Protecting Others' Reputations

In reading Beowulf for the umpteenth time to teach it in my survey class this semester*, I am struck yet again by a repeated theme: a good man (or woman) speaks well of others, covering over their weaknesses if needed. In Seamus Heaney's beautiful, although not very literal, translation of the Old English epic poem, he chooses to use the word "courtesy" to describe right behavior (for instance, in line 613 to describe Wealtheow's proper behavior as queen). The word is not an Old English one, and probably conjures up something more like the chivalric court of King Arthur than an Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, but it gets the point across.

inside the little Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon

I'll cite three instances in the poem of protecting someone's reputation (particularly when there's a weakness to gloss over). The first is when Beowulf is able to defeat the God-cursed monster Grendel when Hrothgar the king (either through his own might or through that of his men) cannot. This could be a "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands" moment (1 Samuel 21:11). But it's not. Instead, the Beowulf poet notes that when the heralds spread the news of Beowulf's conquest of Grendel, "there was no laying of blame on their lord, the noble Hrothgar; he was a good king" (861-2). In other words, they manage to both praise foreign hero Beowulf and protect the reputation of their (the Danes') own king.

The second example is after Beowulf has fought and killed Grendel's Mother. In an effort to make up for insulting Beowulf upon the Geat warrior's arrival in Hrothgar's realm (an example of discourteous behavior), Unferth has lent Beowulf his ancestral sword. This sword, Hrunting, has failed Beowulf in battle--or, rather, regular swords don't seem to work against the scaly skin of these monstrous creatures. Upon return from the (successful) battle, Beowulf doesn't disparage the sword (which would reflect badly on its owner). Instead, he thanks Unferth for the loan. Beowulf "said he had found it a friend in battle / and powerful help; he put no blame / on the blade's cutting edge" (1807-12). In other words, Beowulf tells Unferth, "thank you so much for the help," and leaves it at that. He covers over Unferth's sword's/Unferth's weakness.

The third instance is the one that I'd forgotten about, and that is after what basically amounts to Beowulf's failure in the battle against the dragon. In his old age, and against a fire-breathing foe, Beowulf has found himself outmatched, his own sword this time failing against the dragon's scaly hide. The only reason this foe is conquered is that a young hero, Beowulf's distant cousin Wiglaf, steps up to join in the struggle, plunging his own sword into the dragon's belly (always a more tender spot) and weakening the dragon enough to allow Beowulf's knife to finish the job. Spoiler alert: Beowulf dies from his wounds. Yet, when Wiglaf, immediately afterward, tells what happened in his battle, he puts Beowulf's deeds at the forefront and his own in the background:

. . . God who ordains
who wins or loses allowed him [Beowulf] to strike
with his own blade when bravery was needed.
There was little I could do to protect his life
in the heat of the fray, but I found new strength
welling up when I went to help him.
Then my sword connected and the deadly assaults
of our foe grew weaker, the fire coursed
less strongly from his head. . . . (2874-82)

In other words, Wiglaf subtly protects Beowulf's reputation as the consummate warrior, while Wiglaf is the helper against "our foe." He doesn't emphasize how Beowulf would have been toast (both literally and figuratively) had he, Wiglaf, not joined in the fight.

In these examples of protecting others' reputations, not only am I reminded of the Bible's commands not to gossip or slander (how we tear down others' reputations) (Colossians 3:8), but of the truth that love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8) and of the exhortation to consider others as better than yourself and their interests before your own (Galations 2:3-4).

How can some people think Beowulf is just a story about fights and feasting with no relevance to contemporary life? . . .

* This is an "old book" that is truly a great work. It gets better and better each time one reads it in that there are more things to notice, to appreciate, etc.

Defining Moments on My Academic Path (GH #34)

What follows is a brief talk I shared yesterday with the College of Arts & Sciences faculty at my university, and, of course, it involves literature. :-)

Path through gardens, Scone Palace, Scotland

I grew up loving books.

My mom often read to me when I was little. And by the end of elementary school I was making weekly runs to the library, filling my arms with a stack of books that reached up to my chin. It was a pattern that, more or less, continued up through high school.

When it came time to decide on a major for college, and I visited the school that would become my undergraduate university, I met with a professor to whom the “undecided” students were often directed. I can see now why. Her advice to me was “major in what you love.” So I did: I majored in English, and I’ve never regretted it.

