Singing Shepherds (GH Day 24)

Christmas is here, and it’s the most musical time of the year for a lot of folks. I love playing Christmas music and singing Christmas songs: everything from “The Holly and the Ivy” to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” What a shame that we only get to enjoy these wonderful carols and classics once a year!

In July, I introduced George Herbert’s poem “Christmas,” focusing on the first half. In a twist on the nativity story, the narrator is a worn-out rider seeking lodging who is welcomed by an innkeeper. The narrator then turns around and asks for his soul to be made a lodging for the infant Lord (in place of the manger).

In the second half of the poem, we leave the Mary/Joseph/inn/stable story behind and focus, at least initially, on the shepherds:

THE shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
                      My God, no hymne for thee?

My soul’s a shepherd too: a flock it feeds
                      Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace
                      Enriching all the place.
 

Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
                      Out-sing the day-light houres.
Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
                      Take up his place and right:

We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
                      Himself the candle hold. (lines 1-12 of “Christmas” part 2)

Welsh sheep

Just as he had, to some extent, taken on the characteristics of a weary Mary, the beasts (“brutish”) in the stable, and the manger in the opening sonnet of “Christmas,” Herbert’s speaker now assumes the place of the shepherds. 

In the nativity story (particularly the Luke 2 passage), it is the angels singing (although really there’s no mention of them singing, only speaking), but Herbert puts his twist on this too: his shepherds are the ones singing. Here Herbert is probably playing on the conventions of Renaissance pastoral poetry, where shepherds do a lot of singing. Yet, his point is that the shepherds (of the nativity and in the pastoral poetry) are known for their songs, so can’t the narrator come up with a song as well?

This begins the analogy of lines 3-7. His soul is a shepherd, his flock is his thoughts, words, and deeds, which feed on the pasture of God’s word and drink from the stream of God’s grace. Inherent in this little analogy is a reflection question: on what are we feeding and from what are we drinking? What is my soul, the core of my being, intentionally looking to for its nourishment?

The mention of thoughts, words, and deeds is a reference to a liturgical confession: we have sinned in thought, word, and deed. Surely Herbert is thinking of his position as well. As the pastor (assuming when Herbert wrote “Christmas” he was already leading the little congregation of St. Andrews at Bemerton, outside Salisbury), he is a shepherd responsible for feeding his flock, his congregation.

So, shepherd and flock—one’s own soul and his thoughts, words, & deeds or the pastor and his congregation—shall sing of our one Lord (lines 7, 11). In another sight twist on the nativity story, which, with the angels and shepherds, takes place at night, Herbert focuses on the sun/Son, who came to bring light to the world (John 1:5, 9). Night no longer can take his (the sun’s/Son’s) place: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2). Now that’s something to sing about!

Joy: the Now and the Not-Yet (GH Day 23)

It's Christmas time, and during this time the word "joy" pops up frequently. Maybe it's on Christmas decorations on sale in the stores ("JOY"), maybe it's in Christmas carols you hear or sing ("O tidings of comfort and joy," "Joy to the world"), maybe it's written on the Christmas cards you receive ("Wishing you joy in this holiday season"--or something like that). In southern Louisiana it's on the signs wishing everyone a merry Christmas, or "Joyeaux Noel."

What is this joy we wish people during the holidays? Commercials seem to suggest that if we're simply given the right gift at Christmas, then we'll experience this joy. But when has a physical gift you've been given (and think of your favorite gift ever here) truly brought you lasting joy?

George Herbert (of course!) speaks to this problem in the opening stanza of his poem "Man's Medley":

     Hark how the birds do sing,
          And woods do ring:
All creatures have their joy, and man hath his.
     Yet if we rightly measure,
          Man's joy and pleasure
Rather hereafter than in present is.

Even his opening word "Hark" is reminiscent of Christmas time for us (e.g., "Hark, the herald angels sing"). (What other time of year do we use this word? Granted, it's because of Charles Wesley's lyrics 100 years after Herbert, but now "hark" has Christmas time associations for us readers.) Birds & woods (that is, trees, garland, pine sprigs, red berries): these are also associated with Christmas.

Yet in line 3 Herbert draws a contrast for us between the joy experienced by creatures and that experienced by humans. What is different? We humans can never know true joy in this lifetime. It is "[r]ather hereafter" (6), in Heaven, that we can know true joy. No earthly present, no matter how nice it is, no matter the thought that went into it, can give us lasting joy and pleasure.

Lest we give up on experiencing any joy, or "cheer," as Herbert also calls it, he reassures us in stanza 4:

     Not that he may not here
          Taste of the cheer;
But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head,
     So must he sip and think
          Of better drink
He may attain to after he is dead.

