Let Evening Come - Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Lighting of Chalice (spoken in unison)
“Let Evening Come”
Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Memorial Day Sunday, May 27, 2012
Rev. Bruce A. Bode
We drink from wells we did not dig.
We have been warmed by fires we did not build.
We light this chalice in thanksgiving
for those who have passed their light to us. (Deuteronomy 6:11, adapted)
Opening Words
Holy and beautiful is the custom by which we gather together on this Memorial Day
Sunday morning.
Here we come to give our thanks, to face our ideals, to remember our loved ones, to
seek that which is permanent, and to serve integrity, beauty, and the qualities of life that
make it rich and whole.
Through this hour breathes the worship of all the ages, the sacred music of all
history; blessed are the ears that hear that eternal sound.
Responsive Reading
MINISTER: These are our dead. Short days ago they lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
loved, and were loved.
CONGREGATION: These are our dead. Some died in the fullness of time; they have
seen and felt and known.
MINISTER: Others died abruptly before they had really begun to know the problems and
sorrows, joys and delights, of mature persons.
CONGREGATION: We have had various relationships with them. Some were very dear
to us; others were unknown except to a few.
MINISTER: Everyone that cares for us and for whom we care dies and tears something
of the fabric of our life.
CONGREGATION: At times the loss is so great, the sadness so deep, it takes one’s
breath away. No matter how many deaths one has seen, it again seems unbelievable,
unreal, not so.
MINISTER: So great is the sorrow, so deep is the threat, that, for the most part, we avoid
thinking about it.

CONGREGATION: We hurry away from the grave; we take up again, with alacrity, the
daily problems and confusions which seem so much easier to handle than the imminent
specter of death.
MINISTER: But the richness of our life depends upon how we surround ourselves with
those who care for us, and how much we live in the spirit that does not pass away with
the passing of the body.
CONGREGATION: We need to treasure more deeply those who have loved us and died;
they give greater joy and beauty, greater meaning and worth to our days, because they
help us to see, to feel, to hear, and to understand more deeply.
MINISTER: Will not these qualities we have met in our departed loved ones go on to
infuse all the days of our lives? Do we not owe gratitude and remembrance wherever we
have met with any joy and intimacy?
CONGREGATION: And so this day we honor these, our dead, and all those whom we
have known in the past no longer with us. (Dr. Duncan E. Littlefair)
Call to Remembrance
Please stand now, as you are able, and honor with your silence those individuals
connected with this congregation who have died, not only in this past year, but all those
who have been part of this Fellowship from its beginning.
Harry Jordan
Richard Earhart
Lucy Redkey
Mary W. Erickson
Bernice Ruth Johanson
Daniel Plachta
Jonathan Conant
Earl Willetts
Eula Dennison
Mary Jordan
Louise Nomura
William John Wynn
Arthur David Smith
Ruth Humphrey
Lois Anne Overton
Judy Allen
George Harper
Dick Shipley
Josh Stewart
Craig Stout
John Butler
Henry Redkey
Micky Douhan
Leo Lake
Niels Holm
Ruth Butler
Diana Johanson
Eleanor Finlay Otte
Andrew Palmer
Margaret McLaughlin
Jeanette Earhart Lewis
James Humphrey

Everett Whealdon
Kathleen Bruskin
Vance Lewton
Marjorie Willets
James Edward Everett
Ruth Russell
Desiree W. Whipple
Irene Osborne
Lucille Watson
Anya Kurotchkin Lincoln
Gwyneth Pederson
Trevor Wilson
Robert (Bob) Knudson
Joel Johanson
Norma Davidson
Clara Klug
Karen Driscoll
Jan Givens
Erica Brunquist
Sandy Stewart
Carl Nelson
Helen Wynn
Carol Albrecht
Tammy Garnett
We honor those who have lived and died in our religious community. We gain strength
and confidence from their deeds and memories. Their spirit remains alive among us.
Reading
Memorial Day had its origin at the end of the Civil War when on this last weekend in
May of 1868, General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the
Republic, honored the soldiers and sailors who had given their lives in that horrific civil
conflict. And he honored the war dead, not only of the victors but of both Union and
Confederate soldiers who were buried at the Arlington National Cemetery. He did so by
decorating their graves with flowers. Thus, this day was first known as Decoration Day,
a name that still echoes in memory from my youth.
Later Decoration Day become Memorial Day, a day set aside by our country to
memorialize and pay tribute to all those who have given their lives in military service for
our country. And now, of course, the Memorial Day remembrance has expanded beyond
that, becoming a general remembrance of our loved ones who have died.
Here, in our religious community, as in our “Call to Remembrance,” we use this
Memorial Day Sunday for remembering loved ones from this Fellowship who have died.
And this morning we will consider the theme of death and how to approach it.
My reading, which will stand in sharp contrast to the anthem that the choir will sing
titled, “Let Evening Come,” the words of which will serve as the text for my sermon, will
have to do with not acquiescing to death, but fighting it all the way.
It’s a powerful poem by the celebrated and wild Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who lived
from 1914-1953, dying at the young age of 39. The poem, Thomas’ most well-known
poem, is titled, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” It was written when his aged,
blind father was dying.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Introduction
“LET EVENING COME”
As I indicated in the introduction to my reading, the theme for the Memorial Day Holiday
is remembrance – remembrance of those who have given their lives in military service to
their country.
From that we get to a more general remembrance of departed loved ones no longer with
us.
And from that we get to the theme of death and the question of how to approach death.
And from that we get to the poem that the choir sang this morning, which is often read at
memorial services to bring comfort to those who are grieving the loss of loved ones.

