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Love III

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

        Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

        From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

        If I lack'd anything.

 

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";

        Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,

        I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

        "Who made the eyes but I?"

 

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame

        Go where it doth deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"

        "My dear, then I will serve."

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."

        So I did sit and eat.

 

Today's Herbert post is not as in previous posts, literary analysis in aid of theological reflection. It's a piece of spiritual autobiography. 

Late in my final year at College, having previously completed my MA majoring in Moral Philosophy, I picked up a Victorian leather bound pocket volume of Herbert's poems. It cost me fifty pence at the recently established Voltaire and Rousseau's secondhand book shop in Otago Lane.

I doubt you could persuade me to sell it for a hundred times that now. The reason has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with personal history, and the importance of remembered joy in the weaving of our own spiritual growth and formation.  

My first remembered encounter with George Herbert's poetry was when I read Love III for the first time. "Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back…" As I read that line, and moved on through the poem, I was pulled into a spiritual experience. This was not so much a literary encounter as hearing and heeding a voice which mapped my longings more accurately than any marketing algorithm.

At the age of 15 I had been expelled from school before the O level exam diet. The hoped for trajectory for an able pupil took a radical downturn and I found myself driving a tractor on Clydeside market gardens, labouring in a brickwork, and started an engineering apprenticeship. And in the midst of all this I was converted and gave my life to Christ, and all my priorities were reinvented and reconfigured.

Within a year I felt an insistent inward call to be a minister, a preacher of the gospel that had turned my life round, a pastor like the one who had believed in me and encouraged me to rebuild my life. That required attendance at night school, then day release and Langside College in Glasgow, which atypical two year educational road map produced enough qualifications to go to Glasgow University. 

I had loved, and excelled at English in school. But in my degree I chose philosophy (that's another story), and so missed the chance to study English at degree level. So a quite intense young Lanarkshire evangelical, nearing the end of a seven year educational process from start to finish, and about to be ordained a Baptist minister, came across arguably the finest poem in the rich tradition of Anglican spirituality.

Love III opened windows on to a different theological landscape. This poem, and several other key texts in my life, (yet another story for another time) has helped to shape me, particularly my mindset, as someone who is instinctively ecumenical, intellectually curious and open to newness, seeking to be hospitable to the ideas and experiences and perspectives of others, requiring what I believe is one of the harder fruits of the Spirit to nurture and cultivate, theological humility. I've a ways to go on that one. 

It's quite a hard ask to identify the clues and nudges within the poem, that give Love III its continuing significance for me, as a touchstone of what I think Christian existence feels like from the inside. I only offer them as the conclusions of someone in whom this poem has lived and been life-giving for over 45 years. 

The personification of Love, as the proper name of Christ

the dialogue form in which host and guest try not to offend each other

the repeatedly patient voice of Love, contradicting the unworthiness, lack of self-esteem and lack of trust in Love itself

the profound lessons in hospitality as Love bids welcome, observes the guest's need, taking the hand and smiling

the insistence which isn't an attempt to overpower, but to persuade

and throughout the poem, an argument only Love was ever going to win

And, as so often in Herbert, the power of the last line, in which Christ has the last word. Except Christ's last word is in the penultimate line; it is the guest who has the last word, and it is acknowledgement of defeat in argument, the acquiescence of the heart, the acceptance of Love's invitation, the relieved capitulation of heart to heart, and thus a shared Eucharist of guest and host. 

(Picture is an early postcard of my undergraduate Alma Mater, University of Glasgow)  

 

 

 

The H Scriptures II

OH that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glorie!
Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.

This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destinie:

Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.

Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse:
This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.

It is easy to miss the sophisticated hermeneutics outlined in this simple sonnet. Narrative criticism, canonical criticism, inter-textuality and intra-textuality, and theological interpretation, are not fresh discoveries of post-modern hermeneutics. Herbert describes with familiarity and ease how the Scriptures require us to pay attention to story, to interpret scripture with scripture, to interrogate each text in order to learn its meaning, application and command. 

The first stanza compares the serious bible reader to an astronomer, studying configurations, familiar with patterns of light, knowing how each relates to each through the seasons. The Scriptures tell a coherent story, and display an inner harmony, a discernible movement of inter-relatedness. They contain a universe of lights.

The second stanza reflects the standard hermeneutics of Reformation exegesis; the study of the original text and meaning, and the search for its application to Christian life today; ancient text translated and interpreted into modern context. 

"Such are thy secrets", and they are only found as treasure in the field by those prepared to plough, and stop when they hear the clunk of the blade on whatever lies hidden. Through Scripture we come to know who God is; theological exegesis for Herbert was seeking to know God through scripture, that first. But the dynamic process of reading scripture results in the reader being read. As we search the scriptures, we are searched. As we seek God we find that God is already seeking us. "Thy words do find me out", describes those moments of illumination when we discover more clearly, and not always flatteringly, who we are, and who God is. 

