More Great Ideas I’m Borrowing From The Pentecostals
February 9, 2012
From middle school through my senior year of high school, one of the highlights of my year was getting away from my parents for five days every Summer. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota have strong camp programs, Spencer Lake and Lake Geneva respectively. These were where I could eat junk food, flirt with girls, screw around with my pals, get “blobbed,” and have rather intense ecstatic experiences in the nightly worship services. It’s where I first felt a call to ministry, and it helped give needed “high spots” in my spiritual life.
In short, I treasure(d) my time at camp. The annual Youth Conference was alright, but never like camp.
Additionally, I realize now that it helped to make me feel an affinity for my “diocese.” Over the years I made reasonably good friends from all over the state. We’d meet up at camp and conference, and exchange correspondence; sometimes we’d even go to each other’s houses. It was from one of these friends that I first heard DC Talk (the Nu Thang record); it was here that I first got wind of the punk and hardrock off Tooth & Nail records — back before they sold out, yo. I came to perceive that I was part of this thing called the Assemblies of God. I had friends here, I felt connected.
Now I realize that many Episcopal parishes do camps in the summer. But in my experience, these have mostly been done on a parish by parish basis and only sometimes together, and even then rarely more than a small handful of them. But imagine, if you will, a set Episcopalian campground where not only could there be larger annual 5 day camps for youth and families (we often did Family Camp as well), but the grounds could host all kinds of smaller parish and larger diocene sized events. In my experience, it becomes something like a “spiritual hub.”
Anyway, it seems to me that there could be a lot of good done for the health of a diocese if they had such a camp. At the very least, they did a lot for me as a kid.
Anglican Identities: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
September 4, 2010
In the tasty casserole that is theology there are many layers. Some layers tend to be more important than others, but to forget any one layer always lessens the whole. In theology, there are at least three layers: study, prayer, and action. I think all three are vitally important for theology to really be theology. But is one more important than the others?
The Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond Mpilo Tutu, while clearly a participant in the first two layers of theology as a profound thinker and educator and as a man of prayer, is perhaps best known as a theologian of action. Beginning in the late 1970s, he non-violently fought an unrelenting war on the injustice of apartheid, preaching peace and justice ex cathedra (as bishop of Johannesburg, Lesotho and finally Archbishop of Cape Town), and preaching from the streets, amongst the protesters, risking his life on nearly a daily basis for two decades until he saw apartheid fall. Immediately, he began working for reconciliation and forgiveness. He chaired what is arguably the most extraordinary committee every convened by a government, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is credited for preventing a race-war that would have destroyed South Africa and would have had devastating consequences for the entire continent. That work completed he moved on to champion the causes of eradicating HIV/AIDs and poverty in Africa, as well as continuing to call all people of the world to peace, forgiveness and reconciliation. How beautiful the feet of them who preach the Gospel of Peace.
His theological action, as well as his career as bishop was preceded by a successful academic career, but still much of his theological writing has grown out of his lifetime of theological activism. His themes are relatively simple, forgiveness, unconditional love, justice, peace and non-violence and yet these Sunday School ideas are lent a deep profundity by the power of Desmond Tutu’s witness. It is his right theological action that gives him authority to speak. Furthermore, these mainly ethical concerns of his are radically rooted in the theology of creation, anthropology, and Incarnation; all good Christian ethics is really theology, and all good theology leads to good Christian ethics.
One central and influential theological concept that Archbishop Tutu is credited with bringing to the attention of the Church is the African theological concept of Ubuntu. As Tutu puts it, Ubuntu means that “my humanity is inextricably bound up with yours, so that we can only be humans together.” There is a no more elegant theology of the Other than Ubuntu theology.
I fear–partly due to recent controversy–the idea of Ubuntu has been written off by some as a liberal theological fad that has no root in orthodoxy, but before one makes hasty judgements one should consult Archbishop Tutu on the subject both in books like No Future without Forgiveness and in some of his recorded interviews (ignore the ridiculous guy in the beginning), speeches, sermons (like one linked to the word “liberal” below), and lectures.
Archbishop Tutu is one of the main reasons I began to look into the Episcopal Church. He is, I believe, one of the finest examples of a Christian anywhere in the Church universal, and certainly in the Anglican communion. While many in the Anglican communion, especially many of his brothers in the global south, feel that he is entirely too liberal, and while many in the Episcopal church may even feel that he is a bit too traditional, and while many others think he is just plain silly, I feel that he is quintessentially Anglican. Aren’t we too liberal for some, and too traditional for others? Aren’t we the “laughing-stocks” of Christianity (praise be to God)?
