Author: admin

          The Call

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: 
Such a way as gives us breath;
Such a truth as ends all strife;
Such a life as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: 
Such a light as shows a feast;
Such a feast as mends in length;
Such a strength as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: 
Such a joy as none can move;
Such a love as none can part;
Such a heart as joys in love.

"Christian faith is a religion in the vocative. It invokes God to come and touch us back into life." (Oakley) 

Two Bible references guide the reader. Almost the last words of the New Testament, "Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22.20) The first line inevitably recalls John 14.6. "I am the way, and the truth and the life…" But other references are interwoven throughout: Christ the light of the world, the Eucharist as feast, the fullness of joy that is mutual between God who is love and the heart of the beloved lover. The poem demonstrates the intricacy of the ties between lover and beloved, and the tone is that of one who has learned to trust a love that is mutual, reciprocated and the source of the heart's joy.  

Travelling uphill, you get breathless, but not in following the One who 'gives us breath' for the journey. Truth was dangerous and conflicted in Herbert's times, post Reformation and a few years before Civil War; but in Herbert's lexicon the purpose and meaning of truth is to end strife. The life of Jesus 'killeth death', the truth of the redemptive death and resurrection life of Christ is here compacted into a paradox. Or as Herbert's poetic mentor Donne wrote, "Death, thou shalt die!"  

The middle stanza is about the domestic happiness of friends at a feast. The food and wine are on show, high-lighted by the presence of the host; the wine is the best wine, long maturing and mellowing; and the guests are there because made confident and strong by the welcome and the invitation. Those familiar with Herbert's poems will already heard the echo from Love (III), when the Love asks the one invited if he 'lacked any thing", "A guest I answered, worthy to be here / Love said, you shall be he." 

The first line of the last stanza is a perfectly balanced love call. The joy of love is uniquely powerful, especially when love itself is such that nothing can separate lover and beloved. (Romans 8.39). The circular motion of the verse, the words of the first line recyled in the last line, gives the verse, and indeed the poem, a circulatory structure, like a heart in which love and joy are the systolic and then diastolic phases of the Christian heartbeat. That was relatively new science in Herbert's day, but just maybe, we should be careful about dismissing the scientific knowledge of this well connected and well read country parson still alive in late Renaissance England.

In any case, the simplicity of the poem is effective because of the deceptively complicated structure and interplay of one syllable words. So much of Herbert's poetry is about sin, guilt, unworthiness, personal failure, frustrated longing, anxiety, fear of rejection, and all those other clouds and over-shadowings that obscure the light of love and drain the joy of the heart. Not here. This is a love call, a cry of the heart that expects the full response of welcome, warmth and mutual joy.

So much is on our minds in the current crisis. But at least once a day, just as we are lifted by that one daily outing for exercise and daylight, it might help us to turn to a poem like this. Take some time to remember what sunlight is like, what it means to walk in the presence of the One who is the light of the world, and the way, the truth and the life. Then to pray for strengthened trust in the One who is the light of life, "And such a Life as killeth death." 

Lift up your hearts!  We lift them Lord to Thee.    

   

          A True Hymne          

MY joy, my life, my crown!
     My heart was meaning all the day,
          Somewhat it fain would say:
And still it runneth mutt’ring up and down
With onely this, My joy, my life, my crown.

          Yet slight not these few words:
     If truly said, they may take part
          Among the best in art.
The finenesse which a hymne or psalme affords,
Is, when the soul unto the lines accords.

          He who craves all the minde,
     And all the soul, and strength, and time,
          If the words onely ryme,
Justly complains, that somewhat is behinde
To make his verse, or write a hymne in kinde.

          Whereas if th’ heart be moved,
     Although the verse be somewhat scant,
          God doth supplie the want.
As when th’ heart sayes (sighing to be approved)
O, could I love! And stops: God writeth, Loved.

So what makes a good hymn? Is it the poetry, the coinciding rhyme of words with rhythm of music? What kind of hymn can ever do justice to the God being praised, adored, or glorified. How can any human words have adequate descriptive range and affirmative power?  