Using another word that we associate with Christmas time, "cheer" (line 20), Herbert draws his illustration from nature. Don't get lost in the pleasures of the here-and-now. They are but foretastes of what is to come, the "better drink" (23) of the joys of Heaven.

Of course, as you no doubt know, the Christmas carol, "Joy to the World, the Lord is come," is really pointing us toward this "hereafter": the 2nd advent of Christ, ushering in the joys to be experienced in His kingdom under His rule. So, as we experience the joys of this holiday season with family and friends, let us remember that this present is only a foretaste of the "cheer," "joy," and "pleasure" to come with our spiritual family in Christ.

The Gift of a Grateful Heart (GH Day 22)

An appropriate poem for the Thanksgiving holidays is George Herbert’s “Gratefulness.” Here are stanzas 1-2, 4, & 7-8 from Christian Classics Ethereal Library:

Gratefulnesse

THou that hast giv’n so much to me, Give one thing more, a gratefull heart. See how thy beggar works on thee                                               By art. He makes thy gifts occasion more, And sayes, If he in this be crost, All thou hast giv’n him heretofore                                               Is lost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perpetuall knockings at thy doore, Tears sullying thy transparent rooms, Gift upon gift, much would have more,                                               And comes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wherefore I crie, and crie again; And in no quiet canst thou be, Till I a thankfull heart obtain                                               Of thee: Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me; As if thy blessings had spare dayes: But such a heart, whose pulse may be                                               Thy praise.

Herbert begins by calling himself—particularly his entreaties for a “grateful heart”—a “beggar,” the antecedent for the pronoun “he” of stanza 2. The logic of stanza 2 is that if God gives gifts to the speaker but does not give the speaker a heart of gratitude, there might as well have not been any gifts at all: “Gift upon gift” (stanza 4), yet these are never enough unless they are accompanied by the gift of gratitude.

Martin Luther's Seal

Herbert acknowledges in this poem that all good gifts come from God (James 1:17), including the ability to be thankful. He plays with this idea throughout by picturing a believer who not only asks, but begs God incessantly for this ability. He also reminds us that an attitude of gratitude is one of the greatest gifts of all.

The final stanza delivers a twist: Herbert wants to have a thankful heart at all times, in all circumstances, not just when things are going well and he feels grateful. To have a pulse of praise flowing through one’s body, pumped through it by a grateful heart and enlivening one’s soul: that lifeblood would be a gift indeed!  

Who’s in Charge Here? (GH Day 21)

Last week I brought the film Signs (by M. Night Shyamalan) into my class and showed a particular scene that illustrates the film’s central question: Is all that happens just coincidence, or is there purpose? Put another way, are we on our own in a world of chance happenings, or is there Someone who is guiding things for a purpose?

The main character, Graham, is a former Episcopal priest who has left the Church and is angry with God because his wife has died in a freak car accident. At this point in the film, alien activity has been observed around the world, and people are understandably anxious. Graham and his family—his children and younger brother, Merrill—are holed up in their farmhouse, trying to decide how to respond to the alien arrival.  

Graham divides the potential responses into two groups of people: Group 1 thinks that what happens is more than coincidence. “Deep down,” explains Graham, “they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there’ll be someone to help them, and that fills them with hope.” For Group 2, however, all is just chance, a 50/50 possibility: it could be good; it could be bad. “Deep down,” says Graham, “they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own, and that fills them with fear.”

“What you have to ask yourself,” concludes Graham, “is ‘what kind of person are you?’” and “[i]s it possible that there are no coincidences?”

“So which type of person are you?” asks Merrill.

“Do you feel comforted?” Graham responds.

“Yeah.”

“Then what does it matter?”

Merrill is disappointed, because the answer does matter and it matters what we believe. Is there a purpose to what we encounter in our lives, or will it at least be used for a good purpose? And is there a God who will guide us through the adversity, providing help and hope?  

In “Longing,” George Herbert’s poem of suffering and complaint, he acknowledges that “[t]o Thee help appertains,” yet questions,

“Hast thou left all things to their course,

And laid the reins

Upon the horse?

Is all lockt? hath a sinner’s plea

            No key?” (43-48)

Huntington Library, CA

So, we know that God is the source of all help, yet sometimes it feels like no one’s holding the reins of the world, and things (usually bad) just happen. Is anyone in charge here, guiding, directing, controlling the world (more generally) and my life (more personally)? This is the first question the poet wrestles with, while the second is if God is in charge, when I call on Him for help, why can’t I seem to get through to Him? Why won’t He answer me and provide help?

