W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Oh, to entwine the thread of prayer around
These cares and woes, the daily, hourly cares,

The hungry wants that fasten on our lives;
And bind them all upon Thy promises—
Then bid our faith launch these together forth
Upon the sea, the sunlit golden sea
Of Thy rich love—Thus making certain voyage
To Thy great heart—Thence surely bringing back
Rich Argosies, full freighted, laden up
With all Thou seest good to give to us:
The precious things of Love, of Light, of Heaven.

S. Trevor Francis

Van Gogh’s work has been regarded by some as “hallucinatory,” however his letters show that few artists were as intelligent and rational. His work was not the product of his dark times but of his struggle against them.

“I am feeling well just now… I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible—and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger and makes haste in what he does.” [1]

William Cowper, who battled debilitating and often life-threatening depression throughout his life, and yet was the author of many famous Christian hymns and poems, was the same. John Piper writes:

“I live with an almost constant awareness of the breach between the low intensity of my own passion and the staggering realities of the universe around me, heaven, hell, creation, eternity, life, God. Everybody (whether they know it or not) tries to close this breach—between the weakness of our emotions and the wonder of the World. Some of us do it with poetry.

William Cowper did it with poetry. I think I know what he means, for example, when he writes a poem about his mother’s portrait long after her death and says,

And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief.

There is a deep release and a relief that comes when we find a way of seeing and saying some precious or stunning reality that comes a little closer to closing the breach between what we’ve glimpsed with our mind and what we’ve grasped with our heart.

It shouldn’t be surprising that probably over 300 pages of the Bible was written as poetry. Because the aim of the Bible is to build a bridge between the deadness of the human heart and the living reality of God.” [2]

I want to relate this to every Christian life. This fruitfulness from the darkness is a process that belongs to every child of God. At the very heart of it is the tension caused by challenges to unseen truth by an unbelieving world, and the desire for vindication and rest. This is one of the processes inherent in Covenant history, and an understanding of it helps us to persevere in the truth, even in the darkest times. The New Covenant is no exception. [3]

God calls a man
…..Separates him for duty
……….Gives him the rules
…..Tells him the consequences of his performance
Arranges for the next tour of duty

Of course, this is Ray Sutton’s 5 point Covenant pattern, and I maintain that it becomes 7 point when “played out” on the stage of history:

Creation: God’s call and anointing
…..Division: The man is sent to work

and this is where the distress of the Covenant comes in. The central point is split into three—LAW/LAW/LAW:

……….Ascension: He receives the Covenant Law (as above)
……………Testing: He is challenged by a false Law

This is where the rubber meets the road. It is the Starry Night of Day 4, the saints in the wilderness. Will we be rulers, or will we be ruled? Will we be filled with the law as burning bushes (Lampstands) like Daniel and his friends, or will we be incinerated like the sons of Aaron?

The test is that the world suddenly doesn’t seem to correspond to what God said. We can only see so far, and Satan and those who follow him maintain that what is beyond our sight is not what God said (which is also why evolution is not science but philosophy). How many Christians feel that God has abandoned them, or betrayed them, or failed to reward them for their faithfulness so far? The challenge is to understand that God is qualifying you for more responsibility, more servant-kingship, and of course, more glory.

God’s Word often seems to contradict reality. Imagine being instructed to build a very large boat on dry land, and to put up with the jeers and taunts of the scientists and philosophers of the day. Imagine being instructed to tell the rulers of Judah to submit to the king of Babylon. Imagine being a Pharisee instructed to eat with Gentiles, and form new Jew-Gentile synagogues across the empire. Imagine being instructed to tell the King of the Jews that it is, in fact, You Who are the true King of the Jews. Both Jesus and Paul were thought to be mad. Do you know that feeling? [4]

Of course, vindication came, in torrents, in every one of these situations. The Book of Hebrews is a plea to Christian Jews to hold out, to persevere with this “new Covenant,” despite the fact that the Herods were still building monuments of white stone and gold all over the Land (including the Temple) and Christians were being persecuted and slaughtered across the empire. The words of Jesus certainly didn’t correspond with reality, did they? But the elect, as Daniel predicted, shined like stars. They believed the Word spoken, saw the fulfilment of the promises by faith, although they were far off and not yet seen. Faith is not blind. It is long-sighted.