Scripture reading is a disciplined process of making ourselves understood, to ourselves, or rather, God making us understood to ourselves.  "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139.23-4) The act and art of reading scripture is fulfilled as we know God more intimately, and as we understand more fully how fully we are understood. 

The final two lines contrast responsible reading of scripture with astrology. Starres are poor books, astrology is hit or miss and wide open to charlatans, wishful thinking, and worse for Herbert, assume that life is governed by forces other than the purposive love and faithfulness of the Creator. 

"This booke of starres lights to eternall blisse", is a lovely image of a night sky, populated with light, infinite in variety and inexhaustible in knowledge to be discerned, discovered and diffused.

A few years ago I was involved in an act of Bible restoration. The Bible belonged to one of the finest exponents of bible reading I know, whose long life of reading "the constellations of the storie" had been transposed into the key of Christian character and devotion to God. I took it to the University bookbinder for repair when she went into care, and he painstakingly retained as much of the original as he could. I was able to return it as a restored treasure, 'a booke of starres.' Herbert would have understood the treasure of a worn out Bible, and the joy of its restoration.

 

Trinitie Sunday

Lord, who hast formed me out of mud,
And hast redeem'd me through thy bloud,
And sanctifi'd me to do good;

Purge all my sinnes done heretofore:
For I confess my heavie score,
And I will strive to sinne no more.

Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charitie;
That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.

In most traditions Lent begins with the sign of the cross on the forehead, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." The image describing the creation of the human Adam from the dust, can be lifted from the arid climate of the Middle East, and transposed into the Scottish climate by adding some rain! Dust or mud, it's the same thing; Herbert addresses his Lord as one who knows his humble, earthly beginnings.

The rhyming 'bloud' contradicts Herbert's sense of worthlessness based on his earth-bound humanity. He is redeemed neither by riches nor gold but by the precious blood of Christ. (I Peter,1.19) And the goal of God's redemptive intervention is to sanctify humanity to do good. 

The second Stanza is an interlocking theology of forgiveness and reconciliation. Already the King James version of Psalm 51.7 would be readily familiar from the liturgy: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow"

The central and pivotal line of the nine line poem captures the decisive moment of human appropriation of the cleansing forgiveness of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. "If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (I John 1.9) The grace that forgives, the heart that confesses, and the will determined to sin no more and to do good, is a threefold dynamic of the struggle of the redeemed human heart towards holiness.

The third stanza is a triumph of trinitarian clues. Heart, mouth and hands in line 1 are the body's answering responses in believing faith, uttered hope and active love of line 2. "Run, rise and rest" are all solar motions of the sun, (Son); get it? Herbert has reversed the first two in order to create a linear view of human salvation. So with our whole body enriched with faith, hope and love, we run the race set before us throughout life, we rise with Christ in resurrection, and finally enter eternal rest, "with thee."

In three verses of three lines the whole story of salvation is told in the simplest of words. The first verse refers to Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier while the last verse is a catena of Trinitarian clusters. The lines are an orchestra of biblical allusions and liturgical echoes. 

Try using this prayer three times a day for a week, when you rise, when you run and when you rest. Oh, wait a minute, that would be another way of tracing vestiges of the Trinity in daily life. Was that also what that last line was nudging us towards, a Trinitarian lifestyle?  

The image above is a tapestry I designed some years ago when I taught the Honours module Trinity and Community. 

  

 

 

                The Dawning

Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
     Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns;
     Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
                                    Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.
     But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
     And feel his death, but not his victory.

Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
     Christ’s resurrection thine may be;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
     Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee:
                                    Arise, arise,
And with his burial linen dry thine eyes.
     Christ left his grave clothes, that we might, when grief
     Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

 

Sadness is a complex thing. Herbert doesn't patronise with a trite, "Cheer up!" The two words he uses to push the sad heart towards restoration are "Awake!" and "Arise!" The poet knows that sadness can be oppressive, leaden, dis-empowering, and can become chronic negativity, the sleep of the sad, a drowning in our own tears.

Raise your eyes from the ground, lift up your head, and look at a different horizon, a landscape transformed by the radiant coming of the Saviour like the rising sun. 'Awake' is repeated and this time it's a call to thanksgiving, because Herbert knows that gratitude is one of the more effective antidotes to life-negating sadness.

But even the wake up call fails. We "feel his death, but not his victorie."There is a sadness that becomes so familiar it is preferable to any imagined revival of hope, energy and vitality. Sadness can become a comfort zone, even a selfish indulgence in self-pity.

And Herbert will have none of it! No longer crying 'Awake!', Herbert is now shaking the shoulder and refusing to allow the indulgence of a long lie, dozing in bed clothes in danger of becoming the very grave clothes of hope itself. Lifelong sadness is not the only choice; the resurrection of Christ the bringer of mirth is life-giving. Christian faith is resurrection faith, life giving and life affirming.

