Unapologetic

Here's a beautiful excerpt from a book, the whole of which, I very much look forward to reading. It is about faith, but what it feels like to be a believer in God, rather than what intellectual arguments there are, for Christian belief. If you're a believer, perhaps this will resonate with you. If you're not, perhaps this might help you understand the emotional logic behind why your friends believe:  

Early on in this I compared beginning to believe to falling in love, and the way that faith settles down in a life is also very like the way that the first dizzy-intense phase of attraction settles (if it does) into a relationship. 

Rapture develops into routine, a process which keeps its customary doubleness where religion is concerned. It’s both loss and gain together, with excitement dwindling and trust growing; like all human ties, it constricts at the same time as it supports, ruling out other choices by the very act of being a choice. 

And so as with any commitment, there are times when you notice the limit on your theoretical freedom more than you feel what the attachment is giving you, and then it tends to be habit, or the awareness of a promise given, that keeps you trying. God makes an elusive lover. The unequivocal blaze of His presence may come rarely or not at all, for years and years – and in any case cannot be commanded, will not ever present itself tamely to order. He-doesn’t-exist-the-bastard may be much more your daily experience than anything even faintly rapturous. And yet, and yet. 

He may come at any moment, when and how you least expect it, and that somehow slightly colours every moment in the mass of moments when he doesn’t come. And grace, you come to recognise, never stops, whether you presently feel it or not. You never stop doubting – how could you? – but you learn to live with doubt and faith unresolved, because unresolvable. 

So you don’t keep digging the relationship up to see how its roots are doing. You may have crises of faith but you don’t, on the whole, ask it to account for itself philosophically from first principles every morning, any more than you subject your relations with your human significant other to daily cost-benefit analysis. You accept it as one of the givens of your life. You learn from it the slow rewards of fidelity. You watch as the repetition of Christmases and Easters, births and deaths and resurrections, scratches on the linear time of your life a rough little model of His permanence. 

You discover that repetition itself, curiously, is not the enemy of spontaneity, but maybe even its enabler. Saying the same prayers again and again, pacing your body again and again through the set movements of faith, somehow helps keep the door ajar through which He may come. The words may strike you as ecclesiastical blah nine times in ten, or ninety-nine times in a hundred, and then be transformed, and then have the huge fresh wind blowing through them into your little closed room. And meanwhile you make faith your vantage point, your habitual place to stand. And you get used to the way the human landscape looks from there: re-oriented, re-organised, different.

This section comes from a book by Francis Spufford, called Unapologetic. Here's the author speaking , with verve and conviction, about his new book:

(I read the excerpt above here.) 

O For the Wings of a Dove

I am privileged to go to a church that specialises in sublime music, as well as great sermons and liturgy.

Here's what we got today:



The text is from Psalm 55, which we read out loud, as well:

Hear my prayer, O God, incline Thine ear!
Thyself from my petition do not hide.
Take heed to me! Hear how in prayer I mourn to Thee,
Without Thee all is dark, I have no guide.
The enemy shouteth, The godless come fast!
Iniquity, hatred, upon me they cast!
The wicked oppress me, Ah where shall I fly?
Perplexed and bewildered, O God, hear my cry!
My heart is sorely pained, within my breast,
my soul with deathly terror is oppressed,
trembling and fearfulness upon me fall,
with horror overwhelmed, Lord, hear me call,

O for the wings, for the wings of a dove!
Far away, far away would I rove!
In the wilderness build me a nest,
and remain there for ever at rest.

___________________

Mendelssohn's original text was in German, of course, and it's only fair that you get a chance to see that language!

Hör mein Bitten, Herr, neige dich zu mir,
auf deines Kindes Stimme habe acht! Ich bin allein;
wer wird mein Tröster und Helfer sein?
Ich irre den Pfad in dunkler Nacht!
Die Feinde sie drohen und heben ihr Haupt:
"Wo ist nun der Retter, an den wir geglaubt?"
Sie lästern sie täglich, sie stellen uns nach
und halten die Frommen in Knechtschaft und Schmach.
Mich fasst des Todes Furcht bei ihrem Dräu'n.
Sie sind unzählige - Gott, hör mein Fleh'n!
Herr, kämpfe du für mich. Gott hör mein Fleh'n.