Unlike most of his poems, in “Longing,” Herbert does not find an answer, or even a resolution, to the latter question about God hearing and responding. He does, however, provide an answer to the first question:

  “Indeed, the world’s Thy book,

Where all things have their leaf assign’d;” (49-50)

All is not left to chance and coincidence. There is purpose: the world is God’s book. He is writing the story, and that can fill us with hope. Look for the signs.

A Sunset's Challenge to Unbelief (GH Day 20)

Earlier this evening I was reading "Bishop Blougram's Apology" by Robert Browning for my poetry class. It's a lengthy poem & a dramatic monologue (where the narrator is speaking to someone else as if in a monologue or soliloquy within a play, but we only are given his voice and have to construct the surrounding story from what is revealed). It's also in part a work of apologetics (that is, a defense of the Faith: hence, the title).

At one point, the narrator, a bishop giving an interview to an unbelieving journalist, asks him to imagine that they are both unbelievers and to reason from that premise:

And now what are we? unbelievers both,
Calm and complete, determinedly fixed
To-day, to-morrow, forever, pray?
You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think.
. . . how can we guard our unbelief,
Make it bear fruit to us?—the problem here.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death, . . .
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as Nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul, . . .
The grand Perhaps! (lines 174-91)

In other words, writes Browning, humans can think they are safe from challenges to their unbelief, but all it takes is something as seemingly simple as a sunset to awaken the question within our soul: what if there is a God?

One of the joys of living only a few miles from the coast is that I can frequently grab the opportunity to view a sunset on the Pacific Ocean. A few weeks ago, watching one of these sunsets at my new favorite park, I remarked to a friendly passer-by that only God could have painted such a sunset, as it was beyond a human's ability to even conceive of something so varied and beautiful. He agreed, and it opened the door for planting at least this first seed of the Gospel: that God is our Creator.

George Herbert also reminds us that the sun should point us toward our Creator in his poem "Mattens," which is actually about the sunrise. Since I don't ever see the sunrise, I'll apply his words to the setting sun instead:

Teach me Thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see
May both the work and workman show;
Then by a sun-beam I will climb to Thee. (stanza 5)

This final stanza of "Mattens" comes on the heels of a lament that man "did not heaven and earth create, / Yet studies them, not Him by Whom they be" (lines 15-16). Herbert's hope is that creation will reveal to us both itself ("work") and its Creator ("workman").

My picture above captures the sunbeams on the water at Dana Point, CA. In a play on words, Herbert alludes to Christ's cross (sun/Son + beam [of wood]) as the way he will "climb" to the Father. May our thoughts climb to Heaven when we view a sunrise or sunset, and may unbelievers that we know experience this "sunset-touch," as Browning calls it, and come to faith through the Son's beam.

Special Delivery (GH Day 19)

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Who doesn't like to receive real mail? You know, snail mail, the paper-and-envelope type. And the rarer it gets, the more special it becomes. I received a card the other day from a dear friend who ministers to people by sending them encouraging card notes.   

The same day I received her sweet card, I read the news that stamp prices will be going up yet again. I don't even know what a stamp costs now. That's part of the insidious scheme of the "forever" stamps: to keep us in ignorance of how much we're actually paying.   

Aren't you glad that mail to Heaven is still free? Or, rather, that Someone Else has paid the cost of that postage for us. I introduced George Herbert's poem "The Bag" in a previous blog, but only quoted from the first part of the poem: the Incarnation description. The second half of the poem (stanzas 3-6) picks up after Christ has died, accomplishing his mission in the crucifixion:

But as he was returning, there came one          

     That ran upon him with a spear.          

     He, who came hither all alone,          

     Bringing nor man, nor arms, nor fear,          

     Receiv’d the blow upon his side,

And straight he turn’d, and to his brethren cry’d, 

If ye have any thing to send or write,          

     I have no bag, but here is room:          

     Unto my Fathers hands and sight,          

     Beleeve me, it shall safely come.          

     That I shall minde, what you impart;

Look, you may put it very neare my heart. 

Or if hereafter any of my friends          

     Will use me in this kinde, the doore          

     Shall still be open; what he sends          

     I will present, and somewhat more,          

     Not to his hurt.  Sighs will convey

Any thing to me.  Harke, Despair away.*

      

What ties in the rest of "The Bag" with my theme today is its metaphysical conceit (or somewhat far-fetched extended metaphor). As is often the case with Herbert, the poem's title reveals its controlling metaphor: Christ is like a mailbag worn by a messenger (like a postman), delivering our mail to God.   

