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!  

The Original Iron Man

  Four hundred years before Tony Stark, there was an “yron man” named Talus created by Edmund Spenser in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene (and unlike everything else that purports to be “epic” out there, it actually is an epic, the longest narrative poem in the English language, full of heroes and monsters and battles and descents to the underworld . . . but I digress).

an early copy of The Faerie Queene, Huntington Library, CA

Talus is nicknamed the “yron [iron] man” in The Faerie Queene (5.1.12.2), and he is actually a sidekick (a squire) to a knight named Artegall, who is the knight of Justice. Talus helps Artegall carry out justice: punishing those who have transgressed and restoring those who have been victims of injustice. Here is how Spenser introduces Talus:

His name was Talus, made of yron mold,

Immoveable, resistless, without end.

Who in his hand an yron flail did hold,

With which he thresht out falsehood, and did truth unfold. (5.1.12)*

While Tony Stark as Iron Man tends to act out of personal revenge (this is emphasized in the latest movie) just as often as he responds from a sense of justice, Talus the Yron Man is concerned solely with justice, which, according to the passage above, is just as much about ferreting out the truth as it is about punishing evildoers.

Talus uses his flail to separate truth from falsehood just as one separates wheat from chaff. Jesus and Pontius Pilate have a discussion about truth in John 18:37-38. Jesus states that he has come into the world “to bear witness to the truth,” to which Pilate responds dismissively, not unlike skeptics of today, “What is truth?” Pilate, who is not interested in the answer here, had no way of knowing that Jesus had given answers to the question in the previous evening’s conversation with his disciples (“I am the way, the truth, and the life” Jn 14:6) and personal prayer (“Your [God’s] word is truth” Jn 17:17).   

The imagery of threshing is undoubtedly alluding to images used for Jesus as Judge in Scripture, meting out God’s justice. See, for instance, Matthew 3:12 or Luke 3:17.)

Maybe like Tony Stark, Talus lacks mercy. The “yron man” sometimes carries out justice too far and his flailing of foes has to be curbed. One such instance occurs after he and the “lady knight” Britomart defeat Radigund, the Queen of the Amazons, freeing the enslaved and emasculated men (which include Britomart’s fiancé), but encountering resistance from the Amazonian citizens. Talus “threshes” the citizens deserving of punishment in “his revenge of spirit” (5.7.36.9). Okay, so maybe Talus is like the other Iron Man—sometimes desire for revenge overpowers a concern for simple justice. Britomart, seeing that revenge has taken over, exercises mercy to make Talus stop. Justice must be tempered by mercy.

Unlike Tony Stark, Talus the “yron man” is not egotistical. He is content to be a sidekick, not the center of attention, a squire, not a knight. And, again unlike the other Iron Man, he’s not the most interesting character in Spenser’s collection of “avengers” within his epic poem. Much more interesting is the warrior maid Britomart, for instance, but I’ll have to save her for another post. . . .  

* I have modernized some of Spenser’s intentionally archaic spelling to make the text more easily readable. The parenthetical citation in Arabic numerals is divided into Book, Canto, Stanza, and Line # of The Faerie Queene.

The Hyde Within

My pastor recently finished a series on temptation, based on the passage from Luke’s Gospel about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Coincidentally, I’ve been simultaneously reading Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, a book about how one man’s desire to give into his sinful flesh leads to his downfall. 

 

The Writers' Museum (devoted in part to Stevenson), Edinburgh, Scotland

It’s a simple story: Mr. Hyde is the “good doctor” Jekyll’s evil persona—the creature he turns into when he gives himself over completely to his fleshly desires, untempered by moral conscience. Jekyll explains this in a letter to his friends at the end of the novel. At one point, Jekyll becomes so alarmed by the unrestrained evil of Hyde that he determines to give “Hyde” up for good (that is, to stop taking the potion that strips away his good side, leaving only his fleshly appetites). It is also becoming more difficult for Jekyll to return to his good self after each Hyde binge. Jekyll explains in this letter to his friends,

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”

Stevenson acknowledges here the universal battle with sin that each person fights within him- or herself. It is as old as Adam & Eve in the Garden. Jekyll decides that he wants to choose the “better part,” to do good, to be good, but in himself does not have the strength to be a good man. I’m reminded of the Apostle Paul in Romans, saying, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (7:18b).

Yet, Dr. Jekyll’s attempts to say no to temptation are half-hearted and therefore ineffective. He tries to go “cold turkey” from his Hyde persona, but without cutting off the possibility completely. He admits in his letter,

   “Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.”

It’s like the smoker trying to give up smoking but insisting on hanging around his friends who light up their cigarettes in his presence. How can one avoid the temptation if one is not willing to cut oneself off from it? How can I avoid eating donuts if I persist in standing near the donut table at church? Jekyll keeps his “Hyde house” and “Hyde clothes,” inviting the temptation—in fact, as he admits, “ready” to give in. Not surprisingly, he tells us that he’s only able to stay the course for two months before desires become stronger than conscience:

“For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.”