Faith is also attractive, especially when it rides against the zeitgeist. It is very striking for people today to come across Christians who not only know what they believe, but are also not idiots. I teach the Bible to high school students, and the testimony of someone who believes it from cover to cover stays with them forever. I know, because the Bible was taught to me by people just like that. Brave testimony, under distress, is the heart of the New Covenant.

……….Maturity: He repeats the Law, warns the Bride,
……….and there is great plunder

After obedience at Testing, there are always plagues and plunder. That’s what we see in Exodus. That’s what we see in the ministry of the Apostles and the Reformers and the great missionaries (and not-so-great).

How about you? Are you willing to submit to God for the sake of the plunder? For the New Covenant missionary, the plunder is people, even if he doesn’t live to see the result (like Jim Elliot). I read about a missionary who spent seven long years evangelising some remote tribes and died without seeing a single convert. But those who followed after him reaped the harvest. Unlike discipling your own children, teaching the Bible to other people’s kids seems fruitless at times, because the seed takes a while to germinate. We have faith that it will sprout and that God will give the increase. Many Australians trace their conversion back to Sunday School or SRE (Bible teaching in public schools).

Faith is like time travel. In the midst of suffering, abandonment or persecution, we travel back in time to remember God’s faithfulness in the past, in our life, in the biographies of saints, and in the Bible. And we jump ahead in our head and hearts to the Conquest and Glorification that God has promised for the elect. The Psalmists did this (in both directions), and so did Christ and the Apostles. God is consistently faithful, regardless of how things might feel right now. How can we be trained to judge if there is no tension, no true and false witnesses presenting evidence? The question is, will you turn to other, short-term gods to ease the pain? [5] Or will you persevere and produce the abundant fruitfulness possible only through this process of pruning? Jesus said that if we judge ourselves, we will not be judged.

He shall see the labour of His soul, and be satisfied. Isaiah 53:11

Van Gogh sold only one painting, and died by suicide in poverty. William Cowper had the loving ministry of John Newton, and His God, watching over him. Imagine if Van Gogh and Cowper could see how their labours, the fruits of lives spent suffering in the dark, have been a blessing for hundreds of years to millions of people.

Faith, the substance of things not seen, is like time travel. By your obedience to the Word, and your fearless witness, you are a memorial to something that hasn’t even happened yet, and something that happened long ago. Like Noah, like Jesus, you are the incarnation of the past and a window on the future. Faith is the domain of the prophet, and in the New Covenant, all God’s people are prophets who know the end from the beginning.

So stick with it. Stand. Perseverance is just about everything. And vindication will come.
________________________________
[1] Quoted in Robert Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical.
[2] Listen to or read the transcript of Piper’s wonderful biographical sermon here. See also Seeing In The Dark.
[3] See A Lamentable Life.
[4] See Mercury Rising.
[5] See What Comes Out.

Some great quotes from an interview by Barbara Demarco-Barrett with author Mary Karr:

“[My young son] came flouncing in in his Power Ranger pyjamas and said “I wanna go to church.” I said “Why?” and he said, “To see if God’s there.” It was about the only sentence he could have said that would have gotten me to go. So we did this thing we called God-a-rama in which we went to various temples and mosques and zendos. I had no interest in going to church so I brought a latté and a paperback.

I was praying at the time. I was sober and the only way I seemed to be able to get sober was to pray. But I was praying to some kind of vague, I don’t know, what native Americans would call the Great Spirit but what Catholics would call the Holy Spirit; a force for good in the universe would be about all I could call it. So I was still a long way from conversion.”