O, könnt' ich fliegen wie Tauben dahin,
weit hinweg von den Feinden zu flieh'n,
in die Welt eilt' ich fort,
fände Ruh an schattigem Ort.

O könnt' ich fliegen wie Tauben dahin,
Weit hinweg vor dem Feinde zu fliehen!
In die Wüste eilt ich dann fort,
Fände Ruhe am schättigen Ort.

A (Second) Confession

Tonight I met a girl who loves David Mitchell as much as I do. That is to say, we love him ardently. And we don't even mind that he is most probably short. This one is for you, Jess.

A Confession

I love TS Eliot, but this is glorious....

I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening–any evening–would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.
To me each evening looked far more
Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore
Of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind
Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.

Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east
Never, for me, resembled in the least
A chilblain on a cocktail-shaker’s nose;
Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes,
Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I’ve never known
The moon look like a hump-backed crone–
Rather, a prodigy, even now
Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’ brow
Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place
I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.

Never the white sun of the wintriest day
Struck me as un crachat d’estaminet.
I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
Compelled to live on stock responses,
Making the poor best that I can
Of dull things…peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran
Silver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.

- CS Lewis.

I could move to Sydney for the bookshops

This weekend finds me in Sydney.

It'll take another post to ruminate on the city, but let me just say that they have some damn excellent bookshops.

I spent yesterday afternoon in Kinokuniya, which is sort of Japanese version of Border's, only much better stocked. (For example: a whole aisle of poetry, and one entire bookshelf devoted to Renaissance history!)

Today I whiled away most of the morning in Berkelouw. The ground floor is new books, funky stationary and a vegan cafe (I didn't have to tell them that I wanted a soy flat white. It was already soy). And then you climb the stairs and GLORY: shelves and shelves of second-hand and rare books. And more coffee and food, with the sun making golden coin shapes across the tables.

And tonight, while waiting for my Thai take-away to cook, I ducked into Gould's (open at 9pm!), and brought a very clean copy of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Views the Body and a battered but serviceable copy of George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind. All for 8 bucks!

What a winner!

On CS Lewis

“That being said, I can only confess to being repeatedly humbled and reconverted by Lewis in a way that is true of few other modern Christian writers. Re-reading works I have not looked at for some time, I realize where a good many of my favorite themes and insights came from, and am constantly struck by the richness of imagination and penetration that can be contained even in a relatively brief letter. Here is someone you do not quickly come to the end of — as a complex personality and as a writer and thinker.”

- Rowan Williams on C S Lewis.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

-- Clive Staples Lewis

Music to Hold Hands To

It occurs to me that I don't often write about what I am listening to, so here's a musical post for whiling away these wintry days.

First up, BOY is a Swiss and German duo. Effortlessly hipster, with easy-listening, crowd pleasing pop songs. (It doesn't hurt either, being this attractive! :P) This happy little number makes me dream of sunshine and ice cream, and is great for waking yourself up to, on dreary mornings!



I had dinner with some gorgeous girl friends from college last night, and one of them played us this song. It's Tripod and Eddie Perfect, with an exquisite rendition of a Paul Kelly gem. The song itself is a beautiful reworking of Psalm 23, and I find the lyrics just as wonderful as the music.



Speaking of covers, I've rather fallen for this song, and this gentle, sweet version of it. I actually like it better than the Kinks original! Such lightness of touch from DC Cardwell.



DC also does a fine cover of this Neil Young song. Takes a few listens, I think, but the lyrics and tune has a way of getting under your skin. I've been humming snatches of it as I walk around the city. Something about it just goes so well with rain on pavement, grey skies and a blustery wind freezing your face off. Makes me happy.