All Herbert has wanted to say all day is, "My joy, my life, my crown." But how to expand on that, enhance those words, find better words, shape and craft language into the art form of the true hymn? And at the end of a frustrating day of muttering, pacing up and down, and countless scrunched up drafts tossed in the direction of the rubbish bin, all he has left are the words he started with – "My joy, my life my crown." This is writer's block getting in the way of worship!

The second stanza Herbert gives himself a talking to. What's wrong with those three words, joy, life, crown? They say what's needed. God is his joy: Psalm 3.4 "Then will I go to God my exceeding joy…" God is his life: Deuteronomy 30.20 "For he is thy life…"; God is to be crowned, Isaiah 28.5: "In that day shall the Lord of Hosts be a crown of glory."

Herbert's problem is that joy, life and glory are commonplace attributions to God in Scripture. They have no edge of originality, no poetic imagination. Then he thinks, "that's not the point." If they are said from the heart, truly meant, then they constitute a true hymn, "when the soul unto the lines accords." Problem solved. Well, not quite.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul strength and…." And what? Herbert's first readers knew their Scripture, much of it by heart. They would be expecting that word, "heart". What they get is time, to rhyme with 'rhyme'! The stanza is playfully incoherent, as the poet tries to find a way of putting heart into his words, thus making a true hymn that reflects and expresses his genuine devotion. For that, who needs poetic art? Well, Herbert does. His art, his 'utmost art' is his way of loving God.

Then the word heart appears:

Whereas if th’ heart be moved,
     Although the verse be somewhat scant,
          God doth supplie the want.

All this time and trouble trying to draft the perfect hymn, a true hymn, in order to prove his love; only to find it is God who makes up the difference between Herbert's inadequate words and the worship and devotion Herbert wants to say and sing. When it comes to our worship being acceptable in God's sight, the last word is God's. As in this poem. Herbert has been trying to prove his love through his art; but what enables true worship, and what makes a hymn true, is that "we love Him because He first loved us." I John 4.19. 

Finally, as Herbert rabbits on about not being able to articulate his love for God, he is interrupted by God taking the pen, scoring out the latest failed draft, and writing the word "Loved". It isn't Herbert's love that drives this relationship, it is God's love. This God who is his joy, and life and crown. Herbert has distilled the entire Gospel and the human experience of it into the last word of his poem, "Loved." We love because He first loved us. End of!

           
         

                                          JESU

Jesu is in my heart, his sacred name
Is deeply carved there; but th' other week
A great affliction broke the little frame,
Ev'n all to pieces; which I went to seek:
And first I found the corner, where was J,
After, where ES, and next, where U was graved.
When I had got these parcels, instantly
I sat me down to spell them, and perceived
That to my broken heart he was I ease you,
                    And to my whole is JESU.

"Clearly Herbert liked his miniatures and liked them to come out in the form of puzzles, miniature toys for the mind." (Drury, page 345)

Think of a china jug knocked off the shelf and breaking on the kitchen work surface; or a favourite ornament nudged by the cat onto the hearth. A minor domestic drama becomes for Herbert the framed narrative of salvation. The body of Jesus broken and restored again; the Christian heart engraved with the name of Jesus shattered by affliction, and needing pieced together again.

Herbert understood broken hearts, starting with his own. Fumbling around for all the broken pieces, he tries to repair and restore the fragments to something like the original. And in doing so he sees something that would never have occurred to him.

As he works on restoring his broken heart it dawns on him that the sacred name JESU annealed on its surface like a signature of ownership, is also a promise of comfort; "I ease you." There is here a strong echo of Jesus' great invitation, too obvious for it not to cross Herbert's mind: "Come unto me you who are burdened and heavy laden; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11.28. 

In Greek there is no consonant "J"; so Jesu is really Iesu. So "I ease you" becomes an even more obvious pun, I  ES  U. That's almost textspeak! Jesus is the one who eases the burdened and heavy laden heart.