“[At university] I went to every other church but the Catholic church due to its stance on choice for women, the fact that women can’t be priests… I guess I thought of it in very medieval terms. I thought of it solely in terms of the hierarchy and probably the Spanish inquisition! I had figured I would go for some free-wheeling, breezy hippy deal or something.

We went to a Midrash, a conservative temple, a zendo—which really wasn’t the place for an eight year old. But we ended up at the Catholic church. I don’t know what happened. I just stopped bringing a paperback. A couple of the Protestant churches I had gone to were so vague. It was kind of like, you know, “Today’s gospel is from Glamor magazine… It was like little hopeful things you might find in the Reader’s Digest, and I thought, well, there’s not much God here. And the episcopal church, which had women priests and so forth… the fact that they didn’t believe in evil, theologically… in a way that was more horrifying for me than the Spanish Inquisition! How can you not believe in evil? I knew I believed in evil long before I believed in any force for good.”

“What I loved about the Catholic church was the carnality. First off, the fact that there is an actual body on the cross. It’s so… meaty? You realise what a hunk of meat you are from the minute you walk in. And also (and I know this sounds incredibly nuts) but the way you kneel and stand up and pray. Everyone moves and says the same words the same way, you pray with other people in concert, breathing the prayers and saying them together. A lot of “cradle Catholics” complain about that stuff—you’re a sheep in a herd—but for me it was strangely comforting. Just going through the motions to be polite, kneeling and standing up—even with my cup of coffee and paperback—I realised, “My body bends the way these people’s bodies bend. I’m not so different than they are.” I found that when you read a poem that someone wrote a long time ago that you are breathing the way that person breathed. You are taking their words into your body. I guess it was a eucharistic quality even then that I was attracted to.

Also, it wasn’t the ritual. It was the faith of the people. When they would ask people to state their prayer intentions… I was very moved by people bringing their suffering and their hope together into this public place. I guess I really did think that when you spoke those things together, that it was something sacred.

Again, it was still very vague. I didn’t have much to do with Jesus at the beginning. When I stopped bringing the paperback and visited the peace and social justice committee, I noticed that the people who brought people over from El Salvador and did the prison ministry and ran the soup kitchen all talked about Jesus a lot. They were really into Jesus, and I thought, gosh, these are really nice people. They’re trying to get cribs for these people who don’t even speak English and trying to help them find jobs. They’re running an HIV hospice and bringing meals to people who are gay for God’s sake! I saw a lot of the lay tradition among the poor… which is not peculiar to Catholics, but I guess I just saw it first hand up close.”

You can hear the entire interview at the Pen on Fire podcast.

No, I’m not heading for Rome, ever. I have just found that Catholics often have a much healthier sense of the poetic “earthiness” of truth. Cerebral Protestants might understand sola fide better, but they don’t do mercy ministry like Rome does. There is much good in Rome despite its twisted doctrines and errant traditions that we must recover for Protestantism, or whatever this becomes. Much of it has been ditched by Protestantism since the Reformation, so I guess that is really what we should be drawing on. But who is living it out, in the flesh? This razor-humoured, delightful lady, who has been through some very tough times, experienced a miraculous work of God through some very godly people.

Disgraceland

BY MARY KARR

Before my first communion, I clung to doubt
as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden

for a wormhole into paradise.
God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb,
injected by my dad’s smart shoot.

They swapped sighs until
I came, smaller than a bite of burger.
Quietly, I grew till my lungs were done

then the Lord sailed a soul
like a lit arrow to inhabit me.
Maybe that piercing

made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures whose scalpel
cut a lightning bolt to free me.

I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled around. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grow past crayon outlines,

my feet come to fill spike heels.
Eventually, I lurched out
to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed,

and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.

When my thirst got great enough to ask,
a clear stream welled up inside,
some jade wave buoyed me forward,

and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish.

There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that

and eat it.

Source: Poetry (January 2004).