ZAZ, aka Isabelle Geffroy, is part Edith Piaf, part jazz, half gypsy, and completely awesome!



Finally ... some "hai kultcha" (Oh la!). Our Church Choir sang this a few months back, and I can't get enough! Usually, I hate the organ. It is, as CS Lewis said, "one long roar." But somehow the deadly wall of noise works alright here, broken up as it is by the penetrating voices. I love the thrilling musical build up to "Ye are wash'd! Ye are sanctified! Ye are justified! In the name of the Lord JESUS!"



Happy listening!

A Thought on Reading

So here's a reason for reading Christian Biographies:


"The lives of saints are a text – or rather, they are exegesis of the biblical text. As Hans Urs von Balthasar says, it's the ones who love God that really know something about God, so we ought to listen to the witness of their lives."

Ben Myers strikes again. Thanks, mate!

Winter Warmers

It's a cold winter down here in Melbourne, and what better time to start tucking into some reading, wrapped in blankets and with a pot of tea by your side.

I'm looking around for things to read - something not too dense, so that the reading process might be slow, and a little luxurious. But something with a bit of bite, some chilli to warm the blood, and send the heart palpitating, for a few moments.

So, what are you reading?

Wallowing in the Scriptures

On Sunday in his sermon, my minister passed on a few comments from a young man that he's been mentoring for less than a year. Oliver is an intelligent and kindly Englishman who I've had the privilege of getting to know a little bit too. In our first conversation, we somehow got onto the topic of books and authors that have made an impact on us, and he said, almost immediately, "CS Lewis and JI Packer." So I knew we'd get along!

Apparently, it was only eight months ago that my minister introduced Oliver to the Old Testament, and since then he has read most of the bible, intensively studied many new testament epistles, read Packer's Knowing God twice, and whiles away leisure hours listening to podcast lectures from Ridley Hall Cambridge and reading the works of Cranmer and Aquinas and asking my minister tricky questions about them.

Here's what Oliver said about reading the Bible:

"You know, I've realised that when I spend just half an hour at the beginning and end of each day wallowing in the scriptures, I am a more useful person in everything else I do all day, like all my interactions are coloured by God."

I love the image of indulgence this paints - that reading scripture is a surreptitious luxury, a covert vice! I ought to be watching my tv program, but ah, just one more page! I should be getting ready for going out, but let me sit here and finish this chapter...!

St Patrick's Breastplate

Every time I read this hymn, commonly attributed to St. Patrick (but probably written later, in the 8th Century), I get shivers. The language is so fierce, so aware of wind, earth, darkness and strangers. It's a prayer for preparation on a journey, copying the Druidic style of an incantation.

It's been put to music and here's a nice version.

(NB: A long hymn, but worth the effort!)

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
By power of faith, Christ's Incarnation;
His baptism in the Jordan River;
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom;
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of the Cherubim;
The sweet 'Well done' in judgment hour;
The service of the Seraphim,
Confessors' faith, Apostles' word,
The Patriarchs' prayers, the Prophets' scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, his shield to ward,
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan's spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart's idolatry,
Against the wizard's evil craft,
Against the death-wound and the burning
The choking wave and the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,
The strong name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Bones to Philosophy, Milk to Faith

Today the Western Christian church celebrates the doctrine of the Trinity: that God is three, yet one. Distinct, yet united, co-eternal, and co-equal.

We've been studying the Trinity in class all semester, but its inner workings still does my head in. Yet we cannot do without it, else our faith falls flat. It scaffolds our understanding of the unique relational Christian God. But it's so confusing, something luminous that is beyond our reason, tho' not irrational.

So I rejoiced in hearing these serpentine lines being read in church today. I echo something of dear ol' John's sentiments: even if I am too stupid to fathom the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit nevertheless surround me, and invites me to enter into their eternal dance of love, power and joy.

O Blessed glorious Trinity,
Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely
Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguished undistinct
By power, love, knowledge be,
Give me such a self different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,
Of power, to love, to know, you unnumbered three.

- John Donne.

