Reflecting and Responding
George Herbert
Weaving Life into a Meaningful Whole
If as a Flower doth spread and die,
Thou wouldst extend me to some good,
Before I were by frost’s extremity
Nipt in the bud.
THE TEMPLE
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY CLOSED WITH Christendom battling internal strife, which spilled over into political conflicts between emerging nation-states. As the trauma of the sixteenth century ebbed and flowed, the seeds of radical change were taking root in Western Europe. The elements of the Counter-Reformation—the division of Catholic lands among Protestant warlords and vicious fights among Protestants themselves—revealed the smoldering crisis that was brewing as the curtain fell on the sixteenth century. As it rose on the seventeenth, discontent and turmoil raged across Europe. England and Europe became embroiled in civil and national conflicts that would escalate into the Thirty Years’ War.
Along with the political turmoil came social, philosophical and religious upheaval as well. These conflicts joined with the new science to undermine cultural and spiritual confidence in Christianity. As political allies became enemies and centuries of settled life crumbled under the weight of civil unrest, a continent’s confidence in Christianity collapsed as well. The corruption of the clergy, the nominal religion of kings and the quest for new empires all conspired to unleash an avalanche of unbelief.
Most significant in this emerging period was the final and complete collapse of the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian worldview. Through the work of Copernicus and Galileo, science identified the sun as the center of the universe. There were other forces at work as well, but assumptions like ignorance as the cause of society’s problems and science as the solution of all social ills helped shape what history has come to know as the “modern mentality.”
Stepping into this period of controversy and dissent was George Herbert (1593-1633), the brilliant English poet and pastor who articulated a poetic and passionate understanding of the spiritual life in his classic work The Temple. In this masterpiece Herbert shows how we begin in unbelief outside the church, come to initial belief, grow in our maturity in this belief and finally realize full intimacy with God. Herbert’s genius lies in his wonderful ability to take the disparate parts of our life and weave them into a meaningful whole.
The Flow of Our Spiritual Life
To read Herbert is to gain a sense of how poetry can help us understand our life with God as journey. So often we expect our books to state their positions and then proceed clearly. Herbert’s work is different. It moves between the obvious and the subtle—which reflects the way our very life progresses. Through his erratic poetic style Herbert portrays for us the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the heart-stopping advances and crushing defeats of the spiritual life.
Preparing to enter. The Temple is the record of Herbert’s own struggle to make sense of life with God. It begins with two poems that form the “church porch.” Both the words and the structure of these poems reflect Herbert’s understanding of the motion of God as he communicates his ways and will to us. The church porch is where we prepare to enter life with God. On the porch we face two clear choices: to enter a life that leads to God or to pursue a life that ends in despair.
Herbert establishes a high moral tone that recognizes the gravity of vice while pursuing the elevating energy of virtue. If we undergo moral rehabilitation and develop virtue while on the church porch, this virtuous life frees us to enter “the temple,” where we discover the attendant blessings God intends for those who choose a life with him.
Steps in our journey. Each of The Temple’s 165 poems highlights a step in our spiritual journey that brings us closer to the meaning and purpose promised in a life with Christ. The poems begin with an expression of the longing to make life a living sacrifice to God. Listen to the words of the opening poem, “The Altar,” itself shaped like the ancient altar of the Anglican Church.
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 touched the same.
A heart alone
Is such a stone
As nothing but
Thy power 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.
Oh let thy blessed sacrifice be mine,
And sanctify this A L T A R to be thine.
This poem describes the starting point for our entire Christian pilgrimage. The spiritual life begins with the decision to make Christ’s sacrifice real and present in our own life. The Temple ends with buoyant optimism that when Jesus, as Love, fills our soul, we find rest. In between, the vicissitudes of life ravage us, providing moments of exhilarating insight woven together with long periods of melancholy and despair.
The role of suffering. Herbert is especially attentive to the problem of human suffering. Often suffering either opens us to God or causes us to turn away. Herbert invites us to allow our experiences of anguish and brokenness to bring us closer to God, realizing that it is through suffering that we become aware of a whole other dimension of spiritual truth. It is through suffering and the realization that nothing on earth can relieve it that we turn to God. Listen to these haunting yet hope-filled words from Herbert in “Affliction (III)”:
My heart did heave, and there came forth, Oh God!
By that I knew that thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a scepter of the rod:
Hadst thou not had thy part,
Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.
But since thy breath gave me both life and shape,
Thou knowest my tallies; and when there’s assign’d
So much breath to a sigh, what’s then behind?
Or if some years with it escape;
The sigh then only is
A gale to bring me sooner to my bliss.
Thy life on earth was grief, and thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honor, now to grieve in me,
And in my members suffer ill.
They who lament one cross,
Thou dying daily, praise thee to thy loss.
