Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul?

I’ll be following the Jesus Have I Love, But Paul? Blog Tour which begins this Monday, Jan. 9.  Will you?

Différance

Here is the draft of a poem to ring in the new year.  It is by no means finished, so constructive criticism (particularly from philosophically-inclined folks) is, as always, most welcome.

Différance

 

The silken face on the hem of a chartreuse gown,

I am not

The alloy flecks on a bulbous, saffron ornament,

I am not.

The festooned frame on a realist portrait,

I am not.

 

 

 

I am a word thumbing the earth,

a reed slicing clay.

I am earth and clay,

clay that is clay-and-not-clay,

earth that is earth-and-not-earth

 

The medium is the message,

message that is

message-and-not-message,

signifier which lets the signified slip into itself.

 

—

 

The clay tablet furrows its brow:

 

Why do you darken my counsel,

saying that I am an expression

without content?

 

Brace yourself like a somatic being –

I will question,

you will answer

 

You press against my body,

calling me a bearer

of meaning

 

You impregnate me with wetted sticks,

saying I am a vessel

of speech

 

as though this thought bloating my belly

were not knitted into me,

swelling my uterus,

feeding off my flesh and blood,

crafting my being,

and yielding itself to be crafted

 

Why do you darken my counsel,

saying that I am parergon,

bisected from the work itself?

 

You call me unfaithful,

accusing me of semblance,

though it is you who have called for the

severing of physis and tekhne

 

Do I not bear you within myself?

Am I not called by your name?

 

Ding-an-sich?

Do you not know that there is only

the realm of the Real,

and that nothing exists

in-itself?

Supper At Emmaus

At All Hallows Church in Wyncote, there is a great, thee-paneled stained-glass window build into the wall above the altar.  The scene is curious.  The risen Jesus stands behind a table, facing the viewer, holding bread in his left hand and blessing a cup of wine with his right.  Two other figures inhabit the window: followers of Jesus, one at his right hand, the other at his left.

What is curious is not Jesus or the other figures, but the backdrop of the piece.  The figures are not standing in a house in first century Palestine, but in the altar space of an Episcopal church, in the very place at which worshipers kneel to receive the Eucharist.  It is a room within a room, an altar both beyond and within the our space. Jesus’ face is turned not to the followers beside him, but out into the nave toward the congregation.

This is the gaze that meets mine each Sunday morning as I kneel at the railing to take communion.  We receive the Eucharist at the hand of our priest, but it is Jesus who feeds us with his own Body and Blood.  Jesus is here, breaking the bread and giving it to the hungry.  This feast of remembrance is not of a Lord who is far away, but one whose advent is nigh (even as he is already present).

I realized today that the stained-glass scene depicts the Supper at Emmaus, a story found in Luke 24.  Many often think of communion in connection with 1 Corinthians 11, and rightly so, since Paul discusses what is known as the Last Supper which Jesus had before his death, at which Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper (communion).  But there are details of this post-resurrection story of the Supper at Emmaus which reveal that it is also a kind of Eucharistic narrative which can deepen our own understanding of this meal Jesus gave us.

The scene is a road stretching towards Emmaus (about seven miles from Jerusalem).  Cleopas and another follower of Jesus, on their way to Emmaus, are discussing the befuddling, disheartening events of the last few days: the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth (the prophet of God whom they hoped would redeem Israel) and now the inexplicable reports from the women who had visited Jesus’ tomb.  As the two discuss, Jesus draws near and asks them what they are discussing.  The narrator tells us that they were unable to recognize Jesus even as he walked with them: “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Lk. 24:16).  The motif of ‘sight’ in this passage is striking.  Cleopas and his companion relate the claims of the women at the tomb: that they did not find Jesus’ body, but saw a vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive.  “Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see” (Lk. 24:24).

Jesus responds by rebuking them for their unbelief, saying, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”  Then, the narrator tells us, Jesus interprets to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, beginning with Moses and the Prophets.

And still, they do not recognize Jesus.

It is not until later that evening, when he shares a meal with them that they begin to see who Jesus is:

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. ³¹ And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” ³³ And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, ³⁴ saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Their eyes are veiled until the breaking of the bread.  The language  in v. 31 evokes the memory of a distant Garden in which the first humans ate in order that their eyes would be opened  – but, contrary to the words of the serpent, this eating did not make Adam and Eve ‘like God.’  Their eyes were henceforth clouded with unbelief which kept them from recognizing the face of their Maker.  So too Israel participates in in their blindness and unbelief.  So too humankind participates in the unbelief of Israel.

