Increasingly, our postmodern generation prefers its communications to be in as few words and as many images as possible. Hence, the curious success of both Facebook—a medium of images—and Twitter—a medium of words. Hence also the success of iPhones and texting, and the continued proliferation of cable television, in-home film delivery services (Netflix), comic books, and film in general.

Our generation relishes a communications diet of visual images seasoned with a few words. Some, such as Neil Postman, have worried that this trend away from verbal communication toward visual images will destroy our ability to communicate meaningfully.[1]

Images and words have factored in human communications from the beginning of civilization. Spoken words reinforced by written words, arranged in a variety of forms (oral history, poetry, songs, plays), can be found in virtually every society, no matter how primitive. Art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, and more have supplemented the verbal images of each generation with visual representations. These can be so powerful as to freeze in time the zeitgeist of an entire generation (compare medieval iconography with nineteenth-century Romantic painting).

But Postman worried that, in our day, the increased hunger for visual images threatens to replace, or, at least, to minimize, the role of words in human communication, thus jeopardizing meaning. He saw this as a most undesirable trend, given that human beings are uniquely identified as the creature that speaks and uses sophisticated language. Thus, our retreat from words into the realm of visual images constitutes a retreat from humanity itself, into a more animalistic world ruled by passions and instincts, rather than by reason.

Words and images

Whether or not that’s so, the opposing of words and images, through the emphasis on visual images, is a troublesome notion in itself. Words can create images through their ability to associate various kinds of facts and experiences. Such images have power to make the kind of lasting impressions visual images can only hope to achieve. Visual images are powerful, to be sure. But they are fleeting. This is why, whether in film, on television, in a political campaign, in advertising, or at a rock concert, it is necessary to pile up image upon image in a dizzying array in order to hold the attention and capture the affections of our image-hungry age.

But words—particularly words combined into verse—have power to create images and associations that can go far beyond what visual images can achieve in the way of lasting, even life-changing, effects. Just as a personal example, I cannot remember a single compelling image—a life-transforming image—from any film, athletic event, television program, or concert which I attended during my years in college. But I can still see the room in which I was sitting, feel the sticky heat of an early September afternoon, and shudder under the chill running up my shoulders the first time I read the final couplet of Yeats’s The Second Coming: “And what rough beast, its hour come ’round at last,/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

Poetry may not be the savior of verbal communication, but it can, at the very least, provide a meeting-ground between those who prefer their communications in images and those who yet pursue them in words. Poetry, more, I think, than any other form of verbal communication, can create associations so personal, and with such expansive power, that they can enthrall the affections and expand the imagination of all who are willing to take the time to read and discuss.

We’ll look at two poems which, by employing various associations, convey powerful images, but which do so in different ways. Richard Wilbur’s A Barred Owl is a very homely, simple, and self-reflective meditation on the power of words—even just a few words—to alter dramatically the landscape of imagination. C. S. Lewis, in his On a Theme from Nicolas of Cusa, takes what is at once a more familiar and yet more intellectual approach to stimulating our imaginations, challenging the reader to explore new associations in order to gain the full meaning implied in his verse.

A Barred Owl

I particularly enjoy poems that reflect on the way words and poetry can affect us, such as this offering by Richard Wilbur:[2]

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

This poem not only paints an image, but fills it, first, with horror, then comic relief, then a renewed sense of horror which, were it to be envisioned by the sleeping child, would doubtless be as terrifying as what she had only imagined.

We not only see that child being comforted by her grandparents, in that dark room, but we feel what she and they must have felt on that dark and warping night: fear, then humor, then reassurance, and, finally, rest. We can only imagine what “terror” was becoming “bravely clear” in the mind of that child before her grandparents arrived to comfort her. Here Wilbur encourages the reader to paint in his or her own image from such childhood fears (mine always had one eye and lots of sharp teeth; I’d read the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops as a very young child).

Then, the mood of terror relieved, the poet muses on the power of words, their ability to define and quell our fears, before beginning a crescendo of horror—“stealthy flight,” “small thing in a claw,” “eaten raw”—that takes something of the child’s original terror and foists it on the reader, suddenly.

I have read this poem to students and delighted to hear their responses go from sighs of relief and giggles to audible gasps at the end. The images suggested by the words of this verse can be made highly personal and relived again and again with each successive reading. I doubt that the experience of A Barred Owl could be captured with lasting effect in any series of visual images.

On a Theme from Nicolas of Cusa

Lewis’s delightful meditation is subtitled, (De Docta Ignorantia, III.ix.). Neither the title nor the subtitle is likely to help most readers of this lively verse, at least, not at first:[3]

When soul and body feed, one sees
Their differing physiologies.
Firmness of apple, fluted shape
Of celery, or tight-skinned grape
I grind and mangle when I eat,
Then in dark, salt, internal heat,
Annihilate their natures by
The very act that makes them I.

