Living Wittily

" I will lament, and love." Lent Day 39

Bittersweet

Ah my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament, and love.

This poem is short and sweet. It is also short and sharp. The title contains a paradox, a collision of opposites that continues to the last line. Love is never only undisturbed sweetness; love is too essentially human for such colourless perfection. Relationships of love do not grow and deepen unless there is conflict and forgiveness, hurt and healing, routine and excitement, frustration and fulfilment. Love requires the continuing intentional adjustments of self-interest and self giving that enable a relationship to not only survive, but flourish.

Bittersweet was a variety of cider apple in Herbert's day. Taking a bite from an apple is the original bittersweet experience, indeed it was the original sin. Herbert uses the everyday experience of eating fruit to evoke the powerfully evocative story of Eden, and the fall. The first three lines are loud with echoes of Eden, creation, fall, expulsion, and judgement.

"Yet help afford..." As often in these Lenten reflections, we pay attention to Herbert's frequent use of the word that forces a rethink - 'yet'. Sure, God loves yet strikes, because love is not morally neutral, it is the fire at the heart of holiness. But then the word recurs, and 'yet' becomes the sweetener in the bitter narrative of fall, judgement and exile as punishment; "yet help afford", the promise of a Redeemer who would crush the serpent's head.

The angry Lord who loves yet strikes, loves with a holy love. "Love can get angry for good reasons, but is proved in what it does next. Will it work to reconcile and put things right or will it take revenge and withdraw?" That is such a well expressed account of what is going on here. (My Sour-Sweet Days, Oakley, 112)

"I will complain yet praise" carries on the this one sided conversation about contradictions in which Herbert both disagrees and agrees with what God does and who God is. He captures with succinct precision the inner experience of the sinner caught out and forced to say mea culpa, while feeling inside, "since thou dost love yet strike...yet help afford, felix culpa.

This poem about the paradox of Christian existence recalls Luther's strap line that each Christian is 'simil justus et peccator', simultaneously saint and sinner. That's the way life is, and this poem is Herbert's yes to the contradictions of life and of his own inner experience. Every day is a sour sweet day, of guilt and forgiveness, of sin and judgement, of holiness as one step forward, and sin as at least most times, one step back. 

The resolution in the last line is a beautiful moment of acquiescence, and note the absence of the 'yet' word. There is no longer an assumed incongruity, but a settled acceptance that this is how life is for now; he will lament his sin and failure, and love the God he seeks to serve and obey. Once again, by design not accident, Herbert gives Love the last word. It is his yes to the ambivalence and struggle inevitable in a forgiven sinner whose grateful love keeps being undermined by sin's persistence.

This beautiful miniature poem holds the distilled essence of Herbert's spirituality. There is realism about the holy love of God that must judge and not indulge sin; and an equal conviction that such love precisely because of its holiness, will help afford and seek to redeem, forgive, reconcile and restore. For now, Christian existence is lived in the discomfort of inner contradiction, because the Christian has dual citizenship of earth and heaven and these have conflicting loyalties, temptations and goals. So every day is a sour sweet day, in which faithfulness will never reach perfection, but will persist and persevere on the road to holiness, lamenting every sin and loving God whose help has been afforded: O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 7.24-25)    

 

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back.... Lent day 38

Love III

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

        Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

        From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

        If I lack'd anything.

 

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";

        Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,

        I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

        "Who made the eyes but I?"

 

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame

        Go where it doth deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"

        "My dear, then I will serve."

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."

        So I did sit and eat.

 

Today's Herbert post is not as in previous posts, literary analysis in aid of theological reflection. It's a piece of spiritual autobiography. 

Late in my final year at College, having previously completed my MA majoring in Moral Philosophy, I picked up a Victorian leather bound pocket volume of Herbert's poems. It cost me fifty pence at the recently established Voltaire and Rousseau's secondhand book shop in Otago Lane.

I doubt you could persuade me to sell it for a hundred times that now. The reason has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with personal history, and the importance of remembered joy in the weaving of our own spiritual growth and formation.  

My first remembered encounter with George Herbert's poetry was when I read Love III for the first time. "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back..." As I read that line, and moved on through the poem, I was pulled into a spiritual experience. This was not so much a literary encounter as hearing and heeding a voice which mapped my longings more accurately than any marketing algorithm.

At the age of 15 I had been expelled from school before the O level exam diet. The hoped for trajectory for an able pupil took a radical downturn and I found myself driving a tractor on Clydeside market gardens, labouring in a brickwork, and started an engineering apprenticeship. And in the midst of all this I was converted and gave my life to Christ, and all my priorities were reinvented and reconfigured.

Within a year I felt an insistent inward call to be a minister, a preacher of the gospel that had turned my life round, a pastor like the one who had believed in me and encouraged me to rebuild my life. That required attendance at night school, then day release and Langside College in Glasgow, which atypical two year educational road map produced enough qualifications to go to Glasgow University. 

I had loved, and excelled at English in school. But in my degree I chose philosophy (that's another story), and so missed the chance to study English at degree level. So a quite intense young Lanarkshire evangelical, nearing the end of a seven year educational process from start to finish, and about to be ordained a Baptist minister, came across arguably the finest poem in the rich tradition of Anglican spirituality.

Love III opened windows on to a different theological landscape. This poem, and several other key texts in my life, (yet another story for another time) has helped to shape me, particularly my mindset, as someone who is instinctively ecumenical, intellectually curious and open to newness, seeking to be hospitable to the ideas and experiences and perspectives of others, requiring what I believe is one of the harder fruits of the Spirit to nurture and cultivate, theological humility. I've a ways to go on that one. 