And that is how I have often used this poem. It’s been one of the consistent poems that
I’ve used over the years at memorials services at which I have officiated.
What is the subject of the poem?
However, as I have looked more closely at this poem, and as I have become more
acquainted with the poetry of Jane Kenyon – I facilitated an adult Learning Programs
class on her poetry this past winter – I have come to realize that this poem is, first of all,
simply about the coming of nighttime, the daily slide from light to dark. It’s not using
night as a metaphor for death, as I had assumed.
For example, the author’s husband, fellow poet Donald Hall, in a book titled, Life after
Jane, an elegy written following the death of his wife from leukemia in 1995 at the alltoo-young
age of 48, wrote:
Jane speaks of ‘evening,’ and those who translate ‘evening’ immediately into ‘death’
are missing the poem’s notion. (quoted in Jane Kenyon: A Literary Life, John H. Timmerman, p. 175)
The poem
So, let’s look together at this poem.
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
As a woman takes up her needles
And her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Taking the poem at face-value
Taking this poem, then, at face-value, in its literal, straight-forward meaning, it’s simply
a poem about the coming of the night, and about surrendering to the coming of the night.
This poem uses the word “let” twelve times. It, thus, can be taken as a kind of
supplicatory prayer in the face of fear of the dark and the unknown. “You don’t have to
be afraid of the dark,” says the poem, “for you are accompanied into the night by a power
larger than your fear, which will be with you.” Thus:
“Be not afraid.”
“May I not afraid.”
“Let me not be afraid.”
“I need not be afraid.”
The feeling tone of this poem is one of surrender, acceptance, and embrace. Biographer
John Timmerman writes:
The poem reads as an affirmation of the natural rhythms of life – physically,
biologically, and psychologically. If anything, it is a poem of great peace, regardless
of whether the light rises or falls. (Jane Kenyon: A Literary Life, John H. Timmerman, p. 175)
A rural setting
The images and objects referred to in this poem are from the poet’s surroundings. Jane
Kenyon, whose dates are 1947-1995, lived for most of her adult life with her husband,
Donald Hall, at his ancestral home, called Eagle Pond Farm, in Wilmot, New Hampshire.
Thus, the barn with its bales of hay, the chafing cricket, the hoe abandoned in the long
grass, the fox returning to its sandy den, the shed growing dark inside, the bottle in the
ditch, and the scoop in the oats – all of these things are related to their farm.
As the light departs and the night comes on, there is a comfort in simply naming these
objects … like a child at bedtime saying goodnight to all the important pieces of his or
her surroundings.
Goodnight Moon
This poem brings to my mind the children’s book, Goodnight Moon, that my wife and I,
along with countless other parents, have read to their young children to send them
peacefully into night-time sleep.
This little classic, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, was
first published in 1947, the year of Jane Kenyon’s birth – and mine as well. It describes a
bunny’s bedtime ritual of saying goodnight to the various objects and persons that are
either in the bunny’s room or pictured in the bunny’s room.

(When I was on the ferry last evening coming from Family Camp with Kathy Stevenson,
I mentioned to her that I was planning to say something about Goodnight Moon. She
then proceeded, from memory, to relate the text of that book to me. I said, “How did you
know that?” “Thirty-three years of Rainbow School.”)
I don’t have the text memorized, but here is what the bunny – and thus the child – bids
goodnight to:
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Good night cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady
whispering “hush”
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere
So, perhaps, “Let Evening Come,” can be taken as a kind of adult-version of Goodnight
Moon.
There’s something comforting in the prayer-like mantra of simply naming the objects
around you. When you’re having trouble going to sleep, just start counting or naming
things – objects, persons, sheep, whatever. I often go to sleep by re-playing in my mind
the last round of golf that I’ve played. By the time I’m to the fifth hole, I’m sound
asleep.
The poet’s own struggle
The surrender to the night and the natural rhythms of life was something with which the
poet herself struggled – something that she had to work through. In earlier poems, as
John Timmerman points out, the “shadowland between light and darkness is often strung