But when the soul partakes of good
Or truth, which are her savoury food,
By some far subtler chemistry
It is not they that change, but she,
Who feels them enter with the state
Of conquerors her opened gate,
Or, mirror-like, digests their ray
By turning luminous as they.

The meaning of this poem is not hard to gather: When we eat physical food—in the first stanza, the mention of various foods, reinforced by all those fricatives and labials, that grinding and mangling—our digestive system—“dark, salt, internal heat”—turns what we eat into fuel for the cells of our bodies. The food becomes us, a point comically emphasized by use of the personal pronoun at the very end of the first stanza.

The only “physical” words in the second stanza—“conquerors” and “mirror”—are used as metaphors of abstract subjects. Lewis deftly employs consonance to suggest the softer, subtler, abstract and spiritual concepts which we cannot see or hold in our hands, but which are powerful in transforming us into something other than what we are. “Good” and “truth” are the foods that make us “luminous” like God himself. We must be subdued by such ideas and “digest” them like rays of light in a mirror, so that, glory having been experienced, glory will radiate from us (2 Cor. 3:12–18).

But if this poem is merely about personal transformation, why the cryptic title and subtitle? Why not just call it “Transformation” or “Spiritual Growth: A Comparison” or some such? Because the poem is about much greater transformation, transformation which we experience in a microcosm, but which we can only fully understand and appreciate once we explore the associations suggested in the title and subtitle.

Nicolas of Cusa (1401–1464), Bishop of Brixen, was one of the truly great Renaissance men of his day. He was a pastor, theologian, reformer, scholar, conciliarist, and ecumenist, who fell into disfavor with and was persecuted by the Austrian monarch. He reflected and wrote broadly—on human knowledge, mathematics, philosophy, and history. Nicolas took his Christian faith into every area of life, seeking the transforming power of goodness and truth for individuals, the Church, and society. His Christian worldview seems to have been more self-conscious and expansive than the most of his contemporaries. He would perhaps have been much more at home in this century, amid all our worldview fussing and fretting, than in his own.

In De docta ignorantia, part three and section nine, he reflected on the transforming power of grace, beginning his meditation in that section with a reflection on the dual nature of Christ and concluding with a meditation on the church as the Body of Christ.[4] It is this larger, more expansive notion of transformation that Lewis sees epitomized in the believer’s experience, and that he invites us, by association, to contemplate.

Lewis does not want us to think in a merely personal way about the transforming power of things true and good. Jesus, ground and mangled in the flesh because of the sins of the human ego, rose to everlasting goodness and truth in his glorified body (Is there an allusion to Psalm 24 in those “conquerors”?) and lifts us into his glory by the transforming power of his resurrection life. And not only us: Jesus is making all things new (2 Cor. 5:17; Rev. 21:5). His grace reaches to the whole church and all creation, inviting and calling his transformed people to bring the power of grace to bear on every aspect of life and culture—as Nicolas had sought to do in his day.

Lewis brings the highest aspirations of the medieval church into the individual Christian’s reach by this association with Nicolas, as if to inculcate in us a sense of longing for something much, much more than mere personal piety. The effect on the thoughtful reader is to generate new images of the transforming power of the Gospel as it radiates the glory of God through the church into every area of life.

Postman worried that the increasing barrage of visual images on the brains of contemporary humans would only dull our thinking and stifle imagination. The images created in poetry, through its powers of association, entail no such threat. Rather, poetry can enrich imagination, stimulate conversation, and, perhaps, motivate readers to the kind of deeper introspection—an ongoing dialog between an empty soul and a slouching rough beast, for example—which can set a stage for the drama of grace and truth. 

Of this fair volume which we World do name
If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
Of Him who it corrects, and did it frame,
We clear might read the art and wisdom rare,
Find out his power, which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence extending everywhere,
His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare,—
In every page, no, period of the same!
But silly we, like foolish children, rest
Well-pleased with coloured vellum, leaves of gold,
Fair dangling ribbons; leaving what is best,
Of the great Writer's sense ne’er taking hold:
   Or, if by chance our minds do muse on aught,
   It is some picture on the margin wrought.[1]

Drummond complained that, rather than seek to understand what God may be saying to us through the revelation in creation (Ps. 19:1–4), we prefer to get what knowledge of him we need from the pages of Scripture only. And even if we do pause and take the time to meditate on some wonder of glory from the world around, we regard it merely as a kind of illustration of the “real” revelation in Scripture.

