Taste and see...

[daver49]

Maybe nobody else was confused, but the only part of the quote written by Eliot was:

... human kind
Cannot bear very much reality

Silly me, I thought Eliot's quote included the Eucharist verbage too. I couldn't understand how a famous writer like T.S. Eliot could write something so unimpressive. It's almost criminal that the people on that website would misappropriate a snippet of a poem that seems to be talking about free will and determinism and imply that it applies to the Eucharist (WTF?)

Here is a longer quote from the poem and a link. (I had never read anything Eliot wrote before, so I'm glad that I looked this up )

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Burnt Norton

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

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http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html

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It strikes me as a highly contrived way of avoiding the actuality of our being in this moment.

Obviously, you know the poem.

But a little bird told me it was so...