His life and example point to one of the things that fascinates me very much about this church: how does the Anglican church–which for much of its history was an imperial church, spreading the imperial gospel of English domination–how does such a church produce remarkable men like Desmond Tutu? How did it turn itself around like that, from being a force of oppression and injustice to being one the most stalwart and proven means of their dismantling? The Anglican communion may not always have the recipe just right, but one must admit that those three elements of study, prayer and action are vividly present in this weird, troubled, and hopeful church. One should also admit that in Desmond Tutu the Anglican church has an incredible witness of God’s coming reign of peace and justice.
One could consider this a contribution to our mini-series on Anglican identity as well as for ‘Big Tent Christianity.’ Among the many contributions do be sure to check out our friend David Henson’s here.
It might seem odd to some who know me that I would write a post about ‘Big Tent Christianity’ because I don’t really much care for it. To be more specific, I don’t think that a ‘Big Tent’ is something that we should celebrate and rejoice in for its own sake. The ‘diversity’ in the Church does not extend to Christian division nor the incoherence of Christian speech across groups. More often than not, a ‘Big Tent’ approach downplays the fact that the plethora of Christian groups and denominations are more the fruit of impatience with each other and the refusal to love (that is, ‘heresy’) than fruit of the Spirit. We should be more apt to repent for our division and work for stronger unity in both doctrine and practice than act as if there is no division; because how is there real division under a large covering?
This sounds doubly frightening I imagine coming from an Anglican. Surely we like to sell ourselves as a broad church? ’We are the ‘Via Media’ of which Hooker spoke, able to leap evangelical and catholic doctrine in a single bound.’ It is to Hooker that I wish to dedicate this reflection. Specifically a famous sermon of his wherein he affirms what was incredibly controversial at the time: That Roman Catholics ‘could be saved.’ Ironically, as Rowan Williams points out in his little book, Anglican Identities (Cambridge, Cowley 2003), ‘he believe this, … for what are in fact sound Protestant [doctrinal] reasons.’ (24)
By doing this I hope to open an idea for reflection:
- It is often assumed that doctrine must be somewhat downplayed for ‘Big Tent Christianity’ to work. This strangely cuts off many from the Tent for whom doctrine is non-negotiable. I’d like to suggest that this tent can be filled up even with these ‘conservatives’ – which is what we want right? – by appeal to Protestant doctrinal distinctives as explicated by Richard Hooker, the inclusive Anglican par excellence, in his famous sermon ‘A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown.‘
For Hooker, ‘ Many are the partakers of the error which are not of the heresy of the church of Rome.’ (London, Oxford/Clarendon, M.DCCC.LXV., vol. II, 613) As Hooker sees it, most Christians neither understand nor actively believe the sophisticated explanations of Christian faith and even such things as they do believe they do not realize how some of those might in fact be erroneous. He thinks this because we are born into situations over which we do not have control. ’people follow the conduct of their guides, and observe as they did, exactly that which was prescribed them.’ (613) But the ‘foundation’ of faith is Christ alone and faith in him, not the whole of all we do or do not assent to, and this faith will be enough to sustain the Christian through judgment.
‘They be not all faithless that are either weak in assenting to the truth or stiff in maintaining things any way opposite to the truth of Christian doctrine. But as many as hold the foundation which is precious, though they hold it but weakly, and as it were by a slender thread, although they frame many base and unsuitable things upon it, things that cannot abide the trial of the fire; yet shall they pass the fiery trial and be saved, which indeed have builded themselves upon the rock, which is the foundation of the Church.’ - pp. 614-615
This is not at all novel, it is what we all learned as ‘Justification by Faith.’ But it is key for my point that Hooker draws the boundaries of the Church wide on account of sustained reflection on ‘doctrine,’ on the consequences of Scripture, rather than on the idea of Elizabethan comprehensiveness or an Anglian Via Media. Hooker is no help for those seeking to make of Anglicanism a wide church who are not also willing to flesh out the reasons why Hooker believed as he did.