How Beauty Calls Us to God
Herbert is also keenly aware of the way in which the temporal mediates the eternal. He sees this in the beauty of creation, calling often upon subtle, indirect imagery rather than overt description. Even the role of the preacher as the mediating link between earth and heaven, a role Herbert highly prizes, is valuable only to the extent that the preacher lifts our attention from the temporal to the eternal plane. One notable example is captured in the uplifting poem “Church Music.” Herbert uses this poem to demonstrate how music brings joy to the soul and helps us forget our sorrows.
Elsewhere Herbert implies that poetry is the language of God and the closest form of communication to direct prayer. This is especially true when he describes the mission of the church. In “The British Church,” Herbert writes,
I joy, dear Mother, when I view
Thy perfect lineaments, and hue
Both sweet and bright.
Beauty in thee takes up her place,
And dates her letters from thy face,
When she doth write.
A fine aspect in fit array,
Neither too mean, nor yet too gay,
Shows who is best.
Herbert goes on to describe the variety within the mother church and the beauty of each distinction, capturing the role of aesthetic sensibility in our life with God. His work is highly reminiscent of Plato, who observed that “beauty is the only spiritual essence we love instinctively by our nature.” Herbert believed that beauty, second only to Scripture, elevates us to God.
The Four Pillars of Our Christian Faith
Herbert was a man of the church. His robust confidence in the church is anchored in his belief that there are no “churchless Christians.” Everyone needs a community of faith for their life with God to grow and prosper. It is the church that strengthens the four pillars on which our life with God rests. These pillars are Scripture, prayer, the sacraments and the ordered life of the church year.
Scripture is primary, as Herbert prefers the special revelation of God’s Word to the general revelation of creation. He is especially interested in exploring both the unity and diversity of Scripture and how the canon holds together to convey both specific and general meanings for our life with God. Consider this notable example from “The Holy Scriptures (II)”:
Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glory!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the story.
This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christian’s destiny.
Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do find me out, and parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.
Stars are poor books, and oftentimes do miss:
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.
Together, Scripture, prayer, the sacraments and the ordered life of the church year form the context for our life with God. Everywhere Herbert radiates a boundless enthusiasm for a sacramental view of life, a view that sees the touch of eternity in time, leading us to look for God in the affairs of everyday life.
As The Temple gains momentum, a vibrant optimism breaks out in “Praise (III),” suggesting that we reach points where a settled confidence in God’s goodness stabilizes our life. To make this progress, however, we must undergo necessary growth and pruning. The poem “Paradise” speaks in both words and structure to this process:
I bless thee, Lord, because I
GROW
Among thy trees, which in a
ROW
To thee both fruit and order
OW
What open force, or hidden
CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring me
HARM,
While the enclosure is thine
ARM?
Enclose me still for fear I
START,
But to me rather sharp and
TART,
Then let me want thy hand and
ART.
When thou dost greater judgments
SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and
PARE,
Ev’n fruitful trees more fruitful
ARE.
Such sharpness shows the sweetest
FRIEND,
Such cuttings rather heal than
REND,
And such beginnings touch their
END.
This poem helps us realize that the goal of our journey with God is to bring us to a desired end. “The Pilgrimage” especially amplifies this theme when it identifies the obstacles we face on the way to our ultimate destiny. Along the way, the pilgrim is led into all manner of trial and temptation. His resistance to these trials and temptations brings him at last to death, which ushers him into paradise in heaven.
Herbert is quite attentive to the rhythms of life. He celebrates the way the church year and church history establish both a linear and circular pattern for individual life as well as the corporate life of the community. This, too, is part of the spiritual life as journey.
The Double Motion of Our Journey with God
Herbert’s theme of “double motion” is portrayed most dramatically in his brilliant poem “Colossians 3:3.” His central assumption here is that spiritual formation is necessary because we are not fully formed when born but must develop over time. This poem is the centerpiece of Herbert’s approach to our life with God and, as in many of his others, both the words and the structure convey his meaning. The double nature of our life with God entails both the seen and the unseen, the temporal and the eternal, the sacred and the mundane.
My words and thoughts do both express this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion,
The first Is straight and our diurnal friend,
The other Hid and doth obliquely bend,
One life is wrapt In flesh and tends to earth,
The other winds towards Him whose happy birth
Taught me to live here so, That still one eye
Should aim and shoot at that which Is on high:
Quitting with daily labor all My pleasure,
To gain at harvest an eternal Treasure.
In this poem Herbert introduces the idea that the Christian life is lived on two levels. Both the words he chooses and the pattern he constructs illustrate the way our life is conformed to the image of Christ over time. On the horizontal level, we mark our life by various experiences. But on the vertical level, which is hidden, our spiritual life is being conformed to the image of Christ over time. Hidden in the language of Herbert’s poem are the words from Colossians 3:3: “My life is hid in him that is my treasure.” This is the double motion of the Christian life.