It's quite a hard ask to identify the clues and nudges within the poem, that give Love III its continuing significance for me, as a touchstone of what I think Christian existence feels like from the inside. I only offer them as the conclusions of someone in whom this poem has lived and been life-giving for over 45 years. 

The personification of Love, as the proper name of Christ

the dialogue form in which host and guest try not to offend each other

the repeatedly patient voice of Love, contradicting the unworthiness, lack of self-esteem and lack of trust in Love itself

the profound lessons in hospitality as Love bids welcome, observes the guest's need, taking the hand and smiling

the insistence which isn't an attempt to overpower, but to persuade

and throughout the poem, an argument only Love was ever going to win

And, as so often in Herbert, the power of the last line, in which Christ has the last word. Except Christ's last word is in the penultimate line; it is the guest who has the last word, and it is acknowledgement of defeat in argument, the acquiescence of the heart, the acceptance of Love's invitation, the relieved capitulation of heart to heart, and thus a shared Eucharist of guest and host. 

(Picture is an early postcard of my undergraduate Alma Mater, University of Glasgow)  

 

 

This book of starres lights to eternall blisse. Lent Day 37

 

The H Scriptures II

OH that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glorie!
Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.

This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destinie:

Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.

Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse:
This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.

It is easy to miss the sophisticated hermeneutics outlined in this simple sonnet. Narrative criticism, canonical criticism, inter-textuality and intra-textuality, and theological interpretation, are not fresh discoveries of post-modern hermeneutics. Herbert describes with familiarity and ease how the Scriptures require us to pay attention to story, to interpret scripture with scripture, to interrogate each text in order to learn its meaning, application and command. 

The first stanza compares the serious bible reader to an astronomer, studying configurations, familiar with patterns of light, knowing how each relates to each through the seasons. The Scriptures tell a coherent story, and display an inner harmony, a discernible movement of inter-relatedness. They contain a universe of lights.

The second stanza reflects the standard hermeneutics of Reformation exegesis; the study of the original text and meaning, and the search for its application to Christian life today; ancient text translated and interpreted into modern context. 

"Such are thy secrets", and they are only found as treasure in the field by those prepared to plough, and stop when they hear the clunk of the blade on whatever lies hidden. Through Scripture we come to know who God is; theological exegesis for Herbert was seeking to know God through scripture, that first. But the dynamic process of reading scripture results in the reader being read. As we search the scriptures, we are searched. As we seek God we find that God is already seeking us. "Thy words do find me out", describes those moments of illumination when we discover more clearly, and not always flatteringly, who we are, and who God is. 

Scripture reading is a disciplined process of making ourselves understood, to ourselves, or rather, God making us understood to ourselves.  "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139.23-4) The act and art of reading scripture is fulfilled as we know God more intimately, and as we understand more fully how fully we are understood. 

The final two lines contrast responsible reading of scripture with astrology. Starres are poor books, astrology is hit or miss and wide open to charlatans, wishful thinking, and worse for Herbert, assume that life is governed by forces other than the purposive love and faithfulness of the Creator. 

"This booke of starres lights to eternall blisse", is a lovely image of a night sky, populated with light, infinite in variety and inexhaustible in knowledge to be discerned, discovered and diffused.

A few years ago I was involved in an act of Bible restoration. The Bible belonged to one of the finest exponents of bible reading I know, whose long life of reading "the constellations of the storie" had been transposed into the key of Christian character and devotion to God. I took it to the University bookbinder for repair when she went into care, and he painstakingly retained as much of the original as he could. I was able to return it as a restored treasure, 'a booke of starres.' Herbert would have understood the treasure of a worn out Bible, and the joy of its restoration.

 

The Christian Goal: "That I may runne, rise, rest with thee." Lent Day 36

Trinitie Sunday

Lord, who hast formed me out of mud,
And hast redeem'd me through thy bloud,
And sanctifi'd me to do good;

Purge all my sinnes done heretofore:
For I confess my heavie score,
And I will strive to sinne no more.

Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charitie;
That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.

In most traditions Lent begins with the sign of the cross on the forehead, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." The image describing the creation of the human Adam from the dust, can be lifted from the arid climate of the Middle East, and transposed into the Scottish climate by adding some rain! Dust or mud, it's the same thing; Herbert addresses his Lord as one who knows his humble, earthly beginnings.

The rhyming 'bloud' contradicts Herbert's sense of worthlessness based on his earth-bound humanity. He is redeemed neither by riches nor gold but by the precious blood of Christ. (I Peter,1.19) And the goal of God's redemptive intervention is to sanctify humanity to do good. 

The second Stanza is an interlocking theology of forgiveness and reconciliation. Already the King James version of Psalm 51.7 would be readily familiar from the liturgy: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow"

The central and pivotal line of the nine line poem captures the decisive moment of human appropriation of the cleansing forgiveness of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. "If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1.9) The grace that forgives, the heart that confesses, and the will determined to sin no more and to do good, is a threefold dynamic of the struggle of the redeemed human heart towards holiness.

The third stanza is a triumph of trinitarian clues. Heart, mouth and hands in line 1 are the body's answering responses in believing faith, uttered hope and active love of line 2. "Run, rise and rest" are all solar motions of the sun, (Son); get it? Herbert has reversed the first two in order to create a linear view of human salvation. So with our whole body enriched with faith, hope and love, we run the race set before us throughout life, we rise with Christ in resurrection, and finally enter eternal rest, "with thee."

In three verses of three lines the whole story of salvation is told in the simplest of words. The first verse refers to Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier while the last verse is a catena of Trinitarian clusters. The lines are an orchestra of biblical allusions and liturgical echoes. 

Try using this prayer three times a day for a week, when you rise, when you run and when you rest. Oh, wait a minute, that would be another way of tracing vestiges of the Trinity in daily life. Was that also what that last line was nudging us towards, a Trinitarian lifestyle?  