The summer after my sophomore year, I went on a six-week trip with Greater Europe Mission to teach English as a Foreign Language in Latvia. At age 20, I barely knew what I was doing in the classroom, but it was an excellent experience overall.

After that, I knew I wanted to become a professor.

These were the defining moments that led to my choice of discipline.

In grad school at Baylor University I immediately discovered the richness and depth of medieval & Renaissance literature, of poetry, and especially of the devotional poet George Herbert.

It may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues that my doctoral dissertation was a gender studies approach to George Herbert’s poems. It was a lengthy academic exercise, with a critical approach that did not focus much on what I had fallen in love with about Herbert’s poetry—the faith-filled richness of it and the resonance with human experience and the Christian life.

At my dissertation defense, my 3^rd reader—from Baylor’s religion department—was very perceptive. She asked about my topic, “Did it feed your soul?”

The answer was “no.” This defining moment, at the very end of my schooling, was an influence on my choice of approach to my academic discipline.

That approach is to point toward what we can see in literature that “feeds the soul”:

·      truths of human experience and of the spiritual life that remind us that all truth is God’s truth;

·      the beauty of image, or phrasing, or sound that reflects God’s beauty; and

·      the goodness toward which imaginative literature has the power to move perceptive readers.

The opening stanza of George Herbert’s poem “The Elixir” encapsulates the way I hope to approach my life as both scholar and professor:

     Teach me, my God and King,

     In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

     To do it as for thee (1-4)

  

It took a while, but I have slowly been redeeming my dissertation, carving out portions, reworking them, and publishing them as pieces that will, I hope, gently guide readers to set their sights on things above.

Under Contract (GH #33)

"Light of the World" by William Holman Hunt, Keble College, Oxford

How often do we pay attention to what words could mean? Most of us go for the most obvious or first definition that comes to our minds. The English language has such linguistic richness to it, yet sometimes we miss that richness. I've been digging into George Herbert's poem "Christmas," and, in reading it for the hundredth time, I suddenly thought about one of the words: "contracted." I'll quote the stanza, the closing sestet (6 lines) of the sonnet that forms part one of "Christmas":

  O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,

          Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger ;

          Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,

      To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger :

          Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have

          A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.*

I've always read the word “contracted” (first line above) in its meaning of "condensed": God's great glory shrunken to fit into human form in the Incarnation. His "glorious ... "light" drawn into the flesh, blood, & mind of a smaller, lesser being.

But in what other potential ways could the light of God be "contracted"? Why had I never seen the word "contract" contained within "contracted"? So obvious! Time to turn to the Oxford English Dictionary.

For those not familiar with it, the OED is extremely helpful in that it not only gives definitions the word has had over time, but it supplies examples of historical usage of the word. This way I can check to see what meanings the word would have had during Herbert's time of the late sixteenth & early seventeenth centuries, but also examples of how it was used.

So, the word "contracted" in Herbert's time indeed had the meaning of "agreed upon by contract." Now this opens up a new meaning to Herbert's sestet about the Incarnation. Contract: or how about a more familiar word for us: covenant. The New Covenant is an unconditional covenant between God and man that Christ came to fulfill and that he instituted at the Last Supper.

Let me go even further with the now-obsolete definition of "contracted": "agreed upon." What about the Triune God having agreed amongst the 3 persons to establish this new contract to replace the old? (See Herbert's poem "Redemption" for his metaphor of this replacement of old with new.) What about Jesus Christ having agreed to fulfill the New Covenant, not just before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20), but in the Garden of Gethsemene on the eve before: "not my will, but Thine be done" (Matt. 26:39)? I love how Milton's Paradise Lost pictures the Son's agreement in the salvation plan. In Book 3, the Son of God stands up before all Heaven and offers himself as the substitute for mankind: “Me for him, life for life / I offer. On Me let thine anger fall” (3.236-7).

So we have “contracted” as “condensed” (also “shrunken” or “narrowed”) and as “agreed upon by contract,” but we're not done with definitions. Another definition of the adjective "contracted" used in Herbert's time is "betrothed," a theologically rich idea. Christ the Bridegroom is betrothed to his Bride, the Church. The Incarnation of the Son of God anticipated, set into motion by instituting the Church, the ultimate happily-ever-after wedding between the Lamb and his righteous Bride (Revelation 19:7-8). Reflecting on the holiness of Christ and his great sacrifice in both putting aside his divine glory to take on human flesh and bearing the weight of our sins upon the cross, the speaker in “Christmas” feels keenly his own unworthiness: his “dark” and “brutish” soul (line 3 above). Therefore, he asks that his soul be redecorated by the Lord to be a fit place of habitation for God’s glorious light.  