Here, then, in Hooker, we find possible resources for ‘Big Tent Christianity’ which counter-intuitively came by way of doctrine. In fact I am a ‘Big Tent’ Christian. I am because I am confident that I myself do not have the capacity to be free from believing terribly ‘wrong’ things about God. My capacity for self-deception is vast and my openness to God’s grace is limited. I am because I am nobody’s judge. I am because we as a Church are dependent on the prior acts of a faithful God rather than our own attempts to maintain coherence.
More ’09 Reflections: Anglican Iconoclasm
January 3, 2010
“Yea, I am persuaded, that of them with whom in this cause we strive, there are whose betters amongst men would be hardly found, if they did not live amongst men, but in some wilderness by themselves. The cause of which their disposition so unframable unto societies wherein they live, is, for that they discern not aright what place and force these several kinds of laws ought to have in all their actions. Is there questions either concerning the regiment of the Church in general, or about conformity between one church and another, or of ceremonies, offices, powers, jurisdictions in our own church? Of all these things they judge by that rule which they frame to themselves with some show of probability, and what seemeth in that sort convenient, the same they think themselves bound to practice; the same by all means they labour mightily to uphold; whatsoever any law of man to the contrary hath determined they weigh it not. Thus by following the law of private reason, where the law of public should take place, they breed disturbance.” Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity – I.xvi.6
The ideas were liberating: “We don’t have a Luther or a Calvin, just a Prayer Book;” “It’s not so important that in all things we agree but that we worship together;” “Anglicanism is a Via Media between (insert whatever two things you want);” “You don’t have to leave your brain behind (or another wonderfully condescending phrase);” etc… These are the things that you hear as you begin to approach the Anglican churches. And to a disillusioned Pentecostal who doesn’t know what he believes, they are glorious things to hear.
Unfortunately they are all false. Or at least in most ways confused, or interpreted diversely, or forgotten. In many ways the petty arguments about “Initial Physical Evidence” or really bad eschatology between a tiny minority of youth and their elders in the Assemblies of God pales in comparison to the sheer scope of disagreements currently going on within Anglicanism. And don’t think for a second that the homosexual thing is the only thing. There is a perennial struggle for the soul of the church. Is it Catholic? Is it “biblical?” Is it Evangelical? Is baptism optional? Should laypeople administer the Sacraments? Given the homosexual struggle, was it an error to have allowed Women clergy? Are the large numbers of Christians in the Global South proof of mass Western apostacy?
Whereas these are legitimate questions to ask, we have found that there are no structures available in our various means of Communion to curb the increasingly fierce independence desirous of being expressed in our diverse bodies.
We are a hairs breadth from every Province becoming an island of theological conscience to themselves.
This for me is most terrifying possibility. “Catholicism” is not a matter of mere piety, as if praying with Icons or singing the Magnificat makes one a catholic. Even having monEpiscopacy is not enough to qualify a church for being “Catholic.” “Catholic” is a matter of the structure and vision of a Church. I began attending an Episcopal parish largely on account of C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright, but I stayed because of Michael Ramsey, Rowan Williams, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, Radical Orthodoxy and the Oxford Movement. I could compose my own Prayer Book, I could plant a church that sung the Divine Liturgy, but I could not make from scratch a Catholic church structure and history. If Anglicanism splits into a looser federation, I’m not really sure where I’d be, but I’d be a wreck.
At every turn I’ve been confronted by contradictions. Many liberals aren’t really inclusive but of their own kind; many evangelicals are deeply unaware of their Anglican history and doctrine; there isn’t much of a Via Media but an intolerable and systematic diversity from low church Reformed Protestants to Anglo-Papists; few know or care why we have Bishops and a Prayer Book instead of a Presbytery and Confessional, unless of course not having a confessional becomes permission for doctrinal indifference or iconoclasm; many conservatives are completely unaware that their highly determined systematic theology influences their “biblical” readings and quite a few liberals don’t yet realize that the academy doesn’t give a rats ass about Tillich anymore.
Not that I’ve not found glimmers of hope. I’ve found a great many reflective priests and there are a number of stupendous Bishops (mostly in the Church of England) and Anglican academic theology is currently without peer in most of the world.
But may I say, in keeping with an open and honest tone, that I’m truly terrified. I know it would be more pious and faithful of me to say that I’m hopeful but I’m not really not. I feel as if I walked into the middle of a Family Feud that I’m not much interested in taking to the grave, and while I hold on in trust, I’m still at a point where I’m apprehensive as to how it will turn out. I say this because I don’t feel as if enough people are saying it even though it’s not very constructive. Of those whom I respect many must put on a good face while many for whom I have less respect are declaring the triumph of their “side.” “Winning,” is not something at this point that can happen and constancy is for those stronger than I.
