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.    

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Thank you, Jim.