"Calling all Angels"

Affliction. (IV)

BRoken in pieces all asunder, Lord, hunt me not, A thing forgot, Once a poore creature, now a wonder, A wonder tortur’d in the space Betwixt this world and that of grace. My thoughts are all a case of knives, Wounding my heart With scatter’d smart, As watring pots give flowers their lives. Nothing their furie can controll, While they do wound and prick my soul. All my attendants are at strife, Quitting their place Unto my face: Nothing performs the task of life: The elements are let loose to fight, And while I live, trie out their right. Oh help, my God! let not their plot Kill them and me, And also thee, Who art my life: dissolve the knot, As the sunne scatters by his light All the rebellions of the night. Then shall those powers, which work for grief, Enter thy pay, And day by day Labour thy praise, and my relief; With care and courage building me, Till I reach heav’n, and much more, thee.

Calling all angels, walk me through this one - don't leave me all alone.

George Herbert - via media - Clasping of Hands

I'm still in awe of George Herbert, as a poet, theologian, priest, as one charting a via media course against the increasing pressures of radicalism. After the death of King Charles, Andrew Marvell lamented that we have become the barbarians we feared and heard not the cultured voice of George Herbert (who was then deceased).

There is much academic weight and attention focussed on John Milton, John Donne, Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, Ben Jonson & the Tribe of Ben - yet with all of the attention directed at 16th & 17th Century British Poetry George Herbert has remained a Poet's Poet and seen as a lesser John Donne the Divine. Nigel Smith has recently written a book, Why John Milton is Greater than Shakespeare? While I am tempted to agree with him that we are more in need (whatever that means) of John Milton's love of liberty, learning and and deep knowledge of all things human, I am soundly of the conviction that what we need is George Herbert (oddly Elizabeth Bishop agreed) - we need the middle way; a course that becomes so fluid that the horizontal line and vertical lines are replaced by communicative intimacy (H.Vendler). Herbert places the priority of this 'place' before & next to God (this communicative openness to address & redress God --- a communicative discourse that is based in the Eucharist) with the mystery itself as 'answer' and as 'truth' because it is itself the real intimacy and the via media of life in God.

I was deeply disturbed by some of the statements by Primates and Bishops (as can be seen on YouTube.com) regarding the Lambeth 2008 conference and their non attendance - my thoughts immediately went to George Herbert & the Little Gilding of Farrar. The puritan's ransacked Little Gilding and destroyed a vast number of first draft George Herbert poems & translations to clean-up the faith. They destroyed as an expression of their faith - their anger and violence used to force others to conform to their ideas. The only defense against the new puritanism is a return to the mystery and the hidden intimacy of our co-mingled voices that cry out to God in honest unknowing.

A new puritanism, a neo-puritanism, or to be blunt a neo-fundamentalism is threatening yet another denomination, the Anglican Communion world wide. Again a faction of a community has ventured to believe that the finite can possess the infinite in its totality - that the Truth can be comprehended by those who have access only to the truth ("for now I see only through a glass darkly") - that their 'knowing' of these truths is to say that some people are not allowed into the intimacy of God. The line of the horizon, if followed in depth and not just breath, brings us all back around to yourselves again. The horizontal intimacy of God with humanity in the one who is the union of the infinite and the finite becomes open to all humanity in the embrace of the crucified one, the one who is with us - for us - and in us, defies the gating off of intimacy with God, rejects the barring of communion and service, and opens the call to a life of fellowship and communion to all - male, female, straight, gay, old, young - called in the richness of their differences - flowers of God.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, could do worse that appoint a select diverse group of knowledgeable people to develop a mediative or contemplative / prayful approach to George Herbert's Temple to be used as a personal & corporate meditation and worship tool - alongside a celebration of Little Gilding & its Ideal (which so moved T.S. Eliot). Mystery & Beauty might be a strong cure against the obscene litmus tests of the neo-fundamentalist and their dated interpretation of Scriptures (whose violence has not been changed in the process).

The most powerful critique of Rome's reactionary theology (typified in the Council of Trent and the repressive Inquisition of the Church of Rome came from the mystical beauty of the poetry of St John of the Cross (St John of the Cross entered the Carmelite novitiate in 1563, the same year the Council of Trent was concluded) and visions of intimacy of Teresa of Avila. They provided an immanent critique that was neither reactionary nor damning - they simply remembered the beauty of the mystery of God and in their contemplation and prayer sought God in the mystery. George Herbert's contemplation of God speaks to us in much the same manner. In our pain, anger, happiness, loneliness, joy, and devotion, George Herbert's The Temple joins us in our calling out to the God who is with us without distinction. Our calling out to God joins us together in a clasping of hands, holding in our hands the other, each other, God:

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!

My Son, at 2 1/2, says his ABCs Backwards!!!!!

John Milton a Love Poet? Milton On Love and Loss

From John Milton's Paradise Lost, in his account of Adam and Eve, we have some of the most stunning and tender expressions of love and caring, possessing remarkable beauty, that can be found in all of English Literature. We all know, or should know, the greatness of John Milton's poetry and that Paradise Lost is the finest epic in the language if not also the finest poetry ever written in English. But, I must confess that as I was re-reading this masterpiece I was moved by the power of sentiment and truth in his expressions of Love, Sacrifice for Love and Loss. Milton is a great poet of Love!