Lord have Mercy.
Dear Pluralist,
December 3, 2009
Dear Pluralist,
I seem to recall that at a point recently you indicated that you were done identifying yourself with Anglicanism. Luckily that turned out to be merely an exasterbated cry. Those of us who follow you know that you just can’t seem to get the Anglican blood out of your system. I’m sure it has something to do with being liberal or inclusive or about compromising…or being bored…or secretly desirous of wearing long purple cassocks.
So it was with joy that I continued to read your perpetual angst about the state of a church you no longer identify yourself with and was glad to be rid of. I noted especially a recent article that you published on Episcopal Cafe on the Silence of the Shepherds. Oh how glorious the self righteous piety flowed in the article. You alone are left amongst the righteous, the prophet of the age, the lone non-Anglican who stands against Anglican butchery.
I seem to recall also something about a dead horse. Apparently the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the intensely humble and deeply spiritual man he says that he is, so I’m glad I got the truth from you. The real truth as you so convincingly demonstrate is that Rowan is secretly a tyrannical, power mongering, homophobic turncoat who has abandoned the gay Christians he once supported. He obviously is hell bent on “centralizing” the Communion and “oppressing” homosexuals, and Poperizing his See, and sending black robed-white collared infantry to Uganda to get started on the gay killing spree.
This is obvious from his silence. It seems that Bishops and Archbishops have a job: And that job is to connect their brains to a Google News Search and daily Pronounce and Proclaim about every international topic that tickles your moral toes. ”Proclaim Proclaim Proclaim, that’s the way to change” is what I always say.
It certainly has nothing to do with mutually sustaining relationships of trust whereby one Bishop trusts in the Spirit to guide the moral discernment of another Bishop being united by One Spirit rather than pushing ones rich western white colonial ass around. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with keeping things private in an age of perpetual pornographic availability and public (and uneducated) scrutiny. You obviously have been right all along, Rowan and now even the Presiding Bishop have really been in league all along with the Africans to turn the Communion into a Fascist regime’ of silky purple robed homo-killers.
Or, then again – you could be completely misreading the situation
*UPDATE* – Now also this “Speaking Out” by the Presiding Bishop – one of her best methinks
Peace,
Tony
*P.S. for Readers that might not “get” it. I in no way at all endorse the possible legislation in Uganda concerning homosexuals and I do not find it an unimportant issue. This is about the Pluralist’s essay not the Ugandan situation*
Herbert’s Afflictions
May 18, 2009
Scattered throughout (though strategically placed) his collection of poems, Herbert gives us his five “Afflictions.” Five poems related to the complexities of knowing, loving, believing (and disbelieving) God. If Herbert’s poems are sometimes mistook as simple and unwavering piety, that is because they have not read the Afflictions (or several other of his poems as well). The point of them being scattered haphazardly throughout a complete and purposely shaped collection, seems to be that we are meant to imply that the religious life is not pure bliss, not ever increasing love and trust, but struggle, doubt and uncertainty. Who can but help argue and fight with God when they move beyond the “romantic” period? Those first years where every flower sings the praises of the God-who-is-near. No, says Herbert, this path leads to self doubt and frustration with a God who seems to not be near.
At first, says the first of his Afflictions, he has “so many joys;” he looked upon the Lord’s “furniture so fine, and made it fine to me.” Even the “stars” he “counted” his; “both heaven and earth.” Everything is glorious, Creation itself is shot though with the plainly seen glory of God. “At first thou gav’st me milk and sweetness.” Then for the first time in line 23 we hear our first “but.” “But with my years sorrow did twist and grow, and made a party unawares for woe.” Indeed God seems to pile more on top of more: “Yet lest perchance I should too happy be/in my unhappiness,/Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me/into more sickness” – emphasis mine.
God’s sweet joys have turned to bitterness in Herbert’s mouth. To where by the end, Herbert in total resignation pleads with God: “Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me/None of my books will show:/I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree;/For sure I then should grow” I have searched my books!, he says. But they will not “show.”