with anxiety and fear.” (p. 177) And, again, he says: “… the intermingling of light and
shadow, that indeterminate time of day … always seemed to intrigue and puzzle her.” (p.
173)
Regarding the origin of the poem, in a letter to her good friend and fellow poet, Alice
Mattison, dated April 16, 1986, four years before its publication, Jane Kenyon wrote:
I have written something new, which I am very excited about. While I was in
A[nn] A[rbor] [which is where the poet grew up] I heard my mother say, “Let
Evening Come.” We were talking about getting depressed as the day goes on, and
wanting bedtime to come so you can become oblivious…
(Mattison, “Let It Grow in the Dark Like a Mushroom,-pp. 131-32; quote in Timmerman, p. 175)]
Indeed, throughout her life, Jane Kenyon suffered from depression, diagnosed when she
was thirty-eight as bi-polar manic depression, though rarely on the manic side. In one of
her greatest poems titled, “Having It Out with Melancholy,” she wrote:
Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
As seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep’s
frail wicker coracle.
A “coracle” is a small round boat made from animal skins stretched over a wicker frame.
Like being on a calm lake in a small boat that has been pushed from shore, the sleep of
nighttime provides a temporary respite from the massive pain of the day.
But, of course, the relief will be temporary, for that little boat, that “frail wicker coracle,”
will again come to shore, and often before daybreak.
In these circumstances of depressive emotional pain, the supplication to “let evening
come” would be quite different than the feeling tone we actually find in this poem. That
is, not so much a tone of acceptance, surrender, and embrace; but, rather, a plea for relief,
a cry to escape, a pulling of the blankets over the head, a curling up, perhaps, in a fetal
position.
So, it appears that the poet has worked through an issue for herself and found some real
peace.
Two poems of Robert Frost
But before speaking more about that peace and acceptance, let me contrast the theme of
the embrace of the night and of nature’s rhythms that we find in “Let Evening Come”
with two of Robert Frost’s poems – Robert Frost, who also suffered severe bouts of
depression, but who also claimed to be able “to mock anything out of his system” – a
claim I somewhat doubt.

The first poem by Frost is titled, “Come In.”
Come In
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music – hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went –
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn’t been. (Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Here, as with “Let Evening Come,” the coming of the night brings up the concern of loss
and fear. The poet at the edge of the dark woods hears the final song of the thrush before
it rests for the night, and to him it sounds like a song of lament – and almost like a call for
him to join the thrush in a time of lament.
But the poet resists this thought. He is out to view the stars; he is not out for lament. He
decides he will not join the thrush in his song of lament. He will not “come in” to the
dark … even if invited. And the poet decides abruptly that he has not been invited. End
of the matter!
Thus, whereas Kenyon’s poem pronounces a theme of surrender in relation to the coming
of the night – and by extension a giving over to grief and sorrow – Frost resists and
pushes back.
A second poem of Frost, which also has to do with the coming of the night and the dark,
is titled, “Acceptance.”

Acceptance
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.” (Robert Frost (1874-1963)
In the first Frost poem I read, the poet thought the bird, the thrush, might be inviting him
to lament. In this poem, a bird who can’t make it back to his nest – or maybe he does – at
least finds a familiar place of shelter and says, “Safe.”
The poem is titled “Acceptance,” and in it there is the acceptance of nature: with the
setting of the sun, “No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud/ At what has happened.” But
this would seem to be a blind acceptance, not a conscious one.
But birds at least have a little consciousness of the coming of the night. They take note
of the change from light to darkness.
But do these birds accept the rhythms of nature, or just close their eyes to them?
The bird that Frost quotes uses the dark to shield him against knowledge of the future –
“Let the night be too dark for me to see/ Into the future.” In other words, “Don’t let me
see what will be.” But, on the other hand, “Let what will be, be.”
Is this acceptance? As is often the case, Frost likes to have it both ways, and keep the
reader guessing.
A greater acceptance
Jane Kenyon’s poem, “Let Evening Come,” clearly has a greater sense of embrace and
acceptance … which is why it is so often read at memorial services in relation to the
acceptance of death.
Earlier I quoted her husband Donald Hall when he said, “Jane speaks of ‘evening,’ and
those who translate ‘evening’ immediately into ‘death’ are missing the poem’s notion.”