The image above is a tapestry I designed some years ago when I taught the Honours module Trinity and Community. 

  

 

Awake, awake, and with a thankful heart his comforts take. Lent Day 35

 

                The Dawning

Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
     Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns;
     Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
                                    Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.
     But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
     And feel his death, but not his victory.

Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
     Christ’s resurrection thine may be;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
     Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee:
                                    Arise, arise,
And with his burial linen dry thine eyes.
     Christ left his grave clothes, that we might, when grief
     Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

 

Sadness is a complex thing. Herbert doesn't patronise with a trite, "Cheer up!" The two words he uses to push the sad heart towards restoration are "Awake!" and "Arise!" The poet knows that sadness can be oppressive, leaden, dis-empowering, and can become chronic negativity, the sleep of the sad, a drowning in our own tears.

Raise your eyes from the ground, lift up your head, and look at a different horizon, a landscape transformed by the radiant coming of the Saviour like the rising sun. 'Awake' is repeated and this time it's a call to thanksgiving, because Herbert knows that gratitude is one of the more effective antidotes to life-negating sadness.

But even the wake up call fails. We "feel his death, but not his victorie."There is a sadness that becomes so familiar it is preferable to any imagined revival of hope, energy and vitality. Sadness can become a comfort zone, even a selfish indulgence in self-pity.

And Herbert will have none of it! No longer crying 'Awake!', Herbert is now shaking the shoulder and refusing to allow the indulgence of a long lie, dozing in bed clothes in danger of becoming the very grave clothes of hope itself. Lifelong sadness is not the only choice; the resurrection of Christ the bringer of mirth is life-giving. Christian faith is resurrection faith, life giving and life affirming.

Those who have lived in the same house as those who are not morning people, know the need for regular shouting of phrases like, "Get up!", or "Are you not up yet?" with increasing volume and relentless repetition. That's what Herbert's poem does. "Arise! The hand [of Christ] which as it riseth, raiseth thee: Arise, arise."

Resurrection is a recurring theme in Herbert's poems. Absolutely he 'feels Christ's death', but throughout it is balanced by joyful conviction of 'his victorie.' It's at this point most of Herbert's critics become embarrassed by the last three lines.

  And with his burial linen dry thine eyes.
     Christ left his grave clothes, that we might, when grief
     Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

True enough, Kleenex as an image of resurrection hopefulness does seem to be pushing it a bit. Christ the wonderful counsellor offering the box of tissues to the tearful client isn't much better. Except. "He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will away tears from every face." (Isaiah 25.8) echoed in Revelation 7.17, And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

Grave clothes as a handkerchief is a metaphor, and all the more powerful for its unexpectedness, even incongruity. John's Gospel makes emphasises the folded grave clothes as proof of resurrection, and it is that assurance of resurrection which, Herbert confirms, is the permanent cure of the sadness that can become creeping despair. 

Christian existence takes place in the dialectic of feeling Christ death and also his victory. The cross is the place where love gives all it ever can give; the empty tomb, with its folded grave clothes, is the place where love and life conquer violence, hate, injustice and death itself. This poem exudes pastoral firmness, anchors theological hopefulness, and is a wake-up call at times when legitimate sadness overstays its welcome:  

Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
                                    Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.

Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
     Christ’s resurrection thine may be...

  

"Storms are the triumphs of his art", Lent Day 34

                       The Bag

Away despair! my gracious Lord doth hear.
Though winds and waves assault my keel,
He doth preserve it: he doth steer,
Ev'n when the boat seems most to reel.
Storms are the triumphs of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

This is only the first verse of the poem. But it's worth a closer look, and could stand alone as one of Herbert's miniature paintings of a Bible story. Of course, a verse out of context might end up being a pretext. But what makes this verse worth our time in its own right is the light it throws on Herbert's approach to Scripture.  

Matthew 8.23-27 tells of Jesus bringing calm to a tempestuous sea. Matthew relates the story with narrative power and an effective economy of words. The storm comes without warning, and it's a furious storm; the waves were higher than the boat. So, imminent unexpected danger, "But Jesus was sleeping." Let that sink in. How could he not be soaked, but he's asleep. The disciples grab and pull and shout and waken Jesus, pleading with him to save them.

In Mark's account, the disciples are nothing like as polite, "Master do you not care that we're all going to die?" The last line of Herbert's verse answer that question, with almost casual certainty.

           Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

My guess is that Herbert has both Matthew's and Mark's versions in mind as he describes the way unexpected storms break on human life. And when they are furious, dangerous, overwhelming in force and beyond our power to tame, fear quickly hardens into despair, and the rapid shrinking of hope.

"Away despair!", shouts Herbert above the noise of the storm. This is prayer addressed to Christ while shouting at despair. There's no serenity, none of that T shirt nonsense, 'Keep Calm and Admire the Waves'. The Gospels contrast the terror of the disciples and the relaxed somnolence of Jesus. It's out of the depths of fear and despair of life that they shout their complaint in Jesus ear.

Of course we know how the story ends; "Where is your faith", Jesus asks. He rebuked the wind and waves, told them to settle down, and they did. Just like that. "And it was completely calm." Please note all the meme makers, Jesus didn't ever say, "Keep Calm, and Love the Waves". 

Looking more closely at Herbert's take on the story, he describes (i) the unseen and unknown power of the sleeping Christ to preserve the keel, which is the stabilising part of the boat, and (ii) that same alert competence to steer it safely through even the most tumultuous waves in the face of the strongest gales. This what the disciples were too scared to even think about. Trust is impossible for the mind in panic. It's too busy finding and shouting the word "Help!"