Yet into that unbelief enters the suffering, righteous messiah, the one who redeems Israel.  The travelers to Emmaus recognize him in the eating: their eyes are opened, they recognize him, and he vanishes from their sight.  They gather with the other Jesus-followers and share the stories of resurrection and how Jesus was revealed to them.

When we come together to celebrate communion, we are the travelers on the road to Emmaus: befuddled and disheartened, feeling that our hoped-for messiah has failed us.  Our vision is dull and we distrust the words of our Maker, thinking that he has deceived us and withheld from us our heart’s desire.

Even so, he gives thanks, breaks the bread and gives it to us.  Our eyes are opened, we meet his gaze, and he vanishes from our eyes.

Doxology of Flesh (revised from ‘Dance of Flesh’)

Doxology of Flesh

By Rebekah Devine

 

A song of flesh,

            of loam and clay,

a last farewell to the pomegranate tree:

 

disappearing into the brush

the lascivious serpent of old, its tongue

flicking back and forth,

greedily

moistening its lips.

 

The Deity drags his mirthless

feet, the feet he

donned to dance

            a feral, fire-footed lament.

 

On earth, the mourners

sing, they sing

seraphic, cinder-voice-ed songs,

dying and rising like coals

under a whisper,

 

They sing, they sing:

 

The lacerations on his soles!

The perforations in his hands!

Surely the Just One will justify,

By the offering-up of life-breath,

His own being, his very body!

The offspring of the Just One

He shall see, by

            The sweat of his blackened brow.

 

The slowing of the tabor,

the halting of the

feet, the feet that

deigned to dance

            a song of fetid dust.

 

But, lo! the ancients

sing, they sing,

and cry, cry out

heraldic, warrior-wild chants,

melting the mountains like wax

under a wick,

 

They cry, they cry:

 

The cicatrix in his side!

The sinews knitting in his hands!

Surely the Deity has justified

By the raising-up of his Anointed,

His own being, his very body!

The offspring of his Anointed

He shall raise, by

            The impulse of his Spirit

 

            leaping, leaping

in Adam’s limbs, cantillating in

            Adam’s bones, flinging-forth

 

songs of the body,

 

            dancing doxologies

of flesh.

Mar Mari and the Idols

There is a delightful little idol-polemic pericope in the Syriac Acts of Mar Mari the Apostle.  Known as the “Apostle of Babylonia,” Mar Mari[1] is credited with introducing Christianity into upper and lower Mesopotamia some time around the end of the first century C.E.  Mar Mari travels from city to city healing afflictions, making converts to Christianity, explaining the doctrine of the trinity and battling demons/idols.[2]

This particular story[3] is set in Seleucia, where the “blessed one” (Mar Mari) works on the people’s conversion for a whole year by doing signs and miracles.  Mar Mari then decides to ask them for a place to build a house of worship for the “Living God” (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth).  When the people ask where  he wants to be build it, Mar Mari demands that they let him buy the pagan temple governed by King Aphrahat.  Mar Mari begins his polemic against the idols of this temple, emphasizing the idols’ unreality by claiming that even though food and drink is given to the so-called gods, it is really the priests who eat the food offered to the idols.  Further, he says, they aren’t really deities – just statues of wood and bronze from which demons speak!

The priests, naturally, grow quite angry at Mar Mari for this claim and say, “If you claim that these are dumb things[4], what do you have to say about the sun-(god), the great judge?”[5]  To this, Mar Mari replies that the sun is just a creation of the Living God, placed to enlighten the universe and distinguish between night and day.  “If it is a deity, where would it flee during the night?” Mar Mari reasons.[6]  Apparently, this convinces the king because, after much discussion, the temple is given to Mar Mari by the king, along with the idols themselves as a gift for Mar Mari.  Mar Mari grinds the idols into dust and throws the powder into the river Tigris, demolishes the pagan temple and instead builds a small church with priests and deacons.

The saga continues as the enraged priests go to another king and the king threatens Mar Mari with dismemberment if he will not give up his religion and confess these pagan deities.   I may deal with that next bit of the story in another post,  but for now I’d like to concentrate on some of the details of Mar Mari’s polemic.