Those who have lived in the same house as those who are not morning people, know the need for regular shouting of phrases like, "Get up!", or "Are you not up yet?" with increasing volume and relentless repetition. That's what Herbert's poem does. "Arise! The hand [of Christ] which as it riseth, raiseth thee: Arise, arise."

Resurrection is a recurring theme in Herbert's poems. Absolutely he 'feels Christ's death', but throughout it is balanced by joyful conviction of 'his victorie.' It's at this point most of Herbert's critics become embarrassed by the last three lines.

  And with his burial linen dry thine eyes.
     Christ left his grave clothes, that we might, when grief
     Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

True enough, Kleenex as an image of resurrection hopefulness does seem to be pushing it a bit. Christ the wonderful counsellor offering the box of tissues to the tearful client isn't much better. Except. "He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will away tears from every face." (Isaiah 25.8) echoed in Revelation 7.17, And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

Grave clothes as a handkerchief is a metaphor, and all the more powerful for its unexpectedness, even incongruity. John's Gospel makes emphasises the folded grave clothes as proof of resurrection, and it is that assurance of resurrection which, Herbert confirms, is the permanent cure of the sadness that can become creeping despair. 

Christian existence takes place in the dialectic of feeling Christ death and also his victory. The cross is the place where love gives all it ever can give; the empty tomb, with its folded grave clothes, is the place where love and life conquer violence, hate, injustice and death itself. This poem exudes pastoral firmness, anchors theological hopefulness, and is a wake-up call at times when legitimate sadness overstays its welcome:  

Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
                                    Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.

Arise, sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
     Christ’s resurrection thine may be…

  

                       The Bag

Away despair! my gracious Lord doth hear.
Though winds and waves assault my keel,
He doth preserve it: he doth steer,
Ev'n when the boat seems most to reel.
Storms are the triumphs of his art:
Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

This is only the first verse of the poem. But it's worth a closer look, and could stand alone as one of Herbert's miniature paintings of a Bible story. Of course, a verse out of context might end up being a pretext. But what makes this verse worth our time in its own right is the light it throws on Herbert's approach to Scripture.  

Matthew 8.23-27 tells of Jesus bringing calm to a tempestuous sea. Matthew relates the story with narrative power and an effective economy of words. The storm comes without warning, and it's a furious storm; the waves were higher than the boat. So, imminent unexpected danger, "But Jesus was sleeping." Let that sink in. How could he not be soaked, but he's asleep. The disciples grab and pull and shout and waken Jesus, pleading with him to save them.

In Mark's account, the disciples are nothing like as polite, "Master do you not care that we're all going to die?" The last line of Herbert's verse answer that question, with almost casual certainty.

           Well may he close his eyes, but not his heart.

My guess is that Herbert has both Matthew's and Mark's versions in mind as he describes the way unexpected storms break on human life. And when they are furious, dangerous, overwhelming in force and beyond our power to tame, fear quickly hardens into despair, and the rapid shrinking of hope.

"Away despair!", shouts Herbert above the noise of the storm. This is prayer addressed to Christ while shouting at despair. There's no serenity, none of that T shirt nonsense, 'Keep Calm and Admire the Waves'. The Gospels contrast the terror of the disciples and the relaxed somnolence of Jesus. It's out of the depths of fear and despair of life that they shout their complaint in Jesus ear.

Of course we know how the story ends; "Where is your faith", Jesus asks. He rebuked the wind and waves, told them to settle down, and they did. Just like that. "And it was completely calm." Please note all the meme makers, Jesus didn't ever say, "Keep Calm, and Love the Waves". 

Looking more closely at Herbert's take on the story, he describes (i) the unseen and unknown power of the sleeping Christ to preserve the keel, which is the stabilising part of the boat, and (ii) that same alert competence to steer it safely through even the most tumultuous waves in the face of the strongest gales. This what the disciples were too scared to even think about. Trust is impossible for the mind in panic. It's too busy finding and shouting the word "Help!"

"Storms are the triumphs of his art". Now that one I might just get printed on a T shirt. Faith is seldom challenged on calm seas with blue skies. The real test and triumph of faith, and of the power of Christ to keep us safe, is the storm that comes without warning and turns our lives into a tumult. Even when the eyes of Christ seem closed in the relaxed absence that is sleep, his heart never sleeps. 

I find the story of the calming of the storm a helpful framework for the way life is just now. Without warning we are in lock-down. Who would have thought at Christmas we would be engulfed in a pandemic by Easter? But even when we are destabilised, the keel is threatened, "he doth preserve it".; and even when we seem most to reel and risk capsizing, "he doth steer".

How do we navigate through the storm that is engulfing us, personally, in our neighbourhoods, with those who are our community of faith, as part of a world in crisis? Perhaps by shouting the first two words, as Herbert does, "Away despair". And then by taking to heart the rest of that first line, "My gracious Lord doth hear… and doth preserve the keel….and he doth steer", and because "Storms are the triumphs of his art," which is redeeming love.      

          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).