However, there is a second part to Donald Hall’s statement that I didn’t read, which goes
like this:
Yet the mind leaps to find analogy – humans are symbol-seekers – and people read
this poem at funerals. Someone has carved it into a gravestone. (quoted in Jane Kenyon: A
Literary Life, John H. Timmerman, p. 175)
As I said earlier, I have often used Kenyon’s poem at memorial services. It is the poem
by which I originally knew her name.
And, in particular, the last line of the poem that reads, “God does not leave us/
comfortless, so let evening come” … that line, to me, moves the poem toward to the
theme of death and the facing of the coming of the night as being a metaphor for facing
death.
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
The poem that I read earlier in my reading from Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night,” also often gets quoted at memorial services. And in that poem “night”
is very clearly a metaphor for “death.”
But the approach of that poem, as I said, is in sharp contrast to Kenyon’s poem. It is the
poet’s strong protest against death. Despite death being referred to as “that good night,”
the poet resists its coming and seems to believe that one should fight to the end – “Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.”
(I’ve had the experience on a couple of occasions early on in my ministry of persons
requesting that this poem to be read at memorial services because they have heard of it
and know it’s a powerful poem, then somewhat repenting of their choice afterwards, for
they had not heard it as such a poem of resistance to death. And, so, now, if someone
that requests that poem, I ask them to take a good look at it to be certain this is the tone
they want.)
Giving the ego its rights
On the other hand, Dylan Thomas’ poem does express an important element that I try to
get at in memorial services. I call it, “letting the ego have its rights.” That is, allowing
our ego, our sense of personal identity, to have its say, and to cry out against the losses it
experiences, including its own coming dissolution.
There’s a film interview of Jane Kenyon and her husband Donald Hall by Bill Moyers
that was done in 1993, two years before her death – and before she knew she had
leukemia. But there had been other brushes with death, particularly illnesses of her
husband involving complicated operations for cancer. And Kenyon speaks candidly in
those interviews of there being a lot of “howling” going on in their house at those times.

“Howling?” Moyers asks.
“Yup, howling,” replies Jane Kenyon, “not a very Yankee trait.”
This is what I call “letting the ego have its rights” – allowing it – encouraging it, actually
– to express itself. This is the first thing I try to get at in memorial services at which I
officiate – not to try to be strong in the face of death, or to think only happy thoughts
related to our loved ones; but, first of all, to allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss, the
distress of regret, and to let ourselves be drenched by sorrow, like standing under a
pouring waterfall.
Perhaps, it’s because Kenyon does not deny the ego its rights that she is able to write the
poem, “Let Evening Come.” When the grief and anger and sorrow and regret of the ego
is recognized and honored, then the ego is also in a position to surrender to that which is
larger than itself – to let go and to give itself over to the larger rhythms of nature. In
Kenyon’s words, this is a surrender to the God who “does not leave us comfortless.”
In another interview that Bill Moyers had with Jane Kenyon, the interview ends as
follows. Moyers asks:
“How did you come to write ‘Let Evening Come’? So many people say that’s
their favorite of your poems.”
Jane Kenyon responded, “That poem was given to me.”
Moyers: “By?”
Kenyon: “The muse, the Holy Ghost. I had written all the other poems in the
book in which it appears, and I knew that it was a very sober book. I felt it needed
something redeeming. I went upstairs one day with the purpose of writing
something redeeming, which is not the way to write, but this [poem] just fell out. I
really didn’t have to struggle with it.”
Moyers: “Do you still believe what that poem expresses, given Don’s cancer
[her husband, Donald Hall] and your own illness [Kenyon’s chronic depression].”
Kenyon: “Yes. There are things in life that we must endure which are all but
unendurable, and yet I feel that there is a great goodness. Why, when there could
have been nothing, is there something? This is a great mystery. How, when there
could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, beauty?”
(From The Language of Life, p. 237)
Conclusion
It’s possible for us humans to imagine the complete absence of everything, to experience
the shock of possible non-being.

But there’s not nothing, there’s something, always something!
And, to me, that power of being … which forever overcomes non-being … which rolls
through all things … infinite, eternal, forward-pushing … the source of all individual
beings … and the abysmal ocean into which all individual beings dissolve … that power
of being abides … it creates and keeps on creating … and that is the creativity in which
we ultimately rest. Thus,
Let evening come…
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid.
Hymn: “Abide with Me”
Spoken Benediction
Our closing words are from Jane Kenyon’s poem, “Spring Evening”:
Again the thrush affirms
both dusk and dawn. The frog
releases spawn in the warm
inlet of the pond. Ferns
rise with the crescent moon,
and the old farmer
waits to sow his corn. (Jane Kenyon: Collected Poems, p. 285)
Extinguishing of the Chalice
We extinguish this flame,
but not the light of truth,
the warmth of community,
or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our hearts
until we are together again.
(NOTE: This is a manuscript version of the service given by The Reverend Bruce A.
Bode at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on Memorial Day Sunday, May
27, 2012. The spoken message, available on CD at the Fellowship, may differ slightly in
phrasing and detail from this manuscript version.)