"Storms are the triumphs of his art". Now that one I might just get printed on a T shirt. Faith is seldom challenged on calm seas with blue skies. The real test and triumph of faith, and of the power of Christ to keep us safe, is the storm that comes without warning and turns our lives into a tumult. Even when the eyes of Christ seem closed in the relaxed absence that is sleep, his heart never sleeps. 

I find the story of the calming of the storm a helpful framework for the way life is just now. Without warning we are in lock-down. Who would have thought at Christmas we would be engulfed in a pandemic by Easter? But even when we are destabilised, the keel is threatened, "he doth preserve it".; and even when we seem most to reel and risk capsizing, "he doth steer".

How do we navigate through the storm that is engulfing us, personally, in our neighbourhoods, with those who are our community of faith, as part of a world in crisis? Perhaps by shouting the first two words, as Herbert does, "Away despair". And then by taking to heart the rest of that first line, "My gracious Lord doth hear... and doth preserve the keel....and he doth steer", and because "Storms are the triumphs of his art," which is redeeming love.      

Come my way, my truth, my life.... Lent Day 33

          The Call

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: 
Such a way as gives us breath;
Such a truth as ends all strife;
Such a life as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: 
Such a light as shows a feast;
Such a feast as mends in length;
Such a strength as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: 
Such a joy as none can move;
Such a love as none can part;
Such a heart as joys in love.

"Christian faith is a religion in the vocative. It invokes God to come and touch us back into life." (Oakley) 

Two Bible references guide the reader. Almost the last words of the New Testament, "Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22.20) The first line inevitably recalls John 14.6. "I am the way, and the truth and the life..." But other references are interwoven throughout: Christ the light of the world, the Eucharist as feast, the fullness of joy that is mutual between God who is love and the heart of the beloved lover. The poem demonstrates the intricacy of the ties between lover and beloved, and the tone is that of one who has learned to trust a love that is mutual, reciprocated and the source of the heart's joy.  

Travelling uphill, you get breathless, but not in following the One who 'gives us breath' for the journey. Truth was dangerous and conflicted in Herbert's times, post Reformation and a few years before Civil War; but in Herbert's lexicon the purpose and meaning of truth is to end strife. The life of Jesus 'killeth death', the truth of the redemptive death and resurrection life of Christ is here compacted into a paradox. Or as Herbert's poetic mentor Donne wrote, "Death, thou shalt die!"  

The middle stanza is about the domestic happiness of friends at a feast. The food and wine are on show, high-lighted by the presence of the host; the wine is the best wine, long maturing and mellowing; and the guests are there because made confident and strong by the welcome and the invitation. Those familiar with Herbert's poems will already heard the echo from Love (III), when the Love asks the one invited if he 'lacked any thing", "A guest I answered, worthy to be here / Love said, you shall be he." 

The first line of the last stanza is a perfectly balanced love call. The joy of love is uniquely powerful, especially when love itself is such that nothing can separate lover and beloved. (Romans 8.39). The circular motion of the verse, the words of the first line recyled in the last line, gives the verse, and indeed the poem, a circulatory structure, like a heart in which love and joy are the systolic and then diastolic phases of the Christian heartbeat. That was relatively new science in Herbert's day, but just maybe, we should be careful about dismissing the scientific knowledge of this well connected and well read country parson still alive in late Renaissance England.

In any case, the simplicity of the poem is effective because of the deceptively complicated structure and interplay of one syllable words. So much of Herbert's poetry is about sin, guilt, unworthiness, personal failure, frustrated longing, anxiety, fear of rejection, and all those other clouds and over-shadowings that obscure the light of love and drain the joy of the heart. Not here. This is a love call, a cry of the heart that expects the full response of welcome, warmth and mutual joy.

So much is on our minds in the current crisis. But at least once a day, just as we are lifted by that one daily outing for exercise and daylight, it might help us to turn to a poem like this. Take some time to remember what sunlight is like, what it means to walk in the presence of the One who is the light of the world, and the way, the truth and the life. Then to pray for strengthened trust in the One who is the light of life, "And such a Life as killeth death." 

Lift up your hearts!  We lift them Lord to Thee.    

Even Herbert found that when he needs them most, words fail him. Lent Day 32

   

          A True Hymne          

MY joy, my life, my crown!
     My heart was meaning all the day,
          Somewhat it fain would say:
And still it runneth mutt’ring up and down
With onely this, My joy, my life, my crown.

          Yet slight not these few words:
     If truly said, they may take part
          Among the best in art.
The finenesse which a hymne or psalme affords,
Is, when the soul unto the lines accords.

          He who craves all the minde,
     And all the soul, and strength, and time,
          If the words onely ryme,
Justly complains, that somewhat is behinde
To make his verse, or write a hymne in kinde.

          Whereas if th’ heart be moved,
     Although the verse be somewhat scant,
          God doth supplie the want.
As when th’ heart sayes (sighing to be approved)
O, could I love! And stops: God writeth, Loved.

So what makes a good hymn? Is it the poetry, the coinciding rhyme of words with rhythm of music? What kind of hymn can ever do justice to the God being praised, adored, or glorified. How can any human words have adequate descriptive range and affirmative power?  

All Herbert has wanted to say all day is, "My joy, my life, my crown." But how to expand on that, enhance those words, find better words, shape and craft language into the art form of the true hymn? And at the end of a frustrating day of muttering, pacing up and down, and countless scrunched up drafts tossed in the direction of the rubbish bin, all he has left are the words he started with - "My joy, my life my crown." This is writer's block getting in the way of worship!