Revelation in creation

Things haven’t changed much. Reading and studying the “faire Volume which wee World doe name” is of no more interest to Christians today than it was to Drummond’s contemporaries. However, as I argue in my book, Consider the Lilies,[2] as well as in various contributions to this site,[3] the revelation of God in creation and culture is real revelation. There is knowledge of God and his will to be gained from observing him passing in the rustling grass, the rocks, the trees, and everywhere else. Yet Christians in the twenty-first century seem as disinclined to seek out that knowledge as their seventeenth-century forebears.

The reasons for this neglect are not hard to surmise: we’re simply lazy. It’s hard work to read, study, observe, experiment, and catalog the various ways that God speaks to us from the creation. If polls are correct, it’s all most contemporary Christians can do to find time to read their Bibles with any degree of consistency, much less devote any effort to listening for the voice of God in the things he has made.

For those who may be so inclined, however, knowing where to turn for help can be a challenge. I recommend poetry—Hopkins, Dickinson, Milosz, Levertov, Wilbur, and many more, Christians who have reflected on the creation, straining to discern the revelation of God, and who have left us many engaging insights and meditations to strengthen and expand the horizons of our faith.

Poetry can construct a line of sight from the world of material reality to the unseen realm of God and his glory. It can teach us how to view the creation so as to discern the presence, or an intimation of the presence, of God, and even to reflect on aspects of his will for us. It’s clear from Scripture that God intends us to note his presence in the things he has made, and, at the very least, to be more consistent in giving thanks to him for the evidence of his grace (cf. Rom. 1:18–21). It behooves us, therefore, to look for guidance where we can in discerning the revelation of God in created things, and poetry can serve us well in this regard.

As an example of such guidance, I want to look at one poem by Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), America’s first lady of verse. The poem is “Contemplations,” and it is constructed of thirty-two stanzas of seven lines each and one stanza, the concluding, of eight lines.

Revelation in the structure

From a glance at the structure of this poem we should be cued to expect a meditation on divine revelation. Seven is a Biblical number of perfection—the number for God plus the number for the creation and man. Each of the first thirty-two stanzas consists of four lines of A,B,A,B rhyme and a concluding tercet of C,C,C. Thus, three different rhyming sounds combined in a set of four lines and three lines. The first six lines of each stanza are in iambic pentameter; the final line adds an extra foot, breaking the rhythm of the “old” lines and taking up a “new” structure—a hint of the eighth day of creation introduced by the Resurrection?

The final stanza of eight lines is made up of four rhymed couplets, almost as if directing the poem to come to rest on the creation and the observer, whence it takes its flight through all the preceding stanzas. Yet, not to lose sight of the real object of these contemplations, the last couplet reads,

But he whose name is graved in the white stone,
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.[4]

Can it be merely a coincidence that the number of stanzas—thirty-three—corresponds to the age our Lord Jesus is traditionally considered to have achieved during his earthly sojourn?

Associations

The key to understanding this poem as a guide to discerning the revelation of God in creation is to note the various associations between creation and Scripture Anne Bradstreet was able to observe. Various aspects of the creation around her create points in a line of sight that lead her to reflect on the glory of God and the mysteries of the divine economy. Something in the creation prompts her to think about something in Scripture; the association thus made leads her to turn the pages of the book of creation in new and revelation-yielding ways.

Out on an autumn walk in the woods, Bradstreet is struck by the colors of the trees, and first of all, the golden leaves:

Some time now past in the autumnal tide,
When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Where gilded o’er by his rich golden head . . .

Immediately, in the second stanza, she begins to associate the “golden head” and other rich colors with God:

How excellent is He that dwells on high,
Whose power and beauty by his works we know . . .

A “stately oak” over a hundred years old (Stanza 3), turns her thoughts to eternity as she moves her eyes up the trunk into the high boughs. There she observes the sun, glistening through its top boughs, and leading her to ask, “What glory’s like to thee?” (Stanza 4) In the next stanza she associates the sun with its mention in Psalm 19, leading to a reverie that lasts for three stanzas, and ending in a paean to the greater glory of God in Stanza 7.

In Stanza 8 Mrs. Bradstreet wants to respond to what she has observed. She considers making a song to celebrate the glory of God, doubtless the beginnings of “Contemplations” itself:

My humble eyes to lofty skies I reared
To sing some song, my mazed Muse thought meet.
My great Creator I would magnify . . .

Her initial effort is joined by a grasshopper and a cricket, each contributing its tune and encouraging her on in her determination to praise God in song (Stanza 9):

They kept one tune and played on the same string,
Seeming to glory in their little art.
Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise
And