“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall and winter alone.”
-A. Bartlett Giamatti
But the Spring is coming soon.
I agree, Mr. Frost. I agree.
Baseball, I already miss you.
Kindly,
Gabe
Every so often I come upon a poem or a paragraph or something that gives me chills – and continues to upon each subsequent reading – this poem is one of those.
I help out with the college/post-college group at my Church, which is awesome. This fall we’re talking about prayer – what it means, how we can understand it, and how it relates to the every-day life of a Christian. A few weeks ago i stumbled upon this poem from George Herbert – the brilliant 17th century English poet.
His poem Prayer I captures the mystery and wonder and power that is prayer to God. Check it below:
Prayer I – by George Herbert
PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ; Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ; Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.
Dr. Ben Witherington III, one of my favorite Seminary profs, wrote a particularly pertintent synopsis of this great poem –
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George Herbert presents us with a cornucopia of images of prayer in this
wonderful and striking poem. For one thing, he sees prayer as communion
with God, and so as a sort of feast.
Even if we don’t get what we ask for,
we do get what we most need, which is intimacy with God. Hebert also sees
prayer as natural, as natural as breathing, only prayer is spiritual
respiration, from the heart or soul, if it is at all genuine.
Further,
prayer is a sort of spiritual sacrifice offered up to God, or even more
strikingly, a seige engine with which to assail God when one is in dire
straits. But prayer is also seen as a way of taking the measure of God’s
will for our lives, and so it is a way for the heart to go on pilgrimage,
but the heart must listen for God’s answer while journeying.
The most daring
image in the poem is the analogy drawn between prayer and the spear that
pierced Christ’s side. The idea here is sacramental, and it is dynamic way
of saying that prayer releases the blessing, releases the healing, releases
all the benefits of the shed blood of Jesus. Herbert even ventures into the
psychology of prayer, saying it is something we all hear, but also fear.
Why fear? For the same reason a child is afraid to ask their parent for
something, lest the reply be no, or even worse in some cases— yes! There
is a wonderful line in the play called St. John in Exile where John on
Patmos has just heard that the Roman commander on the island has just been
converted, will allow John to leave the island, but would prefer him to stay
and instruct the commander in the faith. John wrily says to God ” Oh Lord
why do you answer my deepest prayers at the worst possible moments?”
Prayer is indeed something to fear and revere and handle carefully, since God is one who answers prayer. In the end Hebert sees prayer as something that
produces the fruit of the Spirit in the believer– love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness and so on. The final image of prayer as being like a peal
of a bell ringing out clearly reminds that God is not hard of hearing,
rather he is always listening and prepared to respond.
And that’s good news…
“Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words;”
or, “not to be uttered.”
That is the definition of “Ineffable” according to Webster’s Dictionary.
It’s also the word Yeats uses in his poem To Some I have Talked with by the Fire
It is dark but beautiful. Here is the bulk of the poem:
…My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
And of the wayward twilight companies
Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
Under the fruit of evil and of good:
And of the embattled flaming multitude
Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,
And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name…
The imagery of souls as being like “bats in dead trees” is so interesting. The souls are very much alive and are hanging on to something very much close to being dead. So many of us, all of us at one point or another, feel like dead trees…barely hanging on to survive.
There is so much to consider in this work – such as the “companies who sigh” because their dreams have never “bent under the fruit of evil and of good.” This seems to reflect upon the person who has dreams, but never dared to fulfill them…never dared to live them…
And then we come to the Ineffable Name. What is he referring to here? Most critics suggest that he is probably referring to Irish Republicanism, and how the phrase ‘Republic of Eire’ was not allowed to be uttered in Ireland at that time. And the ‘Embattled flaming Multitude’ referrs to those fighting for the Irish Republicans fighting against England for liberty.
And that is probably what he is referring to here.
But there is another allusion that can be drawn from that line.
We are all an embattled flaming multitude, aren’t we? We all fight against the darkness that tries to prevail itself upon us, don’t we? We all get broken by the world and the evil therein, and find ourselves in “wayward companies.” However…there is hope. There is an Ineffable Name that we can cry. There is the name of one who gives us the strength and courage to “rise, wing above wing.” There is One that is truly too great to be expressed in words. And this One longs to bring hope and joy…and liberty… to the souls of passionate men, and wayward companies, and the embattled flaming multitude.
Like the Irish Republicans, we have our own fight for liberty don’t we? Thanks to the Ineffable Name, we can rise and, like the storm, cry out…
I found another great poem this morning, again by Yeats. He’s quickly becoming one of my favorites.
The poem is titled The Lover mourns for the Loss of Love
Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end:
She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image was there;
She has gone weeping away.
I love the image Yeats paints of his beautiful friend – pale brows and dim hair don’t usually get tagged as beautiful. But he does so here. I wonder why.
But more importantly, this poem got me thinking about what is in my heart – about who is in my heart. If someone looked in my heart whose face would they see?
It sounds cheesy, but this poem makes me think of Jesus – how he longs to find himself in our hearts. How it must hurt him when he doesn’t find his image there.
I think Jesus is a lover who mourns the loss of love too.
The one difference, though, is that He doesn’t go weeping away. He stays there. Always hoping. Always wooing. Always yearning to be believed and trusted and accepted and written on our hearts.
Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts, not your clothes. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Joel 2:12-13 (Emphasis added)
Read a great poem this morning – ‘The Ballad of Father Gillian’ by Yeats. I love the language in it.
It’s a poem about an old Irish Priest who is tired because much of his flock is dying from famine. He is weary from all the death. The priest is called in the wee hours to go to the bedside of a dying man, but falls asleep before he goes. He later wakes up and rushes to the house, only to find the man had already died. But instead of being discouraged or angry at himself for this, he takes it as a blessing from God. God knew he couldn’t handle any more death. God saw the priest…
This is the way the poem ends…
‘He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of His great angels down
To help me in my need.
‘He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things,
Asleep upon a chair.’
“Baseball is a game you can’t like if winning is everything. Democracy is that way too.” George Will
"Only The Lonely"
I read this one a few days ago. I think it’s appropriate for a day such as this.
A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love:
The folk who are buying and selling,
The clouds on their journey above,
The cold wet winds ever blowing,
And the shadowy hazel grove
Where mouse-grey waters are flowing,
Threaten the head that I love.
–The Pity of Love by W.B. Yeats