It is customary in Yahwistic idol-polemics to undermine the alleged deity’s authority by emphasizing its human qualities and then pointing out that the god can’t even really do the things that humans can do.  In Deutero-Isaiah’s idol-polemics, for example, the idol has eyes but cannot see.  The idol is mocked as the work of a human craftsman: it is mere wood and stone.  However, even though emphasizing the god’s ineptitude and human-made-ness is common, the portrayals of idols appear to become progressively less mystical as time goes on.  In Deutero-Isaiah, there’s certainly only one true God (Yahweh) and all other gods are nothing – yet there is still the sense that the worshippers of these idols really do believe in them (and the gods may even possess a kind of paltry, subservient existence).  If the gods are human-made, their makers and worshippers are ignorant and blind rather than deceptive and controlling.

Contrast this polemic of the Hebrew Bible with later Jewish idol-polemics of the Second Temple period like Bel and the Dragon.  This story strikingly begins by saying (after one short verse to introduce the political setting) that the Babylonians had an idol (Bel) who was daily offered an abundance of food.  The text goes into considerable detail describing the food.  While Bel is worshipped daily by the king, Daniel worships only his own God.  When the king asks Daniel why he doesn’t worship Bel, Daniel says that he cannot worship idols made with  human hands[7] but worships the living God.  (Note that in both Bel and Mar Mari, each monotheistic prophet insists that they worship the “living God.”  Mar Mari wishes to build a house for the “living God” and tells the priests that the sun is only a creation of the “living God.”)

In Bel, the king says to Daniel, in essence, “You don’t think that Bel is a living God?  Don’t you see how much he eats and drinks every day?”  Daniel smiles; he knows that it’s all the trickery of those finicky priests of Bel and tells the king so.  The king is incensed and calls the priests of Bel and challenges them to account for the food.  The crafty priests suggest a test: the king will set out a lavish meal for Bel in the temple and seal the doors shut with his signet.  In the morning, the king will see whether or not Bel has eaten his food.   What the king doesn’t know, however, is that the priests have made a secret entrance into the temple and that every night, the priest and their wives and children come and eat the food allotted for Bel.  Daniel thwarts the priests by sprinkling ashes everywhere in the temple so that in the morning, their footprints lead to the secret entrance.  The king sees that it is all just the trickery of the priests – Bel isn’t a living god after all.  Daniel destroys Bel and the temple.

In both Bel and Mar Mari, the reality or unreality of the gods lies in whether or not they actually eat and drink as they are purported to  do so.  In the end, it’s all the trickery of some wily priests who are out to deceive the king and the masses.  The pagan gods and their temples are destroyed and temples/churches to the Living God are established in their place.

[1] Mar means “lord” in Syriac and is a title given to holy men and ecclesiastical leaders, Amir Harrak, trans., The Acts of Mar Mari the Apostle (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), xi.

[2] Harrak, Mar Mari, xi.

[3] See Harrak’s translation, 55-59.

[4] The priests are here referring to Mar Mari’s claim that the idols cannot actually speak.

[5] Harrak, Mar Mari, 57.

[6] Harrak, Mar Mari, 57.

[7] The Greek term cheiropoietos (‘made with hands’) appears to have been a fairly common demarcation of idols.

Another Song of the Body

Here is another poem I have been working on for my “Songs of the Body” collection.  As always, I would appreciate suggestions on how it might be improved.

Going to Bed

By Rebekah Devine

Going to bed without one’s beloved

is not as obstreperous as a young

lover might be wont to think.

—

Lying on the evergreen quilt, naked,

staring at the virginal ceiling, perplexed,

pondering the feeling of nakedness

though there is no one else in the room;

wondering at this first sense of

bareness in three years of marriage.

—

Glancing at the bodiless chair yawning

before the desk and the half-sipped mug of

cherry sencha, thinking how still,

how attentive is the room; the

dilapidated spider in the corner web -

surely its myriad eyes must perceive

the bereft body stretching, calm and

corpse-like, on the bed.

—

Smoothing the unmussed

space beneath the cobalt pillow,

feeling the itching Absence,

remembering the missing flesh.

—

No, the body torn asunder is not

as disastrous as young lovers are wont to think.

It is not as if this is the first time lovers

were naked and ashamed.

Updated: A Song of the Body

I am writing/compiling a series of poems on the body and God’s great gift of embodied existence to human beings.  It is (very) tentatively titled, Songs of the Body.  Below is the rough draft of a poem I jotted out at lunch today.  I was having trouble deciding whether the ending is fitting for the poem or if it needs more and have just added a few more lines.  I would appreciate your feedback and any ideas on how to improve the poem.