The irony for those who know should be apparent. The Reformation was supposed to be the rejection, not just of Papal authority; but of a clericalism which said that one only experienced God by way of the Priest. The institution stood between the Christian and their God. But now it was to be different. The Bible is in English. The Protestant is not under the Pope. Here they have the very words of God, no more middle-man to shuffle to and fro. And surely this is what Herbert finds so frustrating. He was supposed to have unfiltered access to God now. How is it now that he is so afflicted? He is telling himself that even though God troubles him he “must be meek.” Modern English might say “should be meek.” ‘I am being told I should be meek but also “stout.”’ ‘Even my own counsel is confused’ says Herbert. ‘I must be strong and meek?’ So in the last lines he determines something absolutely unthinkable to the poet of the first few stanzas. “I will change the service, and go seek/ Some other master out.” ‘If all I’m left with is doubt and abandonment, I’ll just leave!’
Yet immediate penitence finishes out the first Affliction. Having just determined to leave an absentee Lord, Herbert clarifies what he meant: “Ah my dear God! Though I am clean forgot,/Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.” In the depths of his pain, it is his persistent desire for God which shows (he hopes) that he is not “clean forgot.” How could he still love a God who does not exist? In the third Affliction he proclaims in the first lines “My heart did heave, and there came forth, O God!/By that I knew that thou wast in the grief”
The Afflictions are not over yet; in the second poem he moves on to focus on the Lords suffering. Perhaps, he says, if I focus on all my Lord has gone through, I will be able to cope. If “all men’s tears were let/Into one common sewer, sea, and brine;” They would not not even be able to discolor the bloody sweat of the Lord. But this is not good enough. In the third stanza he is brought back to his own grief. Indeed it is only God who is his grief! “Thou art my grief alone” Unwilling to say only this he instantly replies no, “All my delight, so all my smart” – emphasis mine
And so it continues for several more poems. The back and forth between Herbert and God. Though God never actually speaks. It is almost the dialogue in his head, the internal conflict. But in the fifth Affliction he finally comes to terms with the reality that on this side of “grace” there will be no reprieve. “Affliction then is ours” But Affliction, the poet resolves, is not the point; God uses both affliction and joy to turn the person continually to him. The person will need it through “every age.” But we know that God is there because he was there at first: “to make us thine: yet that we might not part,/As we at first did board with thee,/Now thou wouldst taste our misery” The misery of man is also God’s misery on account of God’s “boarding” the “Ark” with humanity (an oblique reference to the doctrine of the Incarnation)
What is interesting about these poems is that Herbert, a Reformed Protestant, ends up sounding an awful lot like Catholic mystics from the same period. Namely St. Terresa Avila and St. John of the Cross. To be too confident in our “knowledge” of God is to give into the temptation to reduce God to an intellectual object for our comprehension; in essense an “idol” of “ideas.” Herbert, with the mystics, insists that it is in the breaking of his constructs, the emptying of his mind, that God is able to show up as God is. Otherwise we risk (Herbert says) confusing our joy with God, equating good feelings with the Creator.
Herbert was an incredibly skillful poet, in many ways ahead of his time, and in others a Romantic; though a Romantic that resisted simple Romance which always carries with it the tendency to cliché. I highly recommend him to any poet interested in the use of formal poetry.
cf:
Williams, Rowan. “Anglican Identities.” Cowley, Cambridge Mass. 2003 “Inside Herbert’s Afflictions” 57-72
Herbert, George. “The Complete English Works.” –Everyman’s Library ed. Ann Pasternak Slater. New York/Toronto (1908,1974) 1995
Gimme That Ole’ Time Religion:
May 16, 2009
An Essay on an Anglican Divine in two parts
It has often been commented that because he translated the Bible into German, Martin Luther did more to shape the German language than anybody previous. In that time all academic works were done completely in Latin and the colloquial language remained mostly oral and the general public illiterate. Something similar happened in English, the Authorized or King James Version of the Bible was also instrumental in uniting and shaping English. But there are three other works which aided in this evolution of English: The 1559 then 1662 Books of Common Prayer of the Church of England, the Works of Shakespeare, and the pious poetry of George Herbert. It is George Herbert that I will be looking at. After setting up a very brief bio, I will examine several of his “concrete” poems, and finish with an evaluation of his “Afflictions.”
George Herbert was born April 3rd, 1593 in Wales to Richard and Magdalene Herbert. This is the year Shakespeare wrote “Venus and Adonis” and only one year later the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker would write the first parts of his monumental book “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” which would be absolutely influential in the Church in which Herbert was to grow up in and serve till his dying day. The English Reformation was not yet fully over and there was yet to be even more huge political and religious turmoil culminating towards the end of Herbert’s life even in the abolition of the Episcopacy.