Are you ready?

I've been preparing like mad for impending ... doom? No, not quite. for an theological exam, actually. Which is about the closest thing to doom, at this stage! (So life is really very good, in my first-world life).

In the process, Herr Karl Barth reminds me to prepare for joy: the mystery, wonder, radiance, refreshment and consolation in the gift of life that God gives us. And to be ready for joy, even when it presents itself, as Barth puts it, "in its alien form":

"We think we should seek pleasure here or there because this thing or that appears as light or alleviation, as warm, benefit, refreshment, consolation and encouragement, promising us renewal and the attainment of what which hovers before us as the true goal of all that we do and refrain from doing. But do we really know this true goal and therefore our true joy?

God knows it. God decides it. But this means that our will for joy, our preparedness for it, must be wide open in this direction, In the direction of His unknown and even obscure disposing, if it is to be the right and good preparedness commanded in this matter. It should not be limited by the suffering of life, because even life's suffering (or what we regard as such) comes from God, the very One who summons us to rejoice. He has given to the cosmos and therefore to our life an aspect of night as well as day, and we have to remember that His goodness as Lord and Creator is the same and no less in the one than the other."

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/4, p377.

Stargazing

I'm not much of a details person, and generally very disorderly. I've come to accept that, for the most part, but the last little while has seen me very frustrated at my inability to organise and plan properly. I've been making costly mistakes at work, operating out of the chaos of my room (usually pleasant madness; but it's gotten to be a black hole of late - things just disappear!), and generally being forgetful and scatterbrained.

It's a comfort to know that God isn't so! That, amidst the vast beauty of the universe, there is elegant symmetry, and order which does not stifle creativity, but merely enhances it, like the way salt enhances the flavour of meat.

Here's the Canadian poet, PK Page, whose simple and lovely poem makes me happy when I'm sitting at my desk, proof-reading and praying that I'll pay proper attention to pick up on all the mistakes.

Stargazer

The very stars are justified.
The galaxy
italicized.

I have proofread
and proofread
the beautiful script.

There are no
errors.

Wunderkammer Day

Not much going on here along Addison's Walk as far as original tumblings of the mind go.

But here's a miscellany of delights for you:

- some poetry

- a song

- some pale and soft pictures of Iceland.

Happy Easter Monday!

This Bright Sadness

Did you know that in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Lent is called the Season of Bright Sadness? It's an expression that, as one website remarks, "attests to the tenor and labor of the season."

Lent is a season of mourning, but one in which grief is lightened by the anticipation of joy to come. Lent's necessary end at Easter means that Christ's Resurrection on that Sunday works its retrograde effect on the 40 days previous, illuminating agony with glory, despair with celebration.

The Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann rebukes our forgetfulness of Resurrection Hope, in this Lenten season:

Anyone who has, be it only once, taken part in that night which is “brighter than the day,” who has tasted of that unique joy, knows it. On Easter we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and live by it. . . Is it not our daily experience, however, that this faith is very seldom ours, that all the time we lose and betray the “new life” which we received as a gift, and that in fact we live as if Christ did not rise from the dead, as if that unique event had no meaning whatsoever for us? We simply forget all this — so busy are we, so immersed in our daily preoccupations — and because we forget, we fail. And through this forgetfulness, failure, and sin, our life becomes “old” again — petty, dark, and ultimately meaningless — a meaningless journey toward a meaningless end.

At the moment, I seem to be drowning in sorrow and sickness: both my own and sharing in others'. Blown apart by a whirling confusion of misunderstandings, misarticulations, misplacements, misadventures, mistakes and miseries. They are, perhaps, all to common to the experience of being human in a broken world. But nevertheless stinging, in their immediacy. And so I am thankful for this Lenten Season, that comes so early this year.

I step into the dark, already a late-comer to the Time. My individual, petty, first world agonies are caught up in the Great Mourning. I lay down the griefs of those I love, in supplication and trust. I need not fear, for I know that in these days of weakness of I shall meet my Lord, who bore the Cross.