The second stanza Herbert gives himself a talking to. What's wrong with those three words, joy, life, crown? They say what's needed. God is his joy: Psalm 3.4 "Then will I go to God my exceeding joy..." God is his life: Deuteronomy 30.20 "For he is thy life..."; God is to be crowned, Isaiah 28.5: "In that day shall the Lord of Hosts be a crown of glory."

Herbert's problem is that joy, life and glory are commonplace attributions to God in Scripture. They have no edge of originality, no poetic imagination. Then he thinks, "that's not the point." If they are said from the heart, truly meant, then they constitute a true hymn, "when the soul unto the lines accords." Problem solved. Well, not quite.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul strength and...." And what? Herbert's first readers knew their Scripture, much of it by heart. They would be expecting that word, "heart". What they get is time, to rhyme with 'rhyme'! The stanza is playfully incoherent, as the poet tries to find a way of putting heart into his words, thus making a true hymn that reflects and expresses his genuine devotion. For that, who needs poetic art? Well, Herbert does. His art, his 'utmost art' is his way of loving God.

Then the word heart appears:

Whereas if th’ heart be moved,
     Although the verse be somewhat scant,
          God doth supplie the want.

All this time and trouble trying to draft the perfect hymn, a true hymn, in order to prove his love; only to find it is God who makes up the difference between Herbert's inadequate words and the worship and devotion Herbert wants to say and sing. When it comes to our worship being acceptable in God's sight, the last word is God's. As in this poem. Herbert has been trying to prove his love through his art; but what enables true worship, and what makes a hymn true, is that "we love Him because He first loved us." I John 4.19. 

Finally, as Herbert rabbits on about not being able to articulate his love for God, he is interrupted by God taking the pen, scoring out the latest failed draft, and writing the word "Loved". It isn't Herbert's love that drives this relationship, it is God's love. This God who is his joy, and life and crown. Herbert has distilled the entire Gospel and the human experience of it into the last word of his poem, "Loved." We love because He first loved us. End of!

When something is broken, and not quite beyond repair. Lent Day 31

           
         

                                          JESU

Jesu is in my heart, his sacred name
Is deeply carved there; but th' other week
A great affliction broke the little frame,
Ev'n all to pieces; which I went to seek:
And first I found the corner, where was J,
After, where ES, and next, where U was graved.
When I had got these parcels, instantly
I sat me down to spell them, and perceived
That to my broken heart he was I ease you,
                    And to my whole is JESU.

"Clearly Herbert liked his miniatures and liked them to come out in the form of puzzles, miniature toys for the mind." (Drury, page 345)

Think of a china jug knocked off the shelf and breaking on the kitchen work surface; or a favourite ornament nudged by the cat onto the hearth. A minor domestic drama becomes for Herbert the framed narrative of salvation. The body of Jesus broken and restored again; the Christian heart engraved with the name of Jesus shattered by affliction, and needing pieced together again.

Herbert understood broken hearts, starting with his own. Fumbling around for all the broken pieces, he tries to repair and restore the fragments to something like the original. And in doing so he sees something that would never have occurred to him.

As he works on restoring his broken heart it dawns on him that the sacred name JESU annealed on its surface like a signature of ownership, is also a promise of comfort; "I ease you." There is here a strong echo of Jesus' great invitation, too obvious for it not to cross Herbert's mind: "Come unto me you who are burdened and heavy laden; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11.28. 

In Greek there is no consonant "J"; so Jesu is really Iesu. So "I ease you" becomes an even more obvious pun, I  ES  U. That's almost textspeak! Jesus is the one who eases the burdened and heavy laden heart.

Herbert is an early example in English poetry of finding novel ways of extolling the name of Jesus, an approach picked up by later hymn writers, especially Charles Wesley, who knew Herbert's poetry well. His hymn 'O for a heart to praise my God' is one of Wesley's key texts on Christian holiness being perfected through divine love. The hymn ends with the same image of the inscribed heart: 'Write thy new name upon my heart,/ Thy new best name of love.

It's late in Lent; and we are living through deeply disturbing times. For all its playful and perhaps overplayed wit, there is still real art in Herbert's miniature of a domestic drama of brokenness repaired, and the heart comforted in the process. I ease you, I ES U, the name of Jesus, annealed on hearts that know affliction, and will know repair. IESU - There's a text to send, perhaps first to ourselves. 

What does JC stand for? As if you didn't know! Lent Day 30

 

Love-Joy

As on a window late I cast mine eye,
I saw a vine drop grapes with J and C
Annealed on every bunch. One standing by
Asked what it meant. I (who am never loath
To spend my judgement) said, It seemed to me
To be the body and the letters both
Of Joy and Charity. Sir, you have not missed,
The man replied; it figures JESUS CHRIST.

Herbert is back in seriously cheerful mood. The poet is playing with the reader, who will have guessed by line two what JC stands for. The narrator seems inexplicably obtuse to suggest they referred to Joy and Charity. Of course he is wrong, it figures Jesus Christ. Everybody knows that.

Except. Except he is not wrong. The narrator is not mistaken, has not missed. The reader is left to work out how Joy and Charity figures Jesus Christ. But it isn't a hard puzzle to solve; Jesus Christ is the bringer of joy and love, the embodiment of God's good news. Jesus Christ, JC, is the one whose birth brought good tidings of great joy, and whose death was an act of divine love which was an eternity in the planning.

Sin is to miss the mark, and to live "as it seems to me". At the centre of the poem the poet admits he's never slow to speak his mind and tell the world what's what. His mistake is made right by the "One standing by." That's what Jesus has done, redeemed all those mistakes we make because we are never slow to decide what we think is right and wrong, as if we had full knowledge of good and evil. Remember where that points to,the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? 

