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                  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'

The Wreath

A wreathèd garland of deservèd praise,
Of praise deservèd, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,—
Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee,
To Thee, who art more far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity.
Give me simplicity, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know Thy ways,
Know them and practise them: then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise.

This is exactly the kind of poem that got Metaphysical Poets a bad name, unfairly I think. The complaint is usually about a poem that is too clever by half, weaving words through repetition, repeating the words at the end of a line almost exactly as the start of the next line. For example "deserved praise" becomes "of praise deserved", and while the repetition of words varies, the continuity of ideas is sustained. Just as flowers, leaves and greenery are woven around each other into a continuous, never ending circle.

But Herbert knows what he is doing. He is using a conceit to weave into the poem the very idea that the words describe. He starts with "a wreathed garland", and ends with a "crown of praise", and between these two points where the circle joins in completion, is the circle of life, all his ways, his crooked winding ways. And, of course, Herbert knows that while his ways are crooked, life itself is a straight temporal line, that one way or another will lead to God.

The contrasts of deceit and simplicity, crooked and straight, death and life, are set within a poem that has its own impetus, given extra momentum by the strong petition, "Give me simplicity".

What makes Herbert such a theologically subtle poet is his self-awareness, first of his own crooked heart, and second of his heart's best aspirations; his heart is at worst devious and at best devout. He wants his life to bring praise to God, despite the failures in the live performance that is his life. To know and practice God's ways, is to make faith active, to love in word and deed, to believe in such a way that what is believed is performed, enacted, embodied.

Helen Wilcox sums this poem up: "In the opposition between 'poor wreath' and 'crown', three main contrasts are at work: a poem versus a lived and practised life, the complexity of a 'winding wreath' versus the simplicity of a circular crown, and imperfect earthly achievement versus the perfection of heaven." 

The entire collection of Herbert's poems tend in the direction of that last line. "Then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise". Christian experience, in all its ambiguity, vacillation and struggle, is a wreathed garland, our ways are often crooked and winding. But the heart is set in the right direction, and the underlying beat of the heart, is the longing to know and practise the ways of God, and at the end, to see the wreathed garland of an incomplete life, transformed into the perfect circular crown of praise.   

 

 

Praise II

King of glory, King of peace,
I will love Thee;
and that love may never cease,
I will move Thee.
Thou hast granted my request,
Thou hast heard me;
Thou didst note my working breast,
Thou hast spared me.

Wherefore with my utmost art
I will sing Thee,
and the cream of all my heart
I will bring Thee.
Though my sins against me cried,
Thou didst clear me;
and alone, when they replied,
Thou didst hear me.

Sev'n whole days, not one in sev'n,
I will praise Thee;
in my heart, though not in heav'n,
I can raise Thee.
Small it is, in this poor sort
to enroll Thee:
e'en eternity's too short
to extol Thee.

Another of Herbert's poems slightly adapted for congregational hymn singing. T S Eliot praised Praise II for its 'masterly simplicity' and one of Herbert's best interpreters calls it a tour de force in imitation of biblical psalms. It's all of that, and more.

The combination of glory and peace are titles of divine tension. Great power and great patience, visible majesty and surprising meekness, dazzling splendour and accommodating condescension, coalesce in the way God relates to human beings.

In Herbert's simple verses, the God who dwells in unapproachable light is being approached by someone whose praise is not fit for purpose, but it's all he has, and all he has he gives, his "utmost art." In these verses God is being approached in a 7/4 metre, like seven steps forward, four back, a rhythm of boldness followed by hesitation.

Praise and love energise each other in this and other Herbert poems. Herbert promises "I will love thee". But love is fulfilled when reciprocated in a mutual exchange of affection, a virtuous circle of loving and being loved. 

Praise is cheap if it remains verbal. However clever the verse, it's the heart that matters, and Herbert uses verse as the vehicle of love, the giving of his very best, the cream of the milk. Singing is one thing; bringing the heart is what makes the words live.

As usual, and this is not a criticism, it is a liturgical and spiritual necessity, Herbert draws near to the King of Glory with trepidation because he can think of all kinds of reasons (sins) why he shouldn't dare. Equally we are unsurprised that God forgives, and what's more, silences the sins' arguments by ignoring them and listening instead to the sincere praise of Herbert's heart.

So a hymn. Not to be sung only on Sundays, but seven days a week. The rhythm of time in weeks, is set against the last two lines. Herbert's utmost art, and the cream of his heart every day, are not enough, and likewise no amount of skill and energy do justice to the King of Glory and of Peace; 

ev'n eternitie is too short

                     to extol thee.

And in the penultimate line Herbert demonstrates the inadequacy of his utmost art by the deliberate faux pas of an eight metre line in a poem that has been 7/4 all the way through. What breaks the rhythm of verse, highlights the limits of eternity itself as sufficient to express fully the fullness of God's love. The entire purpose of the poem is "that love may never cease".