First ---- Adam's profession of love and commitment to Eve.
In Conversation with Raphael,

Neither her outside formed so fair, nor aught
In procreation, common to all kinds
(Though higher of genial bed by far,
And with mysterious reverence, I deem),
So much delights me as those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies, that daily flow
From all her words and actions, mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul
Harmony to behold in wedded pair
More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear.
(Paradise Lost VIII.596-604)

It is in the 'thousand decencies' enacted by Eve that Adam finds the most stirring aspect of his love for her. Who could blame him? What a perfect phrase, "thousand decencies that flow from all her words and actions, mixed with love..." 'Decencies' is such the perfect word - conveying all the thoughtfulness, manners, good form, kindness, never extravagant or bombastic, just simple and true. 'Flow' makes the image of the decencies all the more tender as the decencies flow, as if completely effortless like water that flows from up stream to down stream, as if anything else would be completely foreign and backwards. From whence do the decencies flow? From ALL her words and actions - in all she does and says... words do not contradict her actions or her actions do not betray her words, but they are united in their flow of decencies which are 'mixed' in their union and coherence by 'love'. Not only is this amazing poetry - beautiful in the highest degree, but it makes one long for the very thing it portrays.

Though we can regret the phrase 'sweet compliance' which is revealing of a hierarchy of the social order in which 'good wives' were expected to be compliant with their husbands wishes, if we can set this aside and make allowances for the historic time and setting, we find a very tender and delicate statement by Adam in rapture with the gentle thoughtfulness of Eve in the 'thousand decencies' which 'daily flow' from both her words and actions.
His rapture meets its height in his declaration of their harmonious state of union - dedication to one another strengthened by a shared sense of the world and by shared 'decencies' to one another. It is a beautiful expression of love and the contentment / fullness of being in love.
The next expression or declaration of love by Adam that bares quotation is his response to her after she has told him that she has eaten of the forbidden tree and bids him to do the same.

How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote?
Rather, how hast thou yielded to trangress
The strict forbiddance, how to violate
The sacred fruit forbidden? Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguilded thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die;
How can I live without thee, how forgo
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
(Paradise Lost IX.900-916)
Take particular note of the lines beginning, "How can I live without thee?" Adam declares how can I not be with you, have conversations with you, be alone? Even if God were to create another 'Eve' from yet another rib of mine, the loss of you will never leave me - would break my heart. And so, Adam chooses the death threat of eating of the forbidden tree rather than the loss of Eve. Having heard the story of the fallen angels and the battle in heaven that lead to their eternal damnation and separation from God, Adam is aware that he is at great risk in joining Eve. Love of Eve conquers his fear of death (a great unknown for Adam particularly) and loss of God (incomprehensible for Adam who daily conversed with Angels and had heard the voice of God). He will be damned to death, labor and separation from God - i.e. loneliness at its deepest level. Adam and Eve must now depend on their love to compensate for their loneliness - the absence of the divine. One is left to wonder whether outside the Paradise of Eden the 'thousand decencies' continue from either party?

Contemplating Finitude: Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky



He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. He was somewhere, he had come back through vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.


Because we don't know when we will die we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood? Some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the moon rise, perhaps twenty and yet it will all seem limitless.

Anniversary of the 1st American Great Artist - Hawthorne

Today is the Anniversary of the first truly great American Artist - Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Many consider The Scarlet Letter to stand with Madame Bovary as two of the most perfect novels written. Other critics have hailed the influence of Hawthorne on the great Master of the novel, Henry James, whose work continually returns to Hawthorne and his themes as a touchstone. To be sure, there is little doubt that The Scarlet Letter was the first great American novel. Contemporaries of Hawthorne believed it the first work by an American to rival novels by British authors. Henry James believed it the first work of art produced by an American. It has been a mainstay of education in the US for more than a century. This work teaches us so much about human psychology, American history, cultural history, use of metaphor and allegory; it teaches us about the weight of the past upon the present and the burden that we as individuals and as a collective bare for what has gone before us. It is a warning and it is permission. It is the conflict of all things American.

So, why is there a sudden increase of silly, foolish, ill-formed or just daft opinions/expressions about Hawthorne appearing on blogs? Several of bloggers/readers (or so they say) need to learn a valuable lesson about great literature; namely, that great works of literature define the reading experience and the reader. You say it is old, out dated, slow, boring, has a bad first chapter, and many other statements? Sadly, these impression define your lack of artistic & cultural maturity and appreciation for one of the most perfect novels in any language.
If one listens to Beethoven and then states that it is 'bad' music and boring, it says more about the person than it does about Beethoven. Beethoven is clearly anything but boring to those who appreciate pure genius and beautiful music. In truth, both Beethoven and Hawthorne are geniuses of the highest level. One who says that either Beethoven or Hawthorne are boring or old-fashioned needs to develop their sophistication and understanding of great works of art.
Aside from his short stories & novels, I strongly recommend reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's American Notebooks. They are a very different experience than reading those of Henry James, Steinbeck, Thomas Mann (Diaries), Robert Musil or even those published by Reynolds Price. The self-mannered awareness that the future will prize their "private" thoughts and ideas is absent. These were truly private workbooks. Hawthorne writes in full voice as someone for whom communication is vital and difficult. Open this work anywhere and read what sounds like the inner voice of someone practiced at concealing his thoughts publicly. Expansive, suggestive, and illuminating for all those who would like to know more of the deep thought and artfullness that went into his major works.

Some of his working ideas for stories sound absolutely modern. One story idea develops the possibility of having two men talking and discussing their difficulties while waiting and waiting for someone who never comes. They don't know what to do, so they continue to wait and discussing the one who never comes. Sound familar? A little like "Waiting for Godot"? If you love great literature, read Hawthorne again - slowly.... remember, there are no readers, just re-readers.

Hawthorne is a master of the novel and today we remember him as such.