I mention this because for such a time of rapid change and intrigue, one would hardly have guessed it from the collected works of this “simple” poet/priest. For a time it seemed that Herbert was to be a scholar. Well schooled in many things George was to be a teacher at Cambridge for a time. But since his youth he had felt a call to be a priest, and in time he gave in, moved from his places of considerable influence and prestige to a small country parish where he would live out the rest of his days. He was close to the famous poet John Donne, but he never fancied that he would become significant himself; as evidenced by his dying request to his friend Nicholas Ferrar concerning his poetry:
“. . . tell him (Ferrar) he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul . . . [I] desire him to read it; and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn it . . .” – emphasis mine
This does not sound like one who is a master of the English language, rather a poor humble man; which seems to me to be exactly as he would like it
I would like to turn first to a certain number of his poems, and two specifically which seem to be well ahead of their time: “The Altar,” “Easter Wings” and. These poems all organize the words and stanzas (where there are some) into the shape of what it is talking about, or some other creative shape of the words on the page. These “spatialist poems” predate significantly poems such as Emmett Williams “Like Attracts Like” [1967] or Hansjorg Mayer’s “carmina figurate” [1943]. And in a perhaps unexpected way, Herbert’s complex poems such as these came earlier in his life. At that time he was more prone to delve into the complex forms and experimental methodologies. Later in life he believed simplicity was linked to humility and piety so he experimented less in these overtly nuevo forms; though I would not go so far as to say he was “less creative” or “less complex” later in life. Indeed, it is quite astounding what he can do with strict forms, and his boundless mind was able to meet many a challenge fit into a stanza. Since the visual aspect is so very important I will set out the three poems below.
“The Altar”
A broken A L T A R, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman’s tool hath touch’d the same.
A HEART alone
Is s uch a stone
As nothing but
Thy pow’r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy name.
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O let thy blessed S A C R I F I C E be mine,
And sanctify this A L T A R to be thine.
“Easter Wings”
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poor:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did begin:
And still with sickness and shame
Thou didst so punish sin,
That I became
Most thin.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victory:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
As one can see, The Altar is a concrete, mimetopoetic carmen figuratum. But more so than being merely a poem shaped as an Altar, the poem uses the other unique technique of capitalizing four words that play off each others theme and position in the poem. The top and the bottom line both capitalize ALTAR. The first line has the altar being broken – “a broken altar” – and the bottom has it being “sanctified,” that is reformed into something once again useable. But useful for what? This is where the other words come into play. Well his “heart” of course is what should be “sacrificed.” Like the “altar” it is referred to as a “stone” in line 6, and in 14 stones are bid to praise unceasing. The heart is not merely broken, but as line 4 indicates, it is worked upon by a “workman.” The theme from top to bottom is circular, the heart, as the altar, must be broken to become useful again, for use in praise.
We see here the incredible craft of Herbert. No only is it organized strictly, but the verses themselves are shaped into a single “form;” implying rigidity. But the words themselves reveal that the form must be broken to be remade, with an almost line to line mirror effect.
In Easter Wings we also see form being used not simply in the actual physical shape of the poem, but in the themes and overall message. Complexity forced into simplicity, revealing great skill. For instance, the first line in the first stanza referring to the creation of mankind, and the first line in the second stanza referring to his own creation; the “beginning of his tender age.” The first stanza moves on to recount the classical Christian doctrine of the “fall of man” (cemented as a theme in line 10), and the implication is that ‘Easter,’ that is “this day” of “victories” is the reversal of the fall. But as with the Altar, the second stanza, though it can stand on its own, is a mirror of the first; forming a perfect set of wings, and for Herbert (presumably), connecting himself to humanity first, with Easter the “victory,” and second to himself. Easter is not merely humanities salvation, but it is his salvation. The parallels are so intricate it is difficult to explain without a theological background. In the first stanza, second line, we see “the fall” (“lost the same”), the consequence being “decaying;” a “punishment” if you will. But then in the same line, second stanza, it is sin, the master of “decay,” who now is subjected to punishment. The result of the first that “man became most poor,” and of the second that Herbert was made “most thin.” For mankind, death aroused the need for God (“further the flight”), but because of Easter, for Herbert, it is now not death but “affliction” which “advances the flight in” him. From here we will turn to Herbert’s “Afflictions”
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