His incarnate flesh is the bag, its opening the slit in his side produced by the Roman soldier's spear. Like the postman, Christ calls for our mail, for his job is to be the Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2), making intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12). He keeps our requests, writes Herbert, near his heart, and will deliver them safely to the Recipient.(How's that for  certified mail?)   

We have One who not only guarantees us access to God, but will add his "somewhat more" (last stanza) to our requests. Both now and "hereafter," Christ is the true forever stamp.

* “The Bag” quote from Christian Classics Ethereal Library

One Reason I Teach the Wife of Bath's Tale (GH Day 18)

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I was listening to an old sermon from my pastor today and at the same time contemplating the exam I’m giving my British Literature Survey class over medieval literature. My pastor was preaching on Christ’s “emptying himself,” as described in Philippians 2, and how Christ, in doing so, chose to give up his powerful, exalted position in Heaven in order to assume a fleshly form and live a life of poverty. As an example of just how humbled Christ was in the Incarnation, my pastor referenced Matthew’s account of Jesus, who, unlike the foxes with dens and birds with nests, had no place to lay his head. In this way, Jesus in his earthly life was humbled even below these animals.

What struck me was that these are the same two passages I had referenced last week in teaching Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. Further, that Jesus chose to give up his exalted place and humble himself in the Incarnation is what Chaucer’s tale emphasizes as well, and now I think I understand better how the example of Jesus’ choice not only functions within the tale, but serves as a spiritual lesson for the tale’s readers (past and present).

Here’s the passage from Phil. 2:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God

something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death—

even death on a cross! (5-8)

The context is that of selfishness and disunity in the church: “in humility consider others better than yourselves,” writes Paul (3).

This is the lesson that the knight in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale needs to learn. He has been married off to an old woman as a punishment of sorts and now objects to her being poor and of a low class. Hiding behind his aristocratic origins, the knight refuses to be in a union with this woman who is so obviously (in his and society’s minds) beneath him. In answer to his objections to her, the ugly old woman cites the example of Jesus:

The hye God, on whom that we bileve,

In willful povert chees to live his lyf.

And certes evry man, mayden, or wyf,

May understonde that Jesus, hevene king,

Ne wolde nat chese a vicious living.

If God the Son, Heaven’s King, chose (the woman uses this word twice) to give up his high position in order to live a life of poverty, states the woman, than to be poor must not be a bad thing. If it was good enough for Jesus, then it should be good enough for this knight that his new wife comes from a poor, low-class background. Furthermore, the implication is that the knight, who is of the highest class in medieval society, should take the example of Jesus and humble himself, letting go of his selfishness and his class prejudices, to consider this ugly, old woman above himself.

The lesson is just as applicable for us as for Chaucer’s readers or Paul’s readers. Why is it so hard to humble ourselves for the sake of others as the high God did for us? And, yet, it is as hard for us often times as it is for the knight before the low-class woman in Chaucer’s tale (which has a happy ending, by the way—it’s amazing what mutual yielding and a bit of fairy dust can do).

But what does this have to do with George Herbert, you’ve been wondering? Well, because every time I think of Christ’s kenosis in Philippians 2, I think of imagery from Herbert’s poem “The Bag,” in which Christ’s descending from Heaven to Earth in the Incarnation is depicted as a disrobing of the “God of power” (stanza 2). He begins riding through the heavens, clothed in “His majestic robes of glory,” but “one day / He did descend, undressing all the way” (stanza 2). In the next stanza he continues descending, disrobing as he goes:

The stars His ‘tire of light and rings obtained,

    The cloud his bow, the fire His spear,

    The sky His azure mantle gained;

    And when they asked what He would wear,

    He smiled, and said as He did go,

He had new clothes a-making here below (stanza 3).

The Lord throws his weapons of war and his finery onto the stars and other inhabitants of the heavens as one would toss trousers and shirt onto an obliging chair. I’m reminded once again of Chaucer’s knight in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, who stands in the bedroom without his shining armor, coat of arms, and clothing made of fine fabrics as he is confronted by his ugly wife. After all, bedtime is a leveler of classes: peasant and prince both look the same in a humble nightgown.

But back to Christ’s much greater humbling: the “God of power” having shed his attire continues to descend:

When He was come, as travelers are wont,

    He did repair unto an inn.

    Both then, and after, many a brunt

    He did endure to cancel sin;

    And having given the rest before,

Here He gave up His life to pay our score (stanza 4).

From riding majestically in the heavens, God the Son descends to a humble inn, and, having given up his glory, he gives up what remains, his life, for our sake.

What else is there to say?