Recently I discovered this exclamation:

The night may be dark and long, but all along the way a mysterious and radiant dawn seems to shine on the horizon. “Do not deprive us of our expectation, O Lover of man!” - Alexander Schmemann.

It's become a prayer for me:

Do not deprive us of our expectation! I yell, over and over.

And I know my prayers are answered:

For as many as are the promises of God, they are 'Yes' in Christ. And so through him our 'Amen', to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

Because you are the age that you are
and because I am the age that I am
such thoughts must be remembered
and many feelings are muted

And so I reach back
straining my memory
reaching as if behind my back

For the fiery restlessness
striving to pursue, to attain to remarkableness
To do something, to serve, and put hands to the plow

I remember the ache for beauty
That has never gone away
The longing for a better world

To cast off, cast away
For far off land - brighter seas

It’s still there of course
even after all these years, and the intervening things
Perhaps I have sterilise it
Perhaps I’ve neatened and straightened it
places it in tissue paper

Perhaps life has muted the ache
Dulled the pain?
In part. It is so.

But I have learnt too, in these years.
Of the Lord’s patience
Of the cost one pays
To be slaves, even as we are kings and queens

Oh dear one
You must also pay it
Perhaps you’ll pay it away from me
Where I cannot comfort you

But I am only a selfish sort
This talk of sending you off is all vaulting sentiment
It isn’t for your sake that I pray you’d stay
It’s for to lessen my agony

And if there were another way
I’d rage like the best of them

On Tim Keller's Use of "Mythos"

Tim Keller, the Thinking Evangelical's Favourite, has written a book on marriage. And it has caused much a goodly stir in Christian circles. Moi, I haven't read the book, but I did read Keller's far shorter essay on marriage and singleness, on which, by all accounts, the book is based.

The essay is excellent, not the least for his situating Christian singles and marrieds within the wider community of the people of God, and in arguing for theological reasons for marriage. Tim Keller is also a big C.S. Lewis fan, and is responsible for introducing Lewis to a whole generation of young Christians of the 21st Century.

However, as each new generation reads 'the old books' with the preoccupations of the present age, so what Keller uses of Lewis is reflective of what 21st century Western Christians are concerned with. There is a simplification of Lewis' thought, and, to a certain extent, the reinvention of an idea, or at least a far narrow application of a Lewisean theme.

A comprehensive Attraction

Keller's book on marriage contains a beautiful exhortation to wisdom in choosing 'the one to love.' Keller argues for a 'comprehensive attraction' between prospective marriage partners, one that is not based on superficiality nor sexuality. Rather, he advocates a love and commitment for the other person that is based on character, as well as their 'mission in life.' Such attraction encompasses not only who the other person currently is (imperfect as he/she may be), but who they will become - their hopes, their longings. One must love who the other person is becoming, and be committed in helping to bring about this future self:

'Marriage partners can say, “I see what you are becoming and what you will be (even though, frankly, you aren’t there yet). The flashes of your future attract me.'

These are lovely, profound ideas, which challenge the lens through which we might look at prospective marriage partners. Keller asks us not to necessarily look for Mr. Perfect-Epitome-of-Christ-Right-Now, or Miss-Paragon-of-Godliness-Already-Perfected, but to find someone flawed, but one who is growing, and who is willing to change and be moulded throughout their life by grace.

Mythos Misapprehensions?

But then Keller narrows his definition, to suggest that comprehensive attraction should be directed towards someone who shares your longing for God:

Ultimately, your marriage partner should be part of what could be called your “mythos.” C.S. Lewis spoke of a “secret thread” that unites every person’s favourite books, music, places or pastimes. Certain things trigger an “inconsolable longing” that gets you in touch with the Joy that is God. Leonard Bernstein said that listening to Beethoven’s Fifth always made him sure (despite his intellectual agnosticism) that there was a God. Beethoven’s Fifth doesn’t do that for me. But everyone has something that moves them so that they long for heaven or the future kingdom of God (though many nonbelievers know it only as bittersweet longing for “something more”).