Herbert is an early example in English poetry of finding novel ways of extolling the name of Jesus, an approach picked up by later hymn writers, especially Charles Wesley, who knew Herbert's poetry well. His hymn 'O for a heart to praise my God' is one of Wesley's key texts on Christian holiness being perfected through divine love. The hymn ends with the same image of the inscribed heart: 'Write thy new name upon my heart,/ Thy new best name of love.

It's late in Lent; and we are living through deeply disturbing times. For all its playful and perhaps overplayed wit, there is still real art in Herbert's miniature of a domestic drama of brokenness repaired, and the heart comforted in the process. I ease you, I ES U, the name of Jesus, annealed on hearts that know affliction, and will know repair. IESU – There's a text to send, perhaps first to ourselves. 

 

Love-Joy

As on a window late I cast mine eye,
I saw a vine drop grapes with J and C
Annealed on every bunch. One standing by
Asked what it meant. I (who am never loath
To spend my judgement) said, It seemed to me
To be the body and the letters both
Of Joy and Charity. Sir, you have not missed,
The man replied; it figures JESUS CHRIST.

Herbert is back in seriously cheerful mood. The poet is playing with the reader, who will have guessed by line two what JC stands for. The narrator seems inexplicably obtuse to suggest they referred to Joy and Charity. Of course he is wrong, it figures Jesus Christ. Everybody knows that.

Except. Except he is not wrong. The narrator is not mistaken, has not missed. The reader is left to work out how Joy and Charity figures Jesus Christ. But it isn't a hard puzzle to solve; Jesus Christ is the bringer of joy and love, the embodiment of God's good news. Jesus Christ, JC, is the one whose birth brought good tidings of great joy, and whose death was an act of divine love which was an eternity in the planning.

Sin is to miss the mark, and to live "as it seems to me". At the centre of the poem the poet admits he's never slow to speak his mind and tell the world what's what. His mistake is made right by the "One standing by." That's what Jesus has done, redeemed all those mistakes we make because we are never slow to decide what we think is right and wrong, as if we had full knowledge of good and evil. Remember where that points to,the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? 

This is one of many biblical allusions. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy…", and of course Jesus' central claim, "I am the true vine….abide in me…" The fruit of the vine and the juice of the grape become wine, a symbol of love poured out in eucharistic gladness. and noisily proclaimed in joyful celebration. JC is prominently stamped on every bunch, an immediately recognisable logo, which stands for joy and charity, festivity (joy) and hospitality (charity), which find their source, inspiration and energy in Jesus Christ. "Jesus Christ is behind every exercise of joy and charity…making those virtues possible." (Helen Vendler). 

             

Hope

I gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he
An anchor gave to me.
Then an old prayer-book I did present:
And he an optic sent.
With that I gave a vial full of tears:
But he a few green ears.
Ah Loiterer! I'll no more, no more I'll bring:
I did expect a ring.

We only know the full force of hope when we live through delay, frustration and longing. Hope is hard work, especially when all the evidence seems to make what is hoped for impossible.

Hope is a Loiterer. By definition what is hoped for is beyond our immediate control or we could, and would, make it happen. Instead of giving what we hope for right now and for the asking, Hope defers.

Three couplets describe the negotiations between the poet and Hope (Christ). The watch is a timepiece, new technology in Herbert's time; so Herbert gives all his time to Christ (Hope). In exchange he gets an anchor. The obvious link is Hebrews 6.19:"the hope set before us, an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast…" So instead of giving what is hoped for, Hope gives the strength to hold on and wait. The cruciform shape of the anchor points the reader to the cross, and to the stability and security of being anchored in the eternal love displayed there. 

The Prayer Book in Herbert's time is an emblem of long term, regular and faithful devotion. So Herbert effectively casts up his years of devout loyalty to the liturgy and to the church, as a negotiating package. But instead of realised hopes he is given a telescope to be able to see what is hoped for, while at the same time being compelled to live with distance, and that frustrating not yet, that makes hope such hard work.