BY MARY KARR

Heavenly Father,

Today we celebrate
Your work in Your Son,
the One who said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”

You created all things though Him,
spending three full days
dividing things in two,
making “things new.”

You are the Ancient of Days
yet forever young.
We have sinned and grown old,
decayed and passing away.

From privileges squandered,
you took all that is old,
put it on Your Only Son,
and tore Him in two.

Once again,
nothing is made without Him.
In Him we are both ancient
and forever young.

Image: Cross by Michael O’Brien, www.studiobrien.com

The Master loiters in nursing homes.
Waiting on those who wait for Him,
With those whose grip on life is failing,
Who can do nothing now but pray.

They are elders of the incense altar,
With shining white crowns
And holy robes hard won.
These are the chiefs of sinners.

Despite eyes dimmed by days
They see all from the crystal wall.
With joints inflamed and brittle bones
They “lift” mankind as a cargo for God.

With walking canes and zimmer frames
They crush the evil one under foot.
(How humiliating for the strong man
To be bound by the infirm.)

In the door, on the cusp of forever
They rule the nations with an iron rod.
The world is turned by the bedridden
Who are more in that world than this.

These folks are our burden, but to the Lord,
They are a delight second only to One.
He has tuned them over many years
And finally they are music.

This way a silhouette before heaven’s smile
That way a solitary shadow upon prison walls
August yet base
Is the profile of man.

Once majestic lips, nose and brow
Faced Life Himself;
Mind to mind, spirit to spirit,
Heart to heart;
Now, with clay untempered
His greatest aspirations are stillborn.

His veil of beauty creased and stained,
His voice reeks of the tomb.
With a loveless heart
And divided mind,
He coughs in holy air
But maintains his arrogance.

His desires are a wineskin with holes
Stretched the more the skin is filled
With intoxicating counterfeits
To make him forget the unforgettable
For a time. But the holes enlarge.

His strength is drained
As within, without,
Truth is ridiculed,
Wisdom ignored,
Order confused
And beauty twisted.
The promise is gone.

His marble eyes see dear ones,
Old, some young,
Devoured by a so-called natural end.
He seeks some reason
For each pain, each death,
But tragedy is mute.

When frivolity fails
And despair is undisguised,
He must resign all hope,
Seeking cowardly death
Or resign himself
To the Redeemer.

With God’s travail
He can rise with new feet
And has new arms to carry
His hated life-companion:
The granite heart,
The sordid sickbed,
And no longer need lie thereupon
By pity’s pool.

When he dies,
Let it be by sword as a man
And not asleep with hopeless words
Across his fractured brow.

Whether those once noble features
Breathe blood or final vapour,
Let the outward man,
Through the inward birth,
At least go out
With kindly eyes,
A voice well worn for God,
And smiling lips
Wet with heaven’s dew.

The Christian imagination

Each semester at the Bucer Institute we have a course we call “The Church and Culture” which is basically a catch-all for any topic we’d like to talk about. Our “Church and Culture” class for this semester was held this past Saturday on the topic of “The Christian Imagination” and it was outstanding. (Check out the MP3s when they are ready for downloading, you won’t regret it.).

Too many good things were said to repeat them all, but here are a few of them:

• A woman living on the frontier in the 19th century commented on the quilts she made: “I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”
• Poetry humbles us by giving us more than we can understand. It’s “bigger” than we are.
• Why are the Reformed so unimaginative? Artists tend to arise from traditions that allow mystery, not from traditions that see mystery as a threat to the “system” and therefore always seek to explain (or define) it away.
• The literal is too skeletal and minimalistic to carry the grand load of truth that the poetic can easily transport.

Some of the things covered were: the importance of the imagination; the imagination and theology; how to cultivate a sanctified imagination; a primer on poetry; and the deeper meaning of watching the dead bodies of plague victims being catapulted over the walls of a besieged city. All in all, it was more fun than ought to be legal.