One critic comments, this is "a poem about itself; Herbert praises God while discussing his ability to do so." I think that is true, with one slight correction. What Herbert discusses with God is his inability to praise God adequately on while on earth and with human limitations. Then he gives up entirely, even eternity is too short! So we do what we can. We praise God with our best, rejoicing that God is beyond all our praising. After all God is God; not a problem to be solved but one who invites love and relationship, the I-Thou that is the refrain throughout in the odd numbered lines.

(The image is a photo of a tapestry of a stained glass window, worked freehand. The window is based on a Cezanne painting, worked by Roger Fry and titled Harvester.)  

 

This from Izaak Walton's life of George Herbert. It is quaint, rose tinted, and written by one of Herbert's least critical fans. But as an apocryphal story of what true Christian helpfulness is, it has its own way of pointing us in the right direction in helping those around us with consideration, compassion and companionship. Read it slowly; be patient with 17th Century leisurely tale-telling; and take time to ask what such a story asks of us during the current crisis we all face. 

In another walk to Salisbury, he saw a poor man with a poorer horse, that was fallen under his load: they were both in distress, and needed present help; which Mr. Herbert perceiving, put off his canonical coat, and helped the poor man to unload, and after to load, his horse. The poor man blessed him for it, and he blessed the poor man; and was so like the Good Samaritan, that he gave him money to refresh both himself and his horse; and told him, "That if he loved himself he should be merciful to his beast."

Thus he left the poor man; and at his coming to his musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George Herbert, which used to be so trim and clean, came into that company so soiled and discomposed:but he told them the occasion. And when one of the company told him, "He had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment," his answer was, "That the thought of what he had done would prove music to him at midnight; and that the omission of it would have upbraided and made discord in his conscience, whensoever he should pass by that place: for if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practice what I pray for. And though I do not wish for the like occasion every day, yet let me tell you, I would not willingly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul, or shewing mercy; and I praise God for this occasion. And now let’s tune our instruments." 

 

Unkindnesse

Lord, make me coy and tender to offend:

In friendship, first I think, if that agree,

                                  Which I intend,

               Unto my friends intent and end.

I would not use a friend, as I use Thee.

 

If any touch my friend, or his good name;

It is my honour and my love to free

                                  His blasted fame

                From the least spot or thought of blame.

I could not use a friend, as I use Thee.

 

My friend may spit upon my curious floore:

Would he have gold? I lend it instantly;

                               But let the poore,

              And thou within them starve at doore.

I cannot use a friend, as I use Thee.

 

When that my friend pretendeth to a place,

I quit my interest, and leave it free:

                                    But when thy grace

                   Sues for my heart, I thee displace,

Nor would I use a friend, as I use Thee.

 

Yet can a friend what thou hast done fulfill?

O write in brasse, My God upon a tree

                                    His bloud did spill

                  Onely to purchase my good-will:

Yet use I not my foes, as I use thee.

                      …………………………

None of us like being used. That happens when someone uses us as a means to an end; that is, as a means, not an end. Respect for persons is basic in moral philosophy, teaching that the good person treats others as an end in themselves. A person is to be valued for who they are, not because of their usefulness. Utilitarianism in this negative sense treats the other person as a resource, to be valued in proportion to the contribution they make to my plans, ambitions, interests.

Herbert recognises the moral wrongness of using someone. It is the opposite of love; it is relational utilitarianism. It shows itself in ingratitude for the countless gestures of friendship and affection that have been given on the understanding that friendship is reciprocal, an exchange of goods and goodwill, mutually expensive and mutually beneficial. 

To all his other close friends Herbert shows that mutuality of respect, affection and generosity. But to the one he calls Lord, not so. Considerate, deferential, generous and always making allowances for all his other friends, even for rudeness like spitting on the floor, Herbert works hard at his friendships. Except this one. 

Then, as often in his poems, Herbert uses a favourite pivot word in the last stanza. Yet. Despite the neglect, ingratitude, self-interest and unkindness Herbert has shown, the truth is even at his very best as a friend he can neither match nor repay what the Lord has done for him, as his friend. 

He wants it engraved on brass, a process that requires a steel stylus with a diamond tip.

                            My God upon a tree

                                    His bloud did spill

                  Onely to purchase my good-will.

With predictable penitence, Herbert looks to the cross and Christ's passion, and the price his friend paid for no other purpose than to win Herbert's heart and devotion and faithfulness, as a friend. He treats his enemies more generously than his Lord and friend. This last stanza recalls other lines from another poet: "but O my Friend, my Friend indeed / who at my need his life did spend."

Once again Herbert compels his reader to overhear his sorrow at the spiritual deficit he has built up. And perhaps echoing in the background, Jesus' words convict him and push him towards a change of mind: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

1. Elixir is that which is transformed by the philosopher's stone, turning to gold whatever it touches. In the poem, the motive for every action, "for Thy sake"
2. "Nothing is little in God's service: if it once have the honour of that Name it grows great instantly." (Herbert, The Country Parson).
3. Drudgery divine is a precise definition of those disciplines and habits that form us and keep us who we are; not what we do but why, and for whom we do it.