Sometimes you will meet a person who so shares the same mythos thread with you that he or she becomes part of the thread itself. This is very hard to describe, obviously.

This is the kind of comprehensive attraction you should be looking for in a future partner.

Again, this is thoughtful, sensitive and helpful advice (even if it narrows down my potential marriage partners to a possible 7 people in the world: 4 of them dead, 2 Octogenarians - one married, another still sexily single, and the final one probably yet to be born!) Keller is essentially arguing that we ought to look for someone who understands our Sehnsucht, our longing for something beyond this earth. All well and good, as far as it goes.

What makes me nervous, however, is that Keller inadvertently simplifies CS Lewis' argument regarding Sehnsucht/Longing. For readers of Keller who have not encountered Lewis, they might mistakenly understand Sehnsucht to be that quixotic mixture of deep joys and passions, which, if shared with you, will ear-mark someone as your 'soul mate' or 'kindred spirit.' It would also seem that Sehnsucht is located in the realm of romantic love, and is part of the mysterious magic of such. Sehnsucht then becomes subsumed within the search for the one who will understand and relate to such deep feelings within us, and who will, in Keller's words 'become part of the thread itself.'

I am not suggesting for the faintest moment that Keller is idolising Sehnsucht, and I would be the first to declare that a marriage founded on a weaved unity of 'secret threads' of joy must surely be beautiful and wonderful. But I cannot help but think that a cursory reading of Keller on this will lead to either a misunderstanding (and unhelpful idealisation) of 'Sehnsucht', or an over-zealous longing for romantic relationships that will recognise our Sehnsucht.

Mythos Realigned: Getting back to Our Source

For Lewis, Sehnsucht was never something to be found patterned in another human being. That is, while we might find some (or a great deal) of common longing in another, so that we might meet a person and exclaim: 'And so you like this too? But I thought I was the only one!', Sehnsucht essentially shows our aloneness, which longs for understanding, but which cannot be found fully in anything or anyone of this earth, but in God himself.

Keller quotes CS Lewis' use of 'secret thread' without elaborating the context in which Lewis makes his case (and really, how can he? Keller is after all writing a book on an entirely different theme - marriage!) The phrase comes from Lewis' The Problem of Pain, in which Lewis caps off his work on suffering with a moving chapter on the Longing for Heaven. This secret thread, while Lewis acknowledges others to possess, is uniquely our own. We rarely, argues Lewis, actually find many others who share the same pangs at the sight of beauty:

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of ...

But such should not discourage us, but merely show us our essential uniqueness. Your soul has been made unlike any one else's, and, is always, utterly and bereftly, incomplete, until it finds its refuge and fulfillment in its Maker:

Our soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance ... [Sehnsucht] ... if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away, but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is ....

Sehnsucht is Augustine exclaiming in his Confessions:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

But what about Relationships in the Here and Now? Friendships? Marriage, even?

Of course, Lewis is not saying that we can't find fellow humans who see a similar beauty, or joy, or longing in the things of this world that stir it up in us. Indeed, he spends a lengthy paragraph, in The Problem of Pain, and in Surprise by Joy, as well as a whole chapter in The Four Loves, detailing the joyous meeting of such friends.

But in the end, Lewis' conclusion is that it is because the love of friends and the love of marriages fail, that Sehnsucht is seen for what it really is. Such longing cannot be fulfilled in human relationships alone, and our 'connection' with one another is limited. Sehnsucht points to the exclusive relationship that we, the created ones, must share with our Creator. That is the very nature of Sehnsucht - a tantalising teaser, echoes heard in song, and promises hinted at in sunrises - glimpsed in our relationships perhaps - but pointing to fulfilment elsewhere.

Romantic Love, or the love between friends, of the deepest and intimate kind, will never be enough. They are honourable, glorious things, to rejoice in, and not dismissed (as if we're cold-blooded cardboard saints who are beyond human relationships). But it is only when they are put in their rightful place is a believer's life, as one of the lesser gods, that the True God enters. And by entering, enable us to enjoy these lesser loves, in the whatever form he has chosen for us - be it in marriage, or in singleness with rich friendships and in solitude.

