The Sun (GH # 30)

Today is the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. For millennia, cultures have celebrated midsummer. It’s more of a big deal in climates that experience a long, harsh winter than it is for the U.S. southern states, where I grew up, or for California, where I live now. I remember one summer when I was in the northern Eastern Europe country of Latvia, where they have a huge midsummer festival called Ligo (pronounced “leegwa”), involving folk dress and songs and dancing (at least, that’s how it was several years ago). At this time of the year in Latvia, the sun doesn’t go to bed until late at night.

On this longest day, I am reminded of a short, simple poem from George Herbert called “The Sonne,” in which Herbert plays with the homophones “sun” and “son” (pronounced the same in English, but with very different meanings):

The Sonne

Let foreign nations of their language boast,

What fine variety each tongue affords:

I like our language, as our men and coast:

Who cannot dress it well, want wit, not words.

How neatly do we give one only name

To parents’ issue and the sun’s bright star!

A son is light and fruit; a fruitful flame

Chasing the father’s dimness, carri’d far

From the first man in th’ East, to fresh and new

Western discov’ries of posterity.

So in one word our Lord’s humility

We turn upon him in a sense most true:

      For what Christ once in humbleness began,

      We him in glory call, The Son of Man.*

The flexibility of spelling in the 16^th and 17^th centuries made the parallels between the words even easier, as “sun” might sometimes be spelled “son” or vice versa (with rather interchangeable vowels). Herbert, as with others of his age (see John Donne’s “Hymn to God the Father”), plays with the similar-sounding words sun/son in a few poems and usually finds figurative similarities between the words as well.

In “The Sonne,” for instance, the son is the delight of his parents and the fruit of their loins, which Herbert morphs into the “fruitful flame” (line 7) of the sun (the “bright star” in the sky [6]). “Posterity” in line 10 represents not just new generations of children, but new legacies born of discoveries across the Western hemisphere in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of exploration in the New World. These fruitful voyages west, which brought new literal fruits to Britain as well as figurative ones, are paralleled with the sun’s journey across the sky from East to West (8-10).

So, having explored the connection between son and sun, Herbert now turns his attention to the Son. Having been humbled in becoming the issue of Mary and (stepfather) Joseph, Jesus, the Son of Man, in his glorified state shines like the magnificent sun (14).

Herbert also sneaks in another little connection between the Son and the sun (and, for parents who have only children [line 5], even the son). At line 12, Herbert’s “turn” of phrase (son to sun to Son) in “We turn upon him” is a play on the earth turning around the sun, just as our lives should turn around the Son of God as our center. This revelation of the “sense most true” (12) also functions as what’s called the “turn” of the sonnet, the part of the sonnet where the poet moves from problem to resolution or, as in this case, a lesser idea to a greater connected one.

Enjoying the flexibility of the early modern English language, Herbert has been playing with the similarities between a son and the son, but ultimately both son and sun point to the Son of God. See also parallels Herbert draws in “Mattens” (“by a sun-beam [Son-cross] I will climb to thee” [line 20]) and “Jordan (2)” (“Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sun [Son]” [line 11]). In a Latin poem from Passio Discerpta (#16 “To the failing sun”), Herbert links the sinking sun (sunset) with the Son of God on the cross (when darkness came over the land—Matt. 27:45). Both sun and Son, he indicates in his Latin poem, will rise again.

      

So, as you enjoy this longest day of the summer sun, may you enjoy the fruits of a relationship with the Son as well.

* I’ve modernized the spelling of Herbert’s poems for easier reading.

Unlocking Our Joy (GH # 29)

St. Andrew's, Bemerton, Wiltshire**

There's a song that I sang as a kid in church. You may have sung it too: "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." Repeat the last phrase twice and the whole thing once, ending with "down in my heart to stay." And therein lies the problem. As a Christian, I have access to so much joy, most especially the joy of my salvation, but it tends to reside deep down and can be hard to bring up on a frequent basis.

A couple of Sundays ago, the pastor preaching at my church mentioned the need to "unlock our joy," a phrase that instantly recalled for me the opening line from George Herbert's "Bunch of Grapes": "Joy, I did lock thee up." Now, in Herbert's poem, the narrator's having his joy "locked up" is a good thing, and he's now upset because "some bad man" has let his joy escape. But remembering this line got me thinking about other mentions of joy in Herbert's poems.

Take "The Glance," for instance. In this slightly more mystical poem, the speaker recalls what a thrill and joy he originally felt at God's glance upon him, when he was in the throes of a newfound relationship with God, that flush of new love. However, as we know from experience, live the Christian life long enough and trials will come. "Since that time" of new sweetness," continues Herbert, "many a bitter storm / My soul hath felt, ev'n able to destroy" (lines 9-10). 

"The Glance" covers both problem and solution. The problem: life's storms drown out our original joy with bitter sorrows. The key to the solution: remember the joy of the best times in one's Christian walk, when God's countenance (from the believer's viewpoint) seemed to be smiling down, and one felt joy. "But still Thy sweet original joy," writes Herbert, "... did work within my soul" and "control" the poet's "surging griefs" (13-15). In other words, the joy, already dwelling deep down, was brought back up to revive his soul and temper his sorrow in the storms of life.

A couple of other poems from George Herbert that address joy (and hint at other aspects of the solution of unlocking ours) are "A True Hymn" and "The Call." "A True Hymn" opens by reminding us that the Lord is "My joy, my life, my crown!" (1). The key to unlock joy here is remembering both present and future rewards: the Christian has been made alive in Christ and will be rewarded with the crown of life in heaven. "The Call" contains a similar exultation by the poet in its last stanza: "Come my joy, my love, my heart" (9), concluding with "Such a heart as joys in love" (12). Perhaps the key to unlock joy here is tapping in to the heart, remembering the experience of God's love and our love for Him. 

No doubt there are other keys to unlock the Christian's often elusive joy, but here are a few we can gain from Herbert.

** My photo is of the entrance to Herbert's little church outside Salisbury. When I dropped by to visit in 2006, the door was locked. It's one of those ancient doors with a massive keyhole and a massive key, which I had to hunt down from the (also ancient, but so kind) church caretaker that day. It took two trips to the house down the street, a long waiting period, and enduring a torrential rainstorm before I saw that church key. When it opened this precious church, that old-fashioned key certainly brought me much joy!