George Herbert's poems are laced with Bible texts. Sometimes directly quoted phrases make obvious connections; in some poems allusions and echoes of biblical narrative create a theological structure for an entire poem; and, as in "Clasping of Hands' one phrase is traceable to several biblical verses.

It's interesting to read these biblical echoes before reading the poem.

"My beloved is mine, and I am his." Song of Songs 2.16.

"And all mine are thine, and thine are mine." John 17.10

"I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…" Galatians 2.20

"Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it…" I Corinthians 12.27

Clasping of Hands

Lord, thou art mine, and I am thine,

If mine I am: and thine much more,

Then I or ought, or can be mine.

Yet to be thine, doth me restore;

So that again I now am mine,

And with advantage mine the more:

Since this being mine, brings with it thine,

And thou with me dost thee restore.

          If I without thee would be mine,

          I neither should be mine nor thine.

 

Lord, I am thine, and thou art mine:

So mine thou art, that something more

I may presume thee mine, then thine.

For thou didst suffer to restore

Not thee, but me, and to be mine:

And with advantage mine the more,

Since thou in death wast none of thine,

Yet then as mine didst me restore.

          O be mine still! still make me thine!

          Or rather make no Thine and Mine!

                                  ……………………..

Now if the title was omitted you would never guess this is a poem about clasping hands. There is no mention of hands in the poem, and not even clear reference to handshakes, hands clasped in prayer, or even lovers walking together holding hands. 

The biblical references suggest something much deeper than a handshake of friendship. In fact the most obvious echoes of "mine and thine" speak of the embrace of lovers in the Song of Songs, and the eternal mystery of the Trinity as mutual self-giving love. 

This is Herbert in conversation with God, trying to describe God's eternal love affair with each Christian soul. Somehow he manages to turn an extended conundrum on the greatest mystery of the Faith into a theological word-maze that comes to a brilliant resolution in the last two lines.

O be mine still! still make me thine!

Or rather make no Thine and Mine!

Take time to read the last words of each line in the first stanza – now compare them with the last words in the second stanza. The possessive pronouns are reversed in the second stanza. It is a brilliant example of clarifying by confusion! This is metaphysical poetry at its most fascinating and frustrating, a kind of theological sudoku using words instead of numbers. This is the I-Thou relationship as experienced in the heart; mine and thine as mutual possession through self-giving, without loss of identity. How does that work? That's Herbert's question.

One further thought. Herbert uses the word restore as a conceptual hinge twice in each verse. In the first use, it describes his own salvation; in the second, it describes how his own salvation completes Christ's work of salvation in him.

In the second stanza restore is shorthand for Christ's Passion which restores Herbert to himself, his redeemed self, at which point there is neither thine nor mine, but a union of being in Christ.

The cross makes no sense without reference to its efficacy in restoring God's work in a new creation; that work is personally appropriated by the clasping of hands, remember the title? 

The clasping of hands is the seal of agreement, with overtones of the New Covenant between God and humanity. "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…" The cross as God's handshake with the world, friendship restored. 

And of course, Herbert knew perfectly well that clasping of hands is the symbol of prayer, long before it became a wee emoji! So, this Lent, clasp the hands and take the hand of God. 

 

Temper (1)

That first stanza. It has two exclamation marks, no question marks. But the entire poem is an agitated rhythm of self-questioning.

If only I could always be my best self, complains the poet. Herbert is at it again, giving himself a hard time. Praise is spasmodic because the emotion and feeling of gratitude comes and goes. If only he could be consistent, constant, dependable, his praise would be predictable, and his relationship with God as durable as a signature etched in steel. If only. Two words of a heart wounded by regret.

The rest of the poem is spent wishing it were otherwise. The second stanza stumbles and stutters over the word 'Sometimes. Not never, not always, but sometimes, that middle of the road word that makes no unbreakable promises, but does what it can. For Herbert, it's never enough to do quite well; anything short of excellence verging on perfection exposes what he truly is, 'a crumb of dust.'

That word 'sometimes'; at the risk of committing culpable incongruity, it recalls a song I heard countless times when our son was a certain age, and his music invaded the entire house space. 'Sometimes' by the rock band James is a bleak and defiant anthem against a world of elemental power, danger, loss of meaning, reduced significance and diminishing hope. At the core of the song the refrain,

Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul,
Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul.

This 90's song is a universe removed from Herbert's Seventeenth Century metaphysical poem. But those lines speak of a generation's urgent search for reality, authenticity, significant identity, self-knowing, looking for whatever it is that used to be called the soul. Herbert's more restrained discontent and existential dissatisfaction, given the religious intensity of his age, has the same sense of searching and being searched, of God looking deep inside and seeing the soul, and the human recoil from such a searching, searing stare.

I told you it was incongruous, James from Manchester, and Herbert from Bemerton. There's the best part of four centuries between them, but that sense of searching and being searched remains as one of the most disconcerting of all human anxieties. 

Herbert finishes the poem with a resolution, an affirmation of faith that is part resignation to the divine will, part surrender of his own will, whether he is angel, dust or angel's dust, he is in God's hands: