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!  

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).