Logos
by: Mary Oliver
Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
I spend a good deal of time in the classroom talking about ethos, pathos, and logos with my writing students. Ethos is a rhetorical appeal that relies on the credibility and trustworthiness of the writer. Pathos is an appeal to the emotions--basically getting your readers emotionally invested in your message (through compassion or anger or pity, for example). Logos is the exact opposite of pathos. Logos is an appeal to reason and logic and intellect.
Mary Oliver isn't really trying to engage in a rational debate in this poem. She's talking about the Biblical narrative of the loaves and fishes, where Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. If you are casting around for an explanation of this miracle, you're missing the point of Oliver's poem and the gospel accounts. The disciples accepted the miracle without question. Oliver pretty much backs up the disciples. She tells her readers to just "Accept the miracle."
I know that's difficult for a lot of people. Back in Biblical times, it was taken for granted that angels walked the Earth and blindness could be cured with mud and a little spit. Logos didn't even enter the equation. It was mostly pathos and ethos. Nowadays, pathos and ethos are left to poets and artists and musicians. Logos is the realm of scientists and engineers. Miracles belong to people who dance with rattlesnakes, blind with desperation.
When my sister, Sally, was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma of the brain, I prayed for a miracle. I worked in healthcare for close to 20 years, so I knew all about prognoses and diagnoses. When I first saw images from Sally's CAT and PET scans, the logos side of my brain knew immediately that my sister had little chance of surviving. But ethos and pathos wouldn't let me completely abandon hope for recovery.
My family contacted the local Catholic diocese, and a few days later, our parish priest arrived at my parents' house where Sally was under hospice care. Father Larry brought a relic from Bishop Baraga, a Slovenian Roman Catholic missionary who was the first Bishop of Marquette from 1857 to 1868. Baraga's cause for sainthood is currently under consideration by the Vatican.
Father Larry brought one of Bishop Baraga's stoles and anointed my sister with it. Then, we recited a family rosary. It was a powerful moment, with hope hovering in the room like a trapped sparrow, beating at the windows of all our hearts. That night, everyone in my family believed in miracles.
About a week or so later (maybe less), Sally took a last, deep breath one morning and died, surrounded by her family and closest friends, and it was a miracle. Not the miracle we where looking for, but a miracle nonetheless. Each person in the room lifting Sally up, sending her on her final journey with gratitude and grief for the time we all had with her.
No, my sister didn't miraculously jump out of bed to whip up a pot of her spaghetti sauce. No, she didn't miraculously open her eyes and tell us to stop being babies. And no, the room didn't miraculously smell like blooming roses when she passed.
If you are a logos person, you probably won't experience anything miraculous in your lifetime. Because you're too focused on comprehending and explaining, instead of just following Oliver's simple directive: "Accept . . . each spoken word / spoken with love."
Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for each spoken word. Each soft breath. Each person he loves and who loves him.
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