* You can find Herbert’s poem “Christmas” on Luminarium’s Herbert page: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/christmas.htm

Dusty with a Chance of Dirt Balls (GH #32)

"Dust to Dust": ruins of church, Chester, UK

At a conference I attended last spring, a colleague introduced me to A. S. Byatt’s short story called “Raw Material,” published in The Atlantic Monthly in April 2002. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/04/byatt.htm Last week I finally read it.

The main character, a creative writing teacher (Jack), asks the best writer in his class, a slightly deaf older woman (Cicely Fox), what she likes to read. She responds,

"Oh, the old things. They wouldn't interest you young people. Things I used to like as a girl. Poetry increasingly. I find I don't seem to want to read novels much anymore." . . .

He said, "Which poems, Miss Fox?"

"These days, mostly George Herbert."

"Are you religious?"

"No. He is the only writer who makes me regret that for a moment. He makes one understand grace. Also, he is good on dust."

"Dust?" Jack dredged his memory and came up with "Who sweeps a room as for thy laws / Makes that and the action fine."*

"I like 'Church Monuments.' With death sweeping dust with an incessant motion: 'Flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust / That measures all our time; which also shall / Be crumbled into dust.' And then I like the poem where he speaks of his God stretching 'a crumme of dust from Hell to Heaven.' Or 'O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue to cry to thee / And then not heare it crying.'"**

"He knew," Cicely Fox said, "the proper relation between words and things. 'Dust' is a good word."

Herbert does like to use the word “dust.” He often reminds us that we are made from dust (Gen 2:7), will return to dust, and are as dust in comparison with God’s glory and greatness. Herbert takes the idea of man as formed from dust, now acting as supplicant before his Creator (cf. “Denial”), a (literal) step further in “Longing”:

  Behold, thy dust doth stir;

It moves, it creeps, it aims at thee;

Wilt thou defer

To succour me,

Thy pile of dust, wherein each crumme

Says, Come? (stanza 7, lines 37-42)***

I love the image Herbert paints of the creeping dust: poor pathetic dust trying to reach the King with his petition for aid. (Herbert explores this image of God as ruler denying relief to the supplicant later in stanza 10: “Thou dost reign / And rule on high, / While I remain / In bitter grief” [lines 56-59].) Indeed, the speaker is hoping this picture will tug on the Lord’s heartstrings enough to move Him to respond in compassion. Yes, “dust” is a good word.

Not surprisingly, George Herbert’s poems inspired many other poets in the seventeenth century, not the least of which is the early American colonist Edward Taylor, a Reformed minister on the Connecticut frontier.

In the “Prologue” to Taylor’s Preparatory Meditations, the speaker refers to himself as “a Crumb of Dust,” asking the Lord to “Inspire this Crumb of Dust till it display / Thy Glory through’t: and then thy dust shall live” (lines 21-22). We may be dust, Taylor acknowledges, but if God “inspire” us (in the original meaning of the word, as in God breathing into man the breath of life in the creation), His glory can both shine through us and give us life. (I might also note that Taylor’s opening poem is about humbly taking up his pen in a poetic theodicy: to demonstrate God’s “Properties” [that is, attributes; line 28]. He’s playing on the idea of poets being “inspired.”)

 

Taylor’s poems (almost exclusively religious) are evocative in their own right. He knows how to use words as well, but, unlike Herbert, who uses them in subtle and clever ways, Taylor almost shocks with them. I’ll leave you with one of my favorites, from his “Meditation. Rev. 3.5. The same shall be cloathed in White Raiment.” In the first stanza, Taylor’s speaker considers himself too lowly to be arrayed in white robes with all the saints, calling himself “but a jumble of gross Elements” (line 5). As the second stanza begins, the poet has found his vivid image. What does it look like for a sinful human being to wear the white robes of the righteous? According to Taylor, it looks like “A Dirt ball dresst in milk white Lawn” (line 7).****

I’ve always thought of a big ball of brown dirt dressed in one of those white, ruffled christening gowns. It’s a metaphor that’s almost ludicrous, and yet does not a ball of dirt or a crumb of dust more adequately express how small sinful humanity is compared to God’s holiness than what we usually envision?