This is one of many biblical allusions. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy...", and of course Jesus' central claim, "I am the true vine....abide in me..." The fruit of the vine and the juice of the grape become wine, a symbol of love poured out in eucharistic gladness. and noisily proclaimed in joyful celebration. JC is prominently stamped on every bunch, an immediately recognisable logo, which stands for joy and charity, festivity (joy) and hospitality (charity), which find their source, inspiration and energy in Jesus Christ. "Jesus Christ is behind every exercise of joy and charity...making those virtues possible." (Helen Vendler). 

the living Christ who vivifies the Christian believer and vitalises the Christian church. Lent Day 29

                    Aaron               

Holiness on the head,

         Light and perfections on the breast,

Harmonious bells below, raising the dead

         To lead them unto life and rest:

                Thus are true Aarons drest.

 

                Profaneness in my head,

         Defects and darkness in my breast,

A noise of passions ringing me for dead

         Unto a place where is no rest:

                Poor priest, thus am I drest.

 

                Only another head

         I have, another heart and breast,

Another music, making live, not dead,

         Without whom I could have no rest:

                In him I am well drest.

 

                Christ is my only head,

         My alone-only heart and breast,

My only music, striking me ev'n dead,

         That to the old man I may rest,

                And be in him new-drest.

 

                So, holy in my head,

         Perfect and light in my dear breast,

My doctrine tun'd by Christ (who is not dead,

         But lives in me while I do rest),

                Come people; Aaron's drest.

 

This poem presupposes familiarity with Scripture, and with typology as a way of interpreting Scripture and applying it to the inner life. Exodus 28 is a detailed description of the High Priests garments and the details are woven throughout the poem. This poem is a meditation for priest's as they robe before conducting worship.

 

The priest is called as one whose headline vocational quality is holiness. The entrepreneurial priest, the techie savvy priest, the theologically radical priest, the socially engaged priest are all very well, but this 17th Century priest resets the list of essential qualities and skills for serving God; holiness comes first, seen in a life of light and harmony, truth and love. As they move the bells hanging on the chest are gospel bells calling the people to live the resurrection life of those who have died to sin and risen in Christ to newness of life. All that in one stanza stuffed with imagery quarried from the King James Version of Exodus.

 

Then the reality check; profaneness, not holiness, is the priest's lived experience of contradiction. The stanza is an exact reversal of what should be. Instead of "harmonious bells" of the Gospel there's the cacophony of his own sins. This is pure Romans 7, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

 

But there is another head in whom the Christian lives. The great exchange of Christ's righteousness for human sin runs through stanzas 3 and 4. There is the music of resurrection, the new clothes of the one clothed in Christ; the old man is dead, the one who is in Christ is a new creation. Herbert is playing a theological concerto from the script of Exodus 28 interpreted through Paul's letters. The phrase "alone only" signals the singularity of the personal relationship between the Christian head, heart, breast, and Christ who renews the mind, the will and the affections. 

 

The last stanza describes the humble readiness of the priest, dressed to serve both Christ and Church. The doctrine is well tuned, the musical metaphor recalling harmonious bells summoning the people to celebrate the living Christ who vivifies the Christian believer and vitalises the Christian church.

 

This poem is hard work. You have to allow for a deeply pious priest, acutely self-aware of his own failings, but persevering in his faith that he is clothed in Christ, his righteousness is God's gift, what he believes, preaches and lives is tuned and energised by the living Christ within. You don't have to be a priest to know exactly what Herbert is talking about. Read those two central stanzas again, and continue through Lent assured of the living presence of Christ in your life. 

Hope is hard work. Lent Day 28

             

Hope

I gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he
An anchor gave to me.
Then an old prayer-book I did present:
And he an optic sent.
With that I gave a vial full of tears:
But he a few green ears.
Ah Loiterer! I'll no more, no more I'll bring:
I did expect a ring.

We only know the full force of hope when we live through delay, frustration and longing. Hope is hard work, especially when all the evidence seems to make what is hoped for impossible.

Hope is a Loiterer. By definition what is hoped for is beyond our immediate control or we could, and would, make it happen. Instead of giving what we hope for right now and for the asking, Hope defers.

Three couplets describe the negotiations between the poet and Hope (Christ). The watch is a timepiece, new technology in Herbert's time; so Herbert gives all his time to Christ (Hope). In exchange he gets an anchor. The obvious link is Hebrews 6.19:"the hope set before us, an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast..." So instead of giving what is hoped for, Hope gives the strength to hold on and wait. The cruciform shape of the anchor points the reader to the cross, and to the stability and security of being anchored in the eternal love displayed there. 

The Prayer Book in Herbert's time is an emblem of long term, regular and faithful devotion. So Herbert effectively casts up his years of devout loyalty to the liturgy and to the church, as a negotiating package. But instead of realised hopes he is given a telescope to be able to see what is hoped for, while at the same time being compelled to live with distance, and that frustrating not yet, that makes hope such hard work.

The vial of tears is the gift of his repentance, the proof of his love, the evidence of hope's intensity. Echoing Psalm 8.8 "put my tears into thy bottle", Herbert is asking God to take his tears as proof he has waited long enough. But not quite. Green ears of grain point to a later harvest, and it was only a few green ears. Once again hope is disappointed by wanting it all early, and the response is again a reminder of both assurance and deferment. Hope doesn't become reality on demand. But the tears haven't been bottled. They have irrigated the grains of hope and now the green ears promise eventual harvest.  

Trust Herbert to find a new word for Christ - Loiterer! In Herbert's day the word was used to describe the person who delayed paying their bills! One of the levers in a negotiation between parties is the decision to walk away from the table. Impatience, hurry and compulsion inevitably find hope a frustrating process. So "I'll no more; no more I'll bring" is an ultimatum to force Hope's hand. 

