This fall marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of T.S. Eliot's celebrated poem "The Waste Land." Although Eliot had been the darling of intellectual agnostics in Europe and America, this poem marked, almost unknown to him even,a major turning point in his life, a major redirection in his quest for spiritual meaning.

By this time Eliot had already identified himself as a skeptic. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men" had carefully examined contemporary life and had found it empty of meaning and purpose. But the more Eliot separated himself from his old Harvard mentor, Irving Babbitt, the more he came to realize that life had to be defined by purpose and control. In his later preface to "For Lancelot" he wrote, "most of us are not intelligent enough to afford atheism." Life needed rules and purpose. But getting there was not easy for Eliot.

In many ways "Prufrock" and "Hollow Men" are a part of his own spiritual journey, his own travels through the treacherous valley of disbelief and despair.

When he wrote "The Waste Land," he told the story of a lonely, desperate and trapped narrator, caught in a cage and unable to change or move. But slowly there is movement, slowly and painfully. And the movement is an effort to find and identify something upon which to base belief.

In Part V he writes about the journey to Emmaus, working closely from the biblical account:

Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look up ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in brown mantle a man or a woman - But who is that on the other side of you?

Even on this journey to Emmaus, the disciples cannot firm their belief in the risen Lord until they have dispelled old beliefs. In the distance they see a church. Hope? But as they move closer it turns into Eliot's Chapel Perilous, a ruined church that can offer no solace:

At this point, realizing that one must find one's spiritual centrality at a point not depending upon a church with its inherent frailties, Eliot moves to the There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. Upanishad. The god Prajapati had been asked by his sons to give them instructions for life, and he responds, "Datta, dayadhvan, damyata," each represented in the poem by the syllable "Da" and meaning "develop selfcontrol, give to the needs of others, exhibit compassion." And with this lesson the poem ends "Shantih shantih shantih," which Eliot borrows again from the Upanishad and means "the peace that passeth understanding." Eliot was on his journey.

In 1926 he went with family members to Europe, still a disbeliever. But something happened when he walked into St. Peter's. He was so taken with the solemnity of the place, the flickering candles and statues, that he fell to his knees and, according to one biographer, began to weep. A year later he was received into the Anglican Communion, having wrestled in his poetry with his own dragons of despair and doubt. For the next three years he would be working on the poem of conversion and repentance, "Ash Wednesday," called by some the greatest Christian poem in all of literature.

My favorite recollected image of this great Anglican poet is of him as an old man, walking rather feebly about the altar shrines at St. Stephen's Church, Glouster Road, lighting votive candles. He had explained in his poetry years earlier that we light these little lights that we can see to remind us of the Greater Light which we cannot see.

His advice to us: fare forward, "not fare well / But fare forward, voyagers."

C. Jeriel Howard

Chicago, Ill.