—

A Song of the Body

By Rebekah Devine

—

We squirm uneasily, not quite

at home in our own bodies,

wondering why the all-day sucker

our grandfather bought us tasted

so red, golden, sour, sweet –

like a twisting rope of sticky fairy food –

and why our viscera surged and clamored

when our love first entered the room.

—

So much is for the proposition:

the vicious crimson on the skinned knee,

the feverish tingle on the first day of school,

and trees speaking to each other

in hushed tones and nettled rustlings.

—

What do they say?

Many things; things that make us shift

from foot to foot, cover our flushed cheeks

and furtive eyes, leaving us mumbling,

wondering whether it is home or

homelessness that is the illusion.

—

The trees are for and against it

in their rustling, for they murmur:

Home is near  you, in your mouth

and in your heart; do not ask

who will ascend into heaven.

—

But near – to be near is to be not quite here,

to be covered in a silken veil,

slit through only by a flaming sword.

—

We hear conflicting reports:

that this momentary affliction,

this fleshy desire, this earth-suit,

is passing away and that we will be

laid in our eternal Home in the skies.

—

But we cringe at this wide, unknown world,

hoping, after all, that clouds and space

are only a metaphor for something closer,

feeling a tinge of guilt for wanting, wanting so much,

the filial sense of earth, the sensual existence,

the drop of water on our tongue,

dripping from the beggar’s finger.

—

And we fancy that heaven, real Heaven,

might not be so different from earth.

Different – but only as the heavy dust

cloth removed from the ancient furniture,

and the opened shutters letting loose the sun

into the lifeless room, the maids sweeping,

lighting the lamps and cleaning the chimney.

—

We hear an earthshaking report:

that this divorce, this estranged, two-housed

existence, is not our end and that the

scab-crusted, side-scarred flesh of our savior

bodies forth from heaven to earth,

to join the worlds in remarriage.

—

For we are not dual citizens,

nor will we abdicate our throne.

We are flesh of his flesh

and bone of his bone.

—

And in these dry bones we

squirm uneasily, wearily, eagerly –

asking, pleading, “O LORD, can these bones live?”

—

Copyright © Rebekah Devine 2011

What Makes a Good Liturgy?

“What makes a good liturgy?”  The question overwhelmed me when our professor first asked us to think about and discuss the question in class.  I had no idea.  I knew that there was no perfect liturgy that could be applied to every church because liturgy is based in tradition and different faith communities have different traditions.  I have a fondness for Anglican liturgy, but I can’t expect every church in the world to adopt it – or even that it would be best for every church.

I approach the question somewhat differently now, not thinking of it as a set structure or set of traditions that can be applied to every church.  Instead of finding the ‘perfect liturgy’, I think a good question to ask is: What practices aid in the collective memory of a particular faith community?  What helps a community to remember the story of God and God’s people and connects it to the larger church body both past and present?

I’m not a big fan of a free-for-all liturgy which consists of what individuals have cobbled together that’s meaningful to them personally.  Why?  Because it neglects the communal aspect of liturgy.  I may love the Book of Common Prayer, but if I read a prayer from that book in church and no one else knows that it’s connected to a larger story and tradition, it’s nothing more than a nice prayer to them (I speak from personal experience).

However, I think that liturgists need to consider also the particular needs of a community and how God has worked in it.  For example, everyone would acknowledge that remembering the stories of the Bible are important – Scripture is (among other things) the witness to how God has worked in history both through Israel and Jesus (Israel’s messiah and the indwelling presence of God).  However, as anyone who has studied any church history knows, there are many traditions that have developed post-scripture (the creeds, for example), which help to draw together faith communities and remember the story of God.  History is still happening.  The Book of Common prayer has a particular history and I love the Anglican tradition.  It makes me feel connected to the larger church body.  The structure of the Anglican liturgy helps me to remember.

However, God is still working in history.  These are new times and the church is making new memories of how God has worked in their community in the present day.  We must always remember as a church that we, too, have been “brought out of Egypt”, that God’s acts in the past are also for those who live today.  Yet it makes me wonder if there is a place for building on the old liturgies and adding elements to the service which include contemporary events and ways that God has acted in a particular community.  For example, a church influenced by the tragedies of 9/11 might benefit from communal lamentation based in the laments of the Hebrew Bible, perhaps praying collectively Psalms of lament.  However, that community might also benefit by writing their own prayers (perhaps even based in the pattern of OT laments) which spring from the circumstances of the present day.