Please don't hear me saying that looking to marry your 'secret thread' friend and lover is bad. But that is not the point of Sehnsucht in our lives.

The very purpose of Sehnsucht is to point to something outside the relationship. Looking for a secret thread partner, as if he or she is the one to fulfill your Sehnsucht, is foolhardy and oxymoronic. And though it might be wise for a life-long relationship to begin with an understanding of each other's Sehnsucht, there is no rule that says that a secret thread of Sehnsucht must be the basis of any relationship.

To misunderstand the power and reason for Sehnsucht in our lives is a pitiful waste of a gift of God. Perhaps this is the hardest of all for single people, as we live in a world where romantic love is touted to be the ultimate union and connection two people can have together. What are we singles to do with such longing that seems to point towards fulfillment in another of flesh and blood, but there is none?

This entry is already too long for me to mount an argument that single people reflect the humanity that is to come, and plagiarise Halden and Myers, who suggest, with delicious provocativeness, that 'if Christ is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say categorically that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness, since Jesus himself did not participate in any of these experiences.'

I can only acknowledge the unfulfilled longing of singles, and echo Walter Trobisch's challenge: "The task we have to face is the same, whether we are married or single: To live a fulfilled life in spite of many unfulfilled desires."

We live in a broken world. Not many things happen as we wish. But God is still sovereign, and our Father. What else is there to do, but to trust and obey; pleading for more faith and courage, each day? At the same time, we're allowed to rail and wail to God, and to question all we need. Just see some of the Psalms.

One must also understand that the secret thread can be found between friends, not merely lovers. The thread might come in singular, but the things that it ties together are plural. If we understand Lewis' argument regarding the individuality of each person correctly, one person will never fully share your Sehnsucht, but perhaps a number of dear friends (not excluding your spouse) might share in the varied experiences that bring you to joy.

In the final analysis, Lewis himself would have told you, that all longings (for marriage, for deep friendships, for understanding, for beauty, and for love), force us to go back to the Original Source, the love that is Christ's self-giving to us, and the glorious, 'big-picture' future that is already been secured for us:

But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand ... For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you - you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another's. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God has His good way, to utter satisfaction.

January Hymn

The sun is scalding hot.
The pavement crackles with wind and dust,
And our skins blister, soaking up the brightness -
stretched with light until we can hold no more.

We walk,
Stepping carefully amongst the wreckage
Of December past.
The same gait. The same pace.

Our heads are always in the clouds.
People should look up more, you always said.
There’s so much to see in the sky:

The tips of old buildings. The light rounding out sharp corners.
The birds weaving like living smoke.
A lone geranium plant from a high window ...
We laugh ourselves stupid at cloud shapes.

(I’d built an edifice of my own, by this time.
A paper castle full of manuscripts and ideas.
Some in languages we know.
Some in ones we would learn together.)

And so we run.
Blithely, rejoicing in each other’s strength.
And we stumble, in the same ways -
Our feet fall on the same jutting stones.

But that’s the trouble, you say.
We’re too similar, without being the same.
We’ll never really run a parallel course.

Well my friend, as the song goes:
When your mind’s made up, there’s no point trying to change it.
So we'll close January and wait for February’s new.

I pray. Not knowing what to pray:
I shall always fight words that curtail your freedom,
Even if it means fighting myself.

So I ask God
For a cold day.
My eyes no longer streaming,
trying to see in the summer sun.
When I will go out,
Stepping on autumn leaves.

The light will be older then. Mellower.
And through the mist 
I will see Keat’s fruit, ripe and hanging low.

Full to overflowing from two trees.
Yours and mine. 
Side by side.
(Much like any others, really.)


And perhaps we shall see, what was always intended:
The strong independent roots. The distinct branches.
Yet the interlacing green. The shade they provide.