The vial of tears is the gift of his repentance, the proof of his love, the evidence of hope's intensity. Echoing Psalm 8.8 "put my tears into thy bottle", Herbert is asking God to take his tears as proof he has waited long enough. But not quite. Green ears of grain point to a later harvest, and it was only a few green ears. Once again hope is disappointed by wanting it all early, and the response is again a reminder of both assurance and deferment. Hope doesn't become reality on demand. But the tears haven't been bottled. They have irrigated the grains of hope and now the green ears promise eventual harvest.  

Trust Herbert to find a new word for Christ – Loiterer! In Herbert's day the word was used to describe the person who delayed paying their bills! One of the levers in a negotiation between parties is the decision to walk away from the table. Impatience, hurry and compulsion inevitably find hope a frustrating process. So "I'll no more; no more I'll bring" is an ultimatum to force Hope's hand. 

Truth is, he didn't need to bring anything. Hope is a promise guaranteed by Christ; his promise is as sure as an anchor, is visible through the telescope of faith looking upward, is evidenced by green ears of grain. The fact that Herbert wanted a ring. This has a double meaning. The ring of marriage points to the spiritual union of the Christian with Christ; the ring as symbol of completeness and perfection points to the full blessing of eternity. The full consummation is future; for now we live in hope.

This short poem teaches us something we now need to know about hope. We look on a world forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic. We hope so many things; for the safety of those we love, for a vaccine, for our local communities to be responsible, caring and constructive, for a return to a way of life without this fear and loss of control, for the safety and health of all those who are keeping essential services going, the NHS staff, food suppliers, emergency services, for ourselves an eventual return to human community and flourishing, but perhaps with a clearer idea of why it is important to care about our planet, our human communities, and the economy as servant not slave-master.

We hope these things, and so we pray for them. With Herbert's impatience; with what Jesus called importunity, that noisy persistence that won't shut up. And in our hoping and praying, we will hold on to the anchor, look through the optic towards a future in God's purposes, and imagine those green ears that confirm there will again be harvest.      

                   

The Storm

If as the winds and waters here below
Do fly and flow,
My sighs and tears as busy were above;
Sure they would move
And much affect thee, as tempestuous times
Amaze poor mortals, and object their crimes.

Stars have their storms, ev'n in a high degree,
As well as we.
A throbbing conscience spurred by remorse
Hath a strange force:
It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,
Dares to assault, and besiege thy door.

There it stands knocking, to thy musick's wrong,
And drowns the song.
Glory and honour are set by till it
An answer get.
Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.

 

Somewhere in his memory, perhaps as a child, the poet remembers Storm Herbert! Thunder and lightning, gales and rain, instilled the fear of elemental powers beyond human control. The borderline between awe and terror is quite easily crossed when human beings are caught up in  nature turned tempestuous.

The natural world is often the starting point for Herbert's poetry of the inner life and spiritual reflection. For Herbert the world of nature is "the creator's eloquent countenance", a thought similar to Calvin's view of creation as the "theatre of God's glory."

Storms are for Herbert a powerful metaphor for a conscience that is troubled and in turmoil, his feelings and affections an inner storm of remorse, guilt and emotional distress. So he storms heaven's doors,and uses the metaphor of the storm to depict the laying of a siege and hammering on God's door till he gets an answer.

The throbbing conscience, the driving of remorse and the frantic cry for an answering word that makes the wrong right. This is Herbert at his most confrontational with God. In his Prayer sonnet he had said prayer is like "an engine against th'Almightie". 

Importunate prayer, that is a refusal to be put off by not getting an answer, has a long tradition in Christian spirituality. Going back to Jesus parable of the annoyingly persistent widow and the noisy friend who disturbs the peace at night till he gets what he wants, there has always been a place for the kind of praying that just won't shut up, that storms heaven's gates, and lays siege to God's ears.

It's not easy for the 21st Century mind to appreciate the religious intensity of post-reformation England and the age of the Puritans. Not many would compare guilt for sin to a meteor shower, a storm of light shooting through the darkness; but "starres have their storms" and so does heaven as its doors are stormed by those seeking an answer to their prayers for forgiveness. 