Truth is, he didn't need to bring anything. Hope is a promise guaranteed by Christ; his promise is as sure as an anchor, is visible through the telescope of faith looking upward, is evidenced by green ears of grain. The fact that Herbert wanted a ring. This has a double meaning. The ring of marriage points to the spiritual union of the Christian with Christ; the ring as symbol of completeness and perfection points to the full blessing of eternity. The full consummation is future; for now we live in hope.

This short poem teaches us something we now need to know about hope. We look on a world forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic. We hope so many things; for the safety of those we love, for a vaccine, for our local communities to be responsible, caring and constructive, for a return to a way of life without this fear and loss of control, for the safety and health of all those who are keeping essential services going, the NHS staff, food suppliers, emergency services, for ourselves an eventual return to human community and flourishing, but perhaps with a clearer idea of why it is important to care about our planet, our human communities, and the economy as servant not slave-master.

We hope these things, and so we pray for them. With Herbert's impatience; with what Jesus called importunity, that noisy persistence that won't shut up. And in our hoping and praying, we will hold on to the anchor, look through the optic towards a future in God's purposes, and imagine those green ears that confirm there will again be harvest.      

Keeping Relationships Strong by Clearing the Air. Lent Day 27

                   

The Storm

If as the winds and waters here below
Do fly and flow,
My sighs and tears as busy were above;
Sure they would move
And much affect thee, as tempestuous times
Amaze poor mortals, and object their crimes.

Stars have their storms, ev'n in a high degree,
As well as we.
A throbbing conscience spurred by remorse
Hath a strange force:
It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,
Dares to assault, and besiege thy door.

There it stands knocking, to thy musick's wrong,
And drowns the song.
Glory and honour are set by till it
An answer get.
Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.

 

Somewhere in his memory, perhaps as a child, the poet remembers Storm Herbert! Thunder and lightning, gales and rain, instilled the fear of elemental powers beyond human control. The borderline between awe and terror is quite easily crossed when human beings are caught up in  nature turned tempestuous.

The natural world is often the starting point for Herbert's poetry of the inner life and spiritual reflection. For Herbert the world of nature is "the creator's eloquent countenance", a thought similar to Calvin's view of creation as the "theatre of God's glory."

Storms are for Herbert a powerful metaphor for a conscience that is troubled and in turmoil, his feelings and affections an inner storm of remorse, guilt and emotional distress. So he storms heaven's doors,and uses the metaphor of the storm to depict the laying of a siege and hammering on God's door till he gets an answer.

The throbbing conscience, the driving of remorse and the frantic cry for an answering word that makes the wrong right. This is Herbert at his most confrontational with God. In his Prayer sonnet he had said prayer is like "an engine against th'Almightie". 

Importunate prayer, that is a refusal to be put off by not getting an answer, has a long tradition in Christian spirituality. Going back to Jesus parable of the annoyingly persistent widow and the noisy friend who disturbs the peace at night till he gets what he wants, there has always been a place for the kind of praying that just won't shut up, that storms heaven's gates, and lays siege to God's ears.

It's not easy for the 21st Century mind to appreciate the religious intensity of post-reformation England and the age of the Puritans. Not many would compare guilt for sin to a meteor shower, a storm of light shooting through the darkness; but "starres have their storms" and so does heaven as its doors are stormed by those seeking an answer to their prayers for forgiveness. 

The final two lines rehabilitate storms as descriptions of inner tempest and spiritual turmoil: spiritual imagination:

Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.

Storms clear the air. Strong exchanges can lead to new understanding. Better to have a row and reconcile than spend a lifetime in resentment. Like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, human relationships have their own outer and inner weather; Warm mellow feelings of the countryside,  peasants celebrating summer, the noises of the countryside from rippling streams to singing birds, and then the thunderstorm explodes across the orchestra, before giving way to the calm melodies of everything returning to normal, washed by rain, illumined by sunshine and the clouds dispersing. Herbert's poem, and its last line, sit exactly in those moments of transition from thunderstorm to calm and renewed summertime.

The poem is not quite resolved. Herbert will have it out with God, and clear the air. That's what storms do. But the making up, the forgiving and moving forward, are merely implied. This poem, in the context of the whole sequence that makes up The Temple, needn't spell it out. God sets aside glory and honour and condescends to answer Herbert's noisy knocking and clamorous pleadings for God's restored love and understanding.  

 

When we are possessed by the desire to possess. Lent Day 26

                  Avarice

Money, thou bane of bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine.

Surely thou didst so little contribute
To this great kingdom which thou now hast got,
That he was fain, when thou wert destitute,
To dig thee out of thy dark cave and grot:

Thus forcing thee, by fire he made thee bright:
Nay, thou hast got the face of man; for we
Have with our stamp and seal transferred our right:
Thou art the man, and man but dross to thee.

Man calleth thee his wealth, who made thee rich,
And while he digs thee out, falls in the ditch.

This poem is about money; and the love of money; and the madness of greed.

It's natural to want what I need. Greed is to want more than I need. Avarice becomes a moral disease and against human nature, when the need to possess more and more becomes the primary drive of our lives. Covetousness is a deadly sin because it kills the conscience.

At that point we don't possess money, it possesses us. 

Herbert's poem is an address to money personified. The tone is one of puzzled wondering: how can what started its life hidden in dirt, become something human beings would kill and die for? 

More than that, by refining gold and silver, then stamping a human face on coins, and creating a currency of wealth and worth, humanity has reversed God-given values. Money is gold and man is dross; man and woman made in the image of God have sold that image in order to create wealth.