And the breeze,
When it whistles through the leaves,
Makes a sweet, straining tune.
You take the high notes, I the harmony.
The melody is (of course),
His.

New Year's Resolutions

Written around the end of December 2011. But only found today...

**************

I'm quite a grump about New Year's resolutions. I'm realistic about myself, knowing that I am a fey and fickle creature, lazy to the bone, and can barely stop drinking coffee for a week, let alone keep a noble resolution for 365 days.

So I make some silly ones that are easy to keep, and over which I shan't pour scalding regret, if I did break them.

But this New Year's Eve, as I look back over my 20s and look forward to turning 30, seems a good junction to reflect, and ask myself some bigger questions about who I am, and who I would like to become.

I've never been much of a New Year's celebrator (I expend all my anticipation and excitement over Christmas), and I'm rather immune to the shiny excitment of a fresh new year (blank pages, unknown plans etc.) But Chesterton reminds me:

"THE object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

-'Daily News.'

And so it seemed providential that this week's sermon at church mentioned Wesley's Covenant. Another local church had this in their weekly bulletin:

"John Wesley adapted a Covenant Prayer for use in services for the Renewal of the believer's Covenant with God. In his Short history of the people called Methodists (1781), Wesley describes the first covenant service; a similar account is to be found in his Journal of the time. Wesley says that the first service was held on Monday 11 August 1755, at the French church at Spitalfields in London, with 1800 people present. The prayer had some of its origins in the puritan, Richard Alleine. Services using the Covenant prayer have been included in most Methodist books of liturgy since. It has become usual to use this at New Year. We will offer the opportunity to pray this prayer today:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

(Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, 1936)."

Perhaps, instead of resolutions, which look to the will and strength of the man or woman to accomplish, we could pray this instead. Every day, for 365 days. And trust that God will work this in us, hourly, daily, for this year, and beyond.

Listening to the Silence

“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” - CS Lewis.

Die Bibelforscher

(I don't know why I haven't posted this before, but this is probably my poetic discovery of 2011.)

Die Bibelforscher

For the Protestant martyrs of the Third Reich

By Waldo Williams (as translated from the Welsh by Rowan Williams)

Earth is a hard text to read; but the king
has put his message in our hands, for us to carry
sweating, whether the trumpets of his court
sound near or far. So for these men:
they were the bearers of the royal writ,
clinging to it through spite and hurts and wounding.

The earth's round fullness is not like a parable, where meaning
breaks through, a flash of lightning, in the humid, heavy dusk;
imagination will not conjure into flesh the depths
of fire and crystal sealed under castle walls of wax, but still
they keep their witness pure in Buchenwald,
pure in the crucible of hate penning them in.

They closed their eyes to doors that might have opened
if they had put their names to words of cowardice;
they took their stand, backs to the wall, face to face with savagery,
and died there, with their filth and piss flowing together,
arriving at the gates of heaven,
their fists still clenched on what the king had written.

Earth is a hard text to read. But what we can be certain of
is that screaming mob is insubstantial mist;
in the clear sky, the thundering assertions fade to nothing.
There the Lamb's song is sung, and what it celebrates
is the apocalypse of a glory
pain lays bare.

They also serve ...

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

- John Milton.

O Heart Bereaved and Lonely

O heart bereaved and lonely,
Whose brightest dreams have fled
Whose hopes like summer roses,
Are withered crushed and dead
Though link by link be broken,
And tears unseen may fall
Look up amid thy sorrow,
To Him who knows it all.

O cling to thy Redeemer,
Thy Savior, Brother, Friend
Believe and trust His promise,
To keep you till the end
O watch and wait with patience,
And question all you will
His arms of love and mercy,
Are round about thee still.

Look up, the clouds are breaking,
The storm will soon be o'er
And thou shall reach the haven,
Where sorrows are no more
Look up, be not discouraged;
Trust on, whate'er befall
Remember, O remember,
Thy Savior knows it all.

Fanny Crosby, you rock!