The final two lines rehabilitate storms as descriptions of inner tempest and spiritual turmoil: spiritual imagination:

Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.

Storms clear the air. Strong exchanges can lead to new understanding. Better to have a row and reconcile than spend a lifetime in resentment. Like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, human relationships have their own outer and inner weather; Warm mellow feelings of the countryside,  peasants celebrating summer, the noises of the countryside from rippling streams to singing birds, and then the thunderstorm explodes across the orchestra, before giving way to the calm melodies of everything returning to normal, washed by rain, illumined by sunshine and the clouds dispersing. Herbert's poem, and its last line, sit exactly in those moments of transition from thunderstorm to calm and renewed summertime.

The poem is not quite resolved. Herbert will have it out with God, and clear the air. That's what storms do. But the making up, the forgiving and moving forward, are merely implied. This poem, in the context of the whole sequence that makes up The Temple, needn't spell it out. God sets aside glory and honour and condescends to answer Herbert's noisy knocking and clamorous pleadings for God's restored love and understanding.  

 

                  Avarice

Money, thou bane of bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine.

Surely thou didst so little contribute
To this great kingdom which thou now hast got,
That he was fain, when thou wert destitute,
To dig thee out of thy dark cave and grot:

Thus forcing thee, by fire he made thee bright:
Nay, thou hast got the face of man; for we
Have with our stamp and seal transferred our right:
Thou art the man, and man but dross to thee.

Man calleth thee his wealth, who made thee rich,
And while he digs thee out, falls in the ditch.

This poem is about money; and the love of money; and the madness of greed.

It's natural to want what I need. Greed is to want more than I need. Avarice becomes a moral disease and against human nature, when the need to possess more and more becomes the primary drive of our lives. Covetousness is a deadly sin because it kills the conscience.

At that point we don't possess money, it possesses us. 

Herbert's poem is an address to money personified. The tone is one of puzzled wondering: how can what started its life hidden in dirt, become something human beings would kill and die for? 

More than that, by refining gold and silver, then stamping a human face on coins, and creating a currency of wealth and worth, humanity has reversed God-given values. Money is gold and man is dross; man and woman made in the image of God have sold that image in order to create wealth.

This poem has hardly ever been treated at length by literary critics. Helen Vendler, one of Herbert's most stringent and admiring critics was left wondering. Why did a poet of immense spiritual subtlety and sensitivity feel the need to satirise money? And why go to the trouble of writing a poem, a sonnet at that, a demanding poetic form usually reserved for less banal subjects? 

Vendler's scholarship is impeccable, authoritative, and one of the benchmarks of Herbert scholarship. So I'm puzzled by her puzzlement! Herbert was a theologian of sin and love, of judgement and mercy. Human corruption was one of Herbert's theological research interests. Looking around at the world beyond, the discovery of new lands, the huge inflow of imported goods and wealth from the new world, the growth of political and royal power across Europe, there was a wealth of raw material for Herbert to explore, and much of that raw material was gold.

In pursuit of wealth and its accompanying wealth Herbert saw, with remarkable prescience, a moral reversal, a theological sacrilege, indeed a structural rebellion against the Creator. Wealth now rules the world, not humanity. Human life is possessed by the need to possess, and when that happens inhumanity follows. The last three lines expose the human and moral outcome of making the pursuit and possession of wealth the primary driving force of human community, of political economy and of social organisation. 

Putting money in its place would be a demanding Lenten objective. I am writing this in the midst of one of the greatest crises in our lifetime. The ludicrous behaviour that strips supermarket shelves as a form of self-protection is another dark side of avarice, the proof that what we want to possess may come to possess us. Who would ever have thought a main news story would be police acting on a tip off and stopping a large van full of stolen toilet rolls! (hence the photo above)

So perhaps even the brilliance of a Harvard Professor Emerita, should be supplemented by some reflection on the real world of deals, profit, accumulation, self-interest, wealth creation and distribution. And then some study of Herbert's tireless research into the propensity of the human heart to corruption and sin. When people stockpile toilet rolls, empty the shelves of hand sanitiser, fill the garage with pasta, and all of this without thought of other people, then Herbert's poem is bang on the money! (See what I did there!)