* From Herbert’s “The Elixir.”

** From Herbert’s “Church Monuments,” “The Temper 1,” and “Denial,” respectively.

*** Herbert’s spelling of crumb (crumme) enhances its sight rhyme with “Come.”

**** An excellent edition of Taylor’s poems is the one edited by Donald E. Stanford and published by UNC Chapel Hill (The Poems of Edward Taylor).

Praying Like a Beggar (GH # 31)

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church in Harlech, Wales

In a sermon on prayer this morning, my pastor challenged the congregation to “pray as a beggar.” His biblical text was Psalm 66 (v. 17 “I cried to him with my mouth”), but so many verses from the Psalms would have suited this point as well. Crying out to God beggar-fashion, explained my pastor, is not the same as standing on the street corner with a sign, hoping someone will eventually stop. Instead, it’s putting aside all self-sufficiency and coming to the Lord for everything. “Apart from me,” says Jesus, “you can do nothing” (John 15).

George Herbert’s wonderful poem “Longing,” full of the frustration of unanswered prayer, uses in its second-to-last stanza the metaphor of the beggar. I’ll quote stanzas 11-13 of this 14-stanza poem:

  Lord, didst thou leave thy throne

Not to relieve? How can it be

That thou art grown

Thus hard to me?

Were sin alive, good cause there were

To bear:

  But now both sin is dead,

And all thy promises live and bide;

That wants his head,

These speak and chide,

And in thy bosom pour my tears,

As theirs.

Lord Jesu, hear my heart,

Which hath been broken now so long,

That ev’ry part

Hath got a tongue:

Thy beggars grow: rid them away

To-day. (lines 61-88) 

In this poem, Herbert’s speaker has been crying out to be heard by the Lord, but he has not received (or perceived) a response. He tries various arguments to persuade God to respond. Stanza 11 asks why God would condescend to leave his throne (in the Incarnation) and come down to humanity and yet not relieve human suffering? Herbert follows this argument in stanza 11 with another line of reasoning: if sin were getting in the way of the speaker’s communion with God, then that would be an appropriate cause of God’s not hearing his prayers. Herbert’s reasoning here is modeled after that of the psalmist in Ps 66:18: “If I had cherished iniquity [sin] in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

Yet sin is not the problem. Again following the psalmist (66:19 “But truly God has listened”), Herbert reveals in stanza 12 that (a) “sin is dead” and (b) God’s “promises live.” Sin is not gone (it “wants his [its] head,” that is, its way), but God’s promises keep the speaker from completely giving in to sin (“these [the promises] speak and chide” the narrator). Not only that, but God’s promises are pleading to the Lord on behalf of the speaker (“these . . . in thy bosom pour my tears”).

Herbert’s speaker is left with no answers still. He’s a child of God (stanza 10, lines 59-60), he isn’t given over to sin, and he has God’s promises on his side. Approaching God with arguments to persuade him (logos) isn’t working. Time to resume pathos, reminding the Lord about the speaker’s broken heart in stanza 13. Even in the midst of trying to tug on God’s compassion, Herbert slips in one more argument. If God won’t respond through positive appeals, maybe he will through a negative one. The speaker envisions the pieces of his broken heart each having its own tongue, surrounding the King like a bunch of beggars. All you have to do to get rid of these annoyances, the speaker states, is to grant their request. I’m reminded of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow, who wears the judge down with her repeated requests (Luke 18:1-8). (Many a mother has no doubt been worn down by her children’s requests this way. “Fine! You can have whatever you want. Just stop bothering me.”)

Herbert uses this metaphor of begging in prayer in the poem “Gratefulness” as well, where he is asking God to give him a grateful heart. “See how thy beggar works on thee / by art,” his speaker says (lines 3-4), where “begging” is revealed to be a tactic to move God through “Perpetual knockings at thy door” (13).

While the speaker has not yet received any answers to his requests in Herbert’s poem “Longing,” other poems from Herbert, such as “Praise 2,” reveal the poet’s responses to the Lord having heard his prayers:

Thou hast granted my request,

     Thou hast heard me;

Thou didst note my working breast,

     Thou hast spared me. (lines 5-8)     

Psalm 66 concludes with praise to the God who does answer prayer, in His own time; who forgives sin when we confess (1 Jn 1:9); and who loves his children with an everlasting love: “Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!” (66:20).

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!