This is a spoiler alert: Jekyll, unable to resist temptation on his own, gives in completely to his Hyde persona, and the consequences are dishonor and death. Stevenson’s short novel is a powerful testimony to where the intentional and habitual practice of giving way to our sinful desires leads. The Apostle Paul, at the conclusion of his chapter in Romans on the seemingly futile struggle against our sinful flesh, provides the answer: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25a).

A Quarrel Between Friends

Balquhidder, Scotland

I close my British Novel to 1900 course with Kidnapped, an adventure tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. The two main characters are David Balfour, an orphan on the cusp of manhood from the Scottish Lowlands, and Alan Breck Stewart, a Jacobite rebel from the Highlands. You might call their friendship a "bromance" or maybe a mentoring relationship, but, either way, they are an "odd couple," opposite in politics and separated by age. It's inevitable that they clash, the ultimate conflict occurring as they scramble through the heather, away from the English troops.

Alan, in a moment of weakness, has taken David's money and lost it gambling, and so we pick up with David sulkily giving Alan the silent treatment. "I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth. . . ," says the narrating voice of David, "now incensed both against my companion and myself. For the best part of two days, he was unweariedly kind; silent indeed, but always ready to help, and always hoping . . . that my displeasure would blow by. For the same length of time, I stayed in myself, nursing my anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes as if he had been a bush or a stone" (chap. 24).

Stevenson, writing in the late 1800s, labels each man's reactions as what they are: sin. "I, angry and proud," states David-as-narrator, "and drawing what strength I had from these two violent and sinful feelings: Alan angry and ashamed, ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that I had taken it so ill." Stevenson identifies here the power of sinful thoughts and feelings. Davie for a while feeds off of his resentment and gains the strength from those negative emotions to keep on the journey.

Ultimately that bitterness eats him up inside, "but I was too miserable to repent," he comments. "So I went like a sick, silly and bad-hearted schoolboy, feeding my anger against a fellow-man, when I would have been better on my knees, crying on God for mercy" (chap. 24). David's physical illness has been coming on for some time, but it seems likely that his spiritual sickness adds to that physical ailment, resulting in Davie's complete breakdown in the chapter.

Yet when Davie has worked the tension up and tried to provoke a swordfight to finally "have it out" with Alan, it is Alan's laying down of his sword that prompts David's repentance and the men's reconciliation through forgiveness:

"At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan's kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost forever that doughty friend" (chap. 24).

David echoes Scripture in his realization of the truth that a word spoken cannot be taken back, and, with his realization of sin, his spiritual sickness clears away, opening his eyes to several truths: he has sinned against his friend, gratitude for Alan's help and friendship in the past would have worked as a preventative measure against sin, and the consequences of his sin might be losing his friend forever.

This chapter from Stevenson's Kidnapped illustrates biblical truth about giving way to sin and how it destroys relationships. It also shows how believers, through repentance, humility, and compassion, can restore relationships. Witness the Apostle Paul's instructions to Christians in Ephesians 4:25-32:

"let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. . . . Be angry and do not sin. . . . Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up. . . . Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (ESV).

Finally, Davie puts his pride away, and as he humbles himself before Alan, the physical illness takes over, arousing Alan's compassion. They both ask for forgiveness, to which David responds, "We're neither one of us to mend the other--that's the truth. We must just bear and forbear" (chap. 24). They have been reconciled to each other, but recognize that each man is a sinner. They will doubtless sin against each other again and must learn to bear with each other. (Galations 6:1-5 is a good passage here.)

Good lessons to apply to any relationship we have with people, especially other Christians, in this life. Novels like Stevenson's are a reason why we should do more reading of the old books.

In the Desert (GH #28)

I do not understand the fascination with the desert. It’s all around me in Southern California: both the desert itself and people’s fascination with it. The desert to me has always seemed dirty—everything tinged with the same color of dust. My readers, including my dear brother, who actually prefers to go off driving into the New Mexico desert, are yelling at their screens right now: the desert is not monotone, it’s full of life, it’s no more dirty than a tropical forest, etc. But, for me, the desert represents a wasteland, dry and barren of possibility, open and exposed to the scorching sun. If I have to drive through it, it’s something to pass through as quickly as possible.

My pastor last Sunday began a series of sermons on Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the desert (Luke 4). He highlighted the contrast between the first temptation with the first Adam in the lush garden of Eden and this second temptation with the “last Adam” (I Cor 15:45) in the arid desert. Jesus Christ, led by the Holy Spirit, intentionally put himself into a climate where he would be tempted in the most natural ways (hunger, thirst, discomfort, discouragement), as well as in supernatural ones (Satan’s challenges), in order to demonstrate for us how to win the battle against temptation.

Life is, of course, replete with its lush forests and arid deserts, its times of plenty and its times of drought. For me, the desert is a temptation: a temptation to complain and be discontent. George Herbert expresses this well in his poem “The Bunch of Grapes.” Likening the experience of the Christian life to that of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, Herbert says,

“We have our sands and serpents, tents and shrouds;

     Alas, our murmurings come not last!” (17-18)

So true: our response in the desert tends to be complain first; ask questions later.