This is the second post in this series that considers Prayer I. It was scripted thirty years ago by Alistair Beattie, and given to me as a gift. I had read Herbert's sonnet at a church service and Alistair thought it one of the most profound descriptions of prayer he had ever heard or read. So one night our door bell rang and when I went to the door there was Alistair, carrying a large envelope and apologising for turning up unannounced! This parchment is a treasure because of what lies behind Alistair's art.  

Alistair taught himself calligraphy while in a Japanese concentration camp. Amongst the other prisoners was Laurens Van Der Post, whose writings he admired and with whom he had corresponded after the war. Alistair was one of the finest calligraphers, and amongst other commissions he was the official scribe for the University of Aberdeen's Honorary Doctoral parchments. 

As we go through Lent, and this has been the strangest Lent in my lifetime, I have posted a daily reflection on one of Herbert's poems. I posted a picture of this script on Facebook three years ago; it came up as a FB memory today. None of us imagined in March 2017 what would befall our world in March 2020. As we all come to terms with social distancing, isolation, and the anxiety and distress of a disease that threatens so many, we need more than bland reassurances, however well meant. On the other hand we also need more than the conveyor belt of media reportage that holds us fascinated by our own fears, and threatens to undermine resolve and hopefulness. 

Herbert's poem doesn't tell us how to pray or when to pray. It doesn't even tell us what prayer is. Instead he creates a word kaleidoscope of all the possibilities of prayer. As only a few examples of Herbert's imaginative tour of the human heart, the world and the universe: the banquet of the Eucharist, God's breath and human breath in reciprocal blessing, or an engine of complaint and lament against the Almighty when life falls apart, or music that is made up of an infinity of possibilities, the ordinary words that bring heaven into daily living, the life blood of the soul.

It's hard not to listen to the news. Our own anxieties, our distress for others, our hopes of a turning point, our hunger to understand what is happening and how best to look after ourselves and others. All of that. But it may be helpful to come away after listening and read George Herbert's sonnet, which inspired Alistair who suffered far more than he ever spoke about, to write out in near perfect script, this catena of invitations to pray.

Herbert is not prescriptive, telling us what prayer is. Given the endless diversity of human experience and the variety of experiences that fill the human heart, Herbert offers prayer descriptions for each heart and for any occasion. 

To read Prayer I after the news from Italy, or after the daily news briefing from the Prime Minister flanked by experts whose decisions will affect our lives, means we have to take a deep breath, and look for a way to process the news that doesn't just distil it into further anxiety. The "Christ side-piercing spear" forces us to think of suffering and woundedness, but for Herbert out of the wounds of Christ flows redemptive love and God-purposed hope. "Engine against the Almightie" dares us to complain to God, yes and even to rage against the way the world is.

Or from another perspective, "Church bells beyond the stars heard" is a deeply poignant image just now for Christians who tomorrow will not be in church. That will bring its own spiritual disorientation and yet another level of loneliness. But God is still there, this is still a God-loved world. And while we might be a bit dubious about God dwelling beyond the stars, just remember that Herbert was well aware that God's presence transcends time and space. He was writing poetry not physics!

What Prayer I helps us do is match our praying to our mood, our circumstances, the way the world is, and not to worry about what God thinks! Those last two words; no we won't have answers to everything. Perplexity, anxiety, anger, negativity keep playing their menacing music. But in all our thinking and praying, Herbert brings us at last to the more modest hope, that when all of this is done, there will be "something understood." 

This delicate piece of art, scripted by Alistair Beattie, has begun to fade. Life changes us, and sometimes we go through experiences that are trans-formative for us and for the world around us. The ink on my poem is fading, but the words that were written have truths that don't fade, and that can help us find ways of bringing together our broken world, our breaking hearts, and the God who first gave us breath.   

       

'Colossians 3:3'