On the horizontal plane, our daily life does not always seem to have meaning. Yet Herbert suggests that these activities are the very activities where we encounter God. We cannot always see meaning, control our moods or even sustain a consistent understanding of God. Nevertheless, Herbert helps us see that throughout our mundane days, God’s Spirit is guiding our spirit. On the hidden vertical plane, decisions are being made, choices executed, allegiances cast and motives evaluated. It is on this level that we are becoming like Christ and being conformed to his image over time.
The significance of The Temple is Herbert’s exploration of the range and scope of the Christian life through his use of metaphor. He teaches Christian doctrine indirectly and shows how it can provide the order and structure we need to be guided to God. Even though doctrine alone cannot bring us to God, it can help us understand the nature and destiny of the Christian journey.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
George Herbert astonishes me. To begin with, he wrote an incredibly wise and profound prose piece, The Country Parson. If we are trying to understand the work of spiritual formation in a local congregational setting and the place and role of “pastor” within it, there simply is no better place to turn. Frankly, The Country Parson trumps all the twentieth- and twenty-first-century works on the same subject. Herbert understands the spiritual formation work of the pastor because he lived it completely and knew how to explain it to ordinary pastors seeking to bring the wisdom of God to ordinary people.
But, of course, there is more. Smack in the midst of all the ordinariness of parish life—births and deaths, broken marriages and anxious parents, pastoral visits by the score and cups of tea beyond numbering—Herbert is writing the most astonishing poetry. His poetry, which takes us on an extended journey through everyday parish life, was published after his death. It causes me to wonder how much the people of his parish knew of his poetry, brilliant and beautiful beyond the telling. Did it crop up in his homilies? Did he read it to small groups in homes? Perhaps. My guess, however, is that the people Herbert ministered to day in and day out had no idea of the poetic treasure in their midst.
Herbert’s poetry says two things to me right off. First, it says that God loves beauty. Today we tend to forget those great transcendentals—the good, the true, the beautiful—which guided so much of ancient civilization. And beauty especially we could use in greater measure in our day. Poetry—good poetry, true poetry—is beauty incarnated into language. Please understand, I struggle with poetry. Even the reading of it is hard, not to mention the writing of it. I must read thoughtfully and repeatedly. Understanding comes only with time and patience, but when it does come . . . well, I’m astonished.
The second thing Herbert’s poetry says to me is that word choice is genuinely important. We live in a day of cheap sentences where words are prostituted for the purpose of propaganda. Text-messaging dominates the verbal landscape. “Any old word will do,” we think, as we keep up a steady stream of monosyllabic prattle. No, any old word will not do. Mark Twain once observed that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. It is important that our word choice move from flat, lifeless and black-and-white to become animated with love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other glorious emotions that make our lives dangerous and great and bearable. It was the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who said, “Out of words come the gusts and grunts and hiccups and heehaws of the common fun of the earth.” Herbert’s poetry reminds me of these realities.
I am very much taken with Herbert’s idea that all of life’s experiences have in them a “double motion.” Outwardly we are carrying on the tasks of our day: scrubbing floors, talking with clients, working at our computer. Yet underneath, deeper down, our life is hid with Christ in God. And it is here in the innermost sanctuary of the soul that the real, substantive work of spiritual formation goes on. How hard it is for us to value this inward reality, which remains out of sight to all but the most spiritually sensitive. The outward is always clamoring and demanding. The inward is silent and never draws attention to itself. If we satisfy the outward we receive acclaim. If we satisfy the inward we receive nothing. Well, nothing outwardly—inwardly we experience a life of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We must, however, remember that this is a “double” motion. It isn’t as if the outward is bad and the inward good. Oh, no! It is that the inward is central and the outward flows out of the inward. As we give attention to that which is central, the outward tasks of life become more like a reflex action to the prior initiation of the heart. A double motion.
Finally, I am intrigued by Herbert’s four pillars of life: Scripture, prayer, the sacraments and the ordered life of the church year. Each is valuable and each is important; together they form a bulwark against the chaos of modern life. It is one way we have of ordering the spiritual life, and a helpful one at that. Still, for my blood it feels a little too cut and dried. I’ve never found life quite that fixed, quite that settled. I sense the need for more. The immediacy of the Spirit to guide and empower, perhaps. Something else, maybe. I’m not sure. At least Herbert gives us something worth pondering . . . and living.
O Holy One of Israel, you spoke with glorious beauty through the poetic drama of the prophets of old. And the psalmists too. We’re thankful. So much of life today is drab and flat. Sometimes we long for a sizzling metaphor just to liven things up a bit.
Thank you, Lord, for the singers and the artists and the poets of the world. No doubt they help prepare us for heaven where the music of the spheres will be multiplied beyond all human imagining. O may we love beauty in all its multifaceted expressions. This we pray in the name of the One who is utter beauty and goodness. Amen.