thought it had been forsaken.

Given the state of things these days, I hope redemption will come soon, but I’m not sure it will. If it does come, I’m not sure it will be the doing of God. And, lately, it’s become increasingly hard for me to believe that redemption will come as a result of a profound change in human behavior.

Is it naive to hope for the day when our broken, if not forsaken, world will be redeemed? Is hoping enough to bring about the kinds of changes our world is in desperate need of? “[O]ur usual kind of hope,” writes Frank Ostaseki In his book Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, “is little more than wishful thinking. It’s frequently tied to an almost childlike belief, sometimes even blind faith, that an external agency of authority will bring about what we desire.” Faith in God, if it were possible for me, as our—eventual—redeemer might offer me great comfort.

In contrast to “wishful thinking,” Ostaseki describes “hope” as “an abiding state of being, a hidden wellspring within us.” Further, Ostaseki writes that genuine hope is not passive. Rather, it is active in that it has “an imaginative daring to it.” Unlike “expectation,” this kind of hope, which Ostaseki calls “a basic human need,” “energizes us to engage in activities that we imagine will enrich our future.”

“Imaginative daring”: that’s what’s at the heart of every powerful poem, whether it’s a poem of obliterating darkness or that “light / more radiant than the world / has ever known.” In “Exile for the Sake of Redemption” and in so many of November’s poems, I experience “imaginative daring.”

“Exile” begins by focusing on a recognizable, even if infrequent, experience in a classroom.

…a teacher, standing at the blackboard,
chalk in hand,
suddenly withdraws into himself
to follow the comet tail
of a thought
more profound than he has ever known—
then, after a long pause,
opens his eyes and returns
to his classroom
to share his discovery
with his students

Teacher, blackboard, chalk, classroom, students: we know where we are. But the first two words of the poem’s first line, which I intentionally left out, add something to our sense of where we are, both in space and time. Here is the complete first line:

The way a teacher, standing at the blackboard

Those two words, “the way,” point us to the beyond. From the first two syllables of the poem, we know that what immediately follows will give us one side of an equation: this = that (or, this = this). Even if we are not actively imagining what the teacher’s experience might be compared to, our daring imagination has been activated.  Daring because while we rightly expect the comparison to be revealed, we don’t know who or what the teacher will be compared to or when in the poem the comparative term will be introduced. So, as we read the first stanza we are simultaneously in the present and the future. We read with the awareness that there’s something beyond this person, this place, this moment.

If you look back at the poem’s second and final stanza with which I opened this essay, you’ll note another omission:

…the mystics say

The missing words: “is the way.” The beginning of the second is almost identical to the beginning of the first stanza. If we were to strip the poem down to its rhetorical structure, we would note this: “The way” (part one) “is the way” (part two). Sounds almost Daoist! Here again is the poem’s second stanza in its entirety:

is the way, the mystics say,
God seemingly recedes
back into Himself

until suddenly,
after centuries,
redemption comes,
and a Divine light—
more radiant than the world
has ever known—
illuminates the universe
that thought it had been forsaken.

The poem compares an earthly experience (the teacher’s) to a heavenly experience (God’s). But nothing could be farther apart than a human’s experience on earth and God’s in heaven. The poem even suggests such distance. The teacher takes a “long pause” to “follow the comet tail of a thought.” How long is a long pause in a typical fifty- or seventy-five-minute classroom? A minute? Two minutes? Five? When I was teaching, if I had paused for five minutes to think in the middle of a class the students would get restless, bored. A few might walk out of the class. Maybe one or two would be concerned. By contrast, God “recedes back into Himself” for “centuries.” The place where the teacher pauses to think is the classroom. The place where God recedes into God’s self is, say, heaven. The teacher shares his discovery with his students. God illuminates the universe with God’s Divine light.

But what if the length of God’s pause and the teacher’s pause only appear to be different? What if the classroom is the universe, the universe the classroom? What if God’s withdrawal only appears to us as withdrawal? After all, the poem says, “God seemingly recedes / back into Himself.” The teacher, too, silent while he thinks, remains present in the room as he engages in the deeply human act of thinking. Rather than sensing their teacher’s withdrawal, the students witness the profound experience of a human in the process of experiencing an illumination. Simile (the way is like the way) retains distance. Metaphor (the way is the way) draws things as close together as possible. As clear as the distinctions between teacher and God are, the poem subtly invites us to imagine the following: the teacher is not wholly unlike God and God is not wholly unlike the teacher. One day, God may redeem the world. Today, a teacher redeems his students from the exile of ignorance.

In “Exile for the Sake of Redemption,” November dares to bring the Divine down to earth. This suggests that it is up to us as it is to God to “engage in activities that we imagine will enrich our future.” Teaching and learning are two of those activities. Poetry—writing and reading it—is another. Every strong poem draws on a “hidden wellspring within us.” The poet draws on that wellspring to create the poem. And the reader discovers the hidden wellspring within her as she reads the poem. Poems may merely “enrich” our present and future. They may not lead us to the ultimate redemption. But authentic hope, which is the deep state of being of every poem, is necessary to keep us moving toward the repair if not redemption of the world. Of this, I’m certain.

Richard Chess has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Love Nailed to the Doorpost. Professor emeritus from UNC Asheville, where he directed the Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years, Chess serves on the boards of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, where he co-directs its Faith in Arts project. You can find him at www.richardchess.com .

Close Reading is now available on Substack, where you can sign up to receive all posts directly to your inbox. To learn more, click here.