Liturgy, like creativity and scholarship, is always moving.  Even churches which don’t think they have traditions actually do – they just might not be very old or well-thought out traditions.  We must think carefully about how we embrace old traditions and what we do with them.  We must remember to remember well and consider what practices (old and new) can help us connect to the past and present works of God in the life of the world.

In Memoriam

IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.

Obitt MDCCCXXXIII (“To the memory of A.H.H., died 1833″)

I

I held it truth, with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones,

That men may rise on stepping-stones

Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years

And find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch

The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,

Let darkness keep her raven gloss:

Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,

To dance with death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn

The long result of love, and boast,

‘Behold the man that loved and lost,

But all he was is overworn.’

So begins Tennyson’s In Memoriam, a lengthy poem mourning the death of a friend.  This morning, I was struck yet again by how reticent American culture is to embrace mourning.  When a loved one dies, we are expected to take a few days off and then move on with our lives, to go on and get happy.  Yet, as the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible demonstrates, mourning over death and suffering is right and proper.  Death is not natural.  As Tennyson writes to God in the Prologue to In Memoriam, “Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die” (ll. 10-11).

This first section following the Prologue reflects the belief that a “learn and move on to higher things” mentality does not do justice to the human condition.  We must dance with death, embrace grief and feel bereft.  This does not mean that we will never heal or be able to continue life again – it simply means that mourning and sorrow are a necessary part of life and we are only doing Death a favor when we treat him as if he doesn’t bother us.

‘How A Poem Means’: ruminations and a poem

The past week has been a flurry of activity.  First came the conference (a delightful yet terrifying affair), then a brief tempest of emotional catharsis and then a long train ride filled with thoughts of Isaiah and Galatians.  We arrived in Oxford and spent a few days renewing old friendships and being once again dazzled by the city’s mist and green.  I began to remember the former things of old.  Like a steady, rushing wind in a temple, I felt life begin to tingle in my fingertips and work its way through my arms and up into my body.  Which was I – Pygmalion or Galatea?  I could not escape the sense that the very thing for which I was made was also made for me.

It was new, of course; I could not go back to the Oxford I had left.  The memories of former things are never ends in themselves; they are vessels in which past, present and future meet in holy union.  We eat tear-spotted bread and drink salted wine and we are swallowed by the Life we swallow.  The words we utter are scattered and broken, but in the smouldering rubble we are built up again.

I have been dwelling, once again, on the task of the artist (or perhaps it is better to say “the artistic task of humanity”).  The primary goal of the artist, I believe, is to see and help others to see.  I have written of this in other posts, but I sense the weight of the task more than ever before.  To use the simple example of photography, the photographer isolates an aspect of the visible world and focuses in on it.  It is, in one sense, exaggeration because it emphasizes one or a few things to the exclusion of other things.  However, limited awareness and perspective is part and parcel of being human.  We cannot see everything all at once.  The end goal (of a skillful artist) is a fuller awareness of the world.  We see in part that we may see more fully.  A metaphor discloses a thing by partially hiding it.

Our limited perspective is part of what makes human relationships so important.  We notice different things.  My husband notices sound.  I notice words.  Together, we help each other to be more aware of sounds, words and the interplay between the two.  In the meeting, we become more alive.

To that end of showing and seeing, here is a short poem I’ve been working on.  Unfortunately, I can’t format wordpress to give it the proper spacing, so it has all been jumbled together.  I have thus put dashes where there should be spaces.

How A Poem Means

–

I asked a poem how it means

But it could not answer plain:

–

It blushed, looked down and shifted its weight,

And mumbled under its breath,

As though I had asked who shared its bed.

–

When it recovered its composure,

Gathering its gaze like twelve tribes,

It ventured an answer:

–

We mean like quadrupeds, reptiles and wild beasts,

Like the Leviathan which cannot say its name;

As the ruach churns in adam’s breast,

The deity wells up within us, catches in our throats

And cries out!

Cries the Name we cannot utter

Until we are uttered by the Name

–

I asked it once again to tell me plain:

I say again: Poem, how do you mean?

–

We mean like eddies, spitting rivers and seas,

Like kingfishers fire and dragonfly fláme;

As humanity plays in Adam’s limbs,

The deity plays in us, loosens our tongues

And shouts!

Shouts, ‘Abba! Father!’

Until our sonship is proven

–

I asked a poem how it means
But it could not answer plain:

–

Why – seeing how wonderful

Is the inhabited world – why

Do you ask for my name?