This poem has hardly ever been treated at length by literary critics. Helen Vendler, one of Herbert's most stringent and admiring critics was left wondering. Why did a poet of immense spiritual subtlety and sensitivity feel the need to satirise money? And why go to the trouble of writing a poem, a sonnet at that, a demanding poetic form usually reserved for less banal subjects? 

Vendler's scholarship is impeccable, authoritative, and one of the benchmarks of Herbert scholarship. So I'm puzzled by her puzzlement! Herbert was a theologian of sin and love, of judgement and mercy. Human corruption was one of Herbert's theological research interests. Looking around at the world beyond, the discovery of new lands, the huge inflow of imported goods and wealth from the new world, the growth of political and royal power across Europe, there was a wealth of raw material for Herbert to explore, and much of that raw material was gold.

In pursuit of wealth and its accompanying wealth Herbert saw, with remarkable prescience, a moral reversal, a theological sacrilege, indeed a structural rebellion against the Creator. Wealth now rules the world, not humanity. Human life is possessed by the need to possess, and when that happens inhumanity follows. The last three lines expose the human and moral outcome of making the pursuit and possession of wealth the primary driving force of human community, of political economy and of social organisation. 

Putting money in its place would be a demanding Lenten objective. I am writing this in the midst of one of the greatest crises in our lifetime. The ludicrous behaviour that strips supermarket shelves as a form of self-protection is another dark side of avarice, the proof that what we want to possess may come to possess us. Who would ever have thought a main news story would be police acting on a tip off and stopping a large van full of stolen toilet rolls! (hence the photo above)

So perhaps even the brilliance of a Harvard Professor Emerita, should be supplemented by some reflection on the real world of deals, profit, accumulation, self-interest, wealth creation and distribution. And then some study of Herbert's tireless research into the propensity of the human heart to corruption and sin. When people stockpile toilet rolls, empty the shelves of hand sanitiser, fill the garage with pasta, and all of this without thought of other people, then Herbert's poem is bang on the money! (See what I did there!)

Time to match our praying to our mood, our circumstances, and the way the world is.... Lent Day 25

This is the second post in this series that considers Prayer I. It was scripted thirty years ago by Alistair Beattie, and given to me as a gift. I had read Herbert's sonnet at a church service and Alistair thought it one of the most profound descriptions of prayer he had ever heard or read. So one night our door bell rang and when I went to the door there was Alistair, carrying a large envelope and apologising for turning up unannounced! This parchment is a treasure because of what lies behind Alistair's art.  

Alistair taught himself calligraphy while in a Japanese concentration camp. Amongst the other prisoners was Laurens Van Der Post, whose writings he admired and with whom he had corresponded after the war. Alistair was one of the finest calligraphers, and amongst other commissions he was the official scribe for the University of Aberdeen's Honorary Doctoral parchments. 

As we go through Lent, and this has been the strangest Lent in my lifetime, I have posted a daily reflection on one of Herbert's poems. I posted a picture of this script on Facebook three years ago; it came up as a FB memory today. None of us imagined in March 2017 what would befall our world in March 2020. As we all come to terms with social distancing, isolation, and the anxiety and distress of a disease that threatens so many, we need more than bland reassurances, however well meant. On the other hand we also need more than the conveyor belt of media reportage that holds us fascinated by our own fears, and threatens to undermine resolve and hopefulness. 

Herbert's poem doesn't tell us how to pray or when to pray. It doesn't even tell us what prayer is. Instead he creates a word kaleidoscope of all the possibilities of prayer. As only a few examples of Herbert's imaginative tour of the human heart, the world and the universe: the banquet of the Eucharist, God's breath and human breath in reciprocal blessing, or an engine of complaint and lament against the Almighty when life falls apart, or music that is made up of an infinity of possibilities, the ordinary words that bring heaven into daily living, the life blood of the soul.

It's hard not to listen to the news. Our own anxieties, our distress for others, our hopes of a turning point, our hunger to understand what is happening and how best to look after ourselves and others. All of that. But it may be helpful to come away after listening and read George Herbert's sonnet, which inspired Alistair who suffered far more than he ever spoke about, to write out in near perfect script, this catena of invitations to pray.

Herbert is not prescriptive, telling us what prayer is. Given the endless diversity of human experience and the variety of experiences that fill the human heart, Herbert offers prayer descriptions for each heart and for any occasion. 

To read Prayer I after the news from Italy, or after the daily news briefing from the Prime Minister flanked by experts whose decisions will affect our lives, means we have to take a deep breath, and look for a way to process the news that doesn't just distil it into further anxiety. The "Christ side-piercing spear" forces us to think of suffering and woundedness, but for Herbert out of the wounds of Christ flows redemptive love and God-purposed hope. "Engine against the Almightie" dares us to complain to God, yes and even to rage against the way the world is.

Or from another perspective, "Church bells beyond the stars heard" is a deeply poignant image just now for Christians who tomorrow will not be in church. That will bring its own spiritual disorientation and yet another level of loneliness. But God is still there, this is still a God-loved world. And while we might be a bit dubious about God dwelling beyond the stars, just remember that Herbert was well aware that God's presence transcends time and space. He was writing poetry not physics!

What Prayer I helps us do is match our praying to our mood, our circumstances, the way the world is, and not to worry about what God thinks! Those last two words; no we won't have answers to everything. Perplexity, anxiety, anger, negativity keep playing their menacing music. But in all our thinking and praying, Herbert brings us at last to the more modest hope, that when all of this is done, there will be "something understood." 

This delicate piece of art, scripted by Alistair Beattie, has begun to fade. Life changes us, and sometimes we go through experiences that are trans-formative for us and for the world around us. The ink on my poem is fading, but the words that were written have truths that don't fade, and that can help us find ways of bringing together our broken world, our breaking hearts, and the God who first gave us breath.