I will quote another line from Herbert, this time from his poem “Home”:

“Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,

     Which way so-e’re I look, I see” (49-50)

The desert is a temptation: to despair in the wasteland. All seems barren. No possibilities. Maybe the seeming wasteland continues for as far as the eye can see.

What might it mean to embrace the desert? I’m not sure I’m ready for that one. Christ’s response to his temptation in the desert must be a key to our survival in the times of drought in life, though: stay rooted in God’s Word, know that the Holy Spirit can enable one to win the battle against temptation, turn to the Savior who can sympathize with us in our temptations, and maintain hope of the reward to come as a result of winning the battle.

So, should I yearn to see the “oasis” (to belabor the metaphor), or should I learn to appreciate the desert? I don’t know that I have the answer.

Christ in the Winepress (GH #27)

On Thursday of this Easter Christians around the world remembered the Lord’s Supper and Jesus’ vigil in the Garden of Gethsemene, and on Good Friday we recalled the day of Christ’s crucifixion. I cannot think of a better George Herbert poem to accompany these two days than “The Agony,” which develops the theme of Christ's sacrifice through the metaphor of the winepress.

“The Agony” begins, however, not with Jesus’ Passion, but with scientific exploration:

Philosophers have measured mountains,

Fathomed the depths of seas, of states, and kings;

Walked with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:

But there are two vast, spacious things,

The which to measure it doth more behove;

Yet few there are that sound them,—Sin and Love. (1-6)

The speaker of the poem opens with the challenge of measuring geographical locations and political entities, and then switches to the more difficult task of measuring two abstract ideas: Sin and Love.

As a scientific observer and experimenter in the poem, Herbert remains distant from the object of his observation, which is the agony of Christ, until the final two lines of the poem, where the scientific experiment becomes a personal and spiritual experience for the speaker. In the second stanza, the poet as observer describes the agony of Christ:

            Who would know Sin, let him repair

Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see

A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,

            His skin, his garments bloody be.

Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain

To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein. (7-12)

Herbert’s references to wringing, bloody garments, pressing, and forcing would have evoked in his readers the familiar winepress image from the Old Testament and Revelation. One of the most extensive passages focusing on the winepress image comes from Isaiah 63, which features a dialogue between Isaiah the prophet and a mysterious man wearing a robe sprinkled with wine/blood:

 

[Isaiah:]  Who is this . . . that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength? 

[Man:]  I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

[Is:]  Why art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him who treadeth in the winefat?

[Man:]  I have trodden the winepress alone. . . ; for I will tread them in mine anger, . . . and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my rainment. (63:1-3)

In 1623 (during George Herbert’s university years) popular preacher Lancelot Andrewes gave an Easter sermon on this Isaiah 63 passage and discussed the winepress imagery at length. The man with the blood-stained garments is Christ, says Andrewes, and the Scripture passage is a prophecy of two winepresses: the Winepress of Redemption and the Winepress of Vengeance (220).*

Lancelot Andrewes states, "A double wine-presse . . . we find; Christ was in both. . . . In the former, He was himselfe troden and pressed: He was the grapes and clusters himselfe. In this later heere, He that was troden before, gets up again, and doth heere tread upon, and tread downe . . . upon some others. The Presse he was troden in, was his Crosse and Passion" (230-31). The second press is Christ's triumph over his enemies, which Andrewes says occurred during the Resurrection and will also occur in the execution of God's divine wrath in the end times.

Focusing on this first pressing mentioned by Andrewes in his sermon, that of the Passion of Christ, Herbert's poem "The Agony" uses the winepress image to refer to the weight of sin pressing Christ during the Passion. On Mount Olivet, the place of Jesus' prayer to God and betrayal by Judas, Jesus was tormented by the cup of suffering he knew he would have to taste on the cross. "Wrung with pains" (9), he sweat drops of blood. Andrewes calls this agony of Jesus' the first strain of his pressing.

Christ being pressed in the winepress of "The Agony's" second stanza produces the wine of stanza three, which states,

            Who knows not Love, let him assay

And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike

Did set again abroach; then let him say

            If ever he did taste the like.

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine. (13-18)

The act of the winepress is compared to the Passion of Christ, and Christ's body is transformed by Herbert into a wine barrel, “set . . . abroach” or punctured (15). The cup of suffering, which is the curse of Adam's sin that Jesus would take upon himself, turns into the cup of blessing and salvation after he has been pressed on the cross, and the new cup is offered to all who will partake of it. Love in “The Agony” becomes a liquid substance, felt by God as blood and by the speaker as wine through the symbolic nature of Holy Communion.

As Henry Vaughan, an admirer of Herbert's poetry, states in his own poem “The Passion,” Christ as the vine was "prest / To be my feast!" (19-20). Let us drink deeply of His divine love as we remember His sacrifice this Easter.

* Andrewes, Lancelot. Sermons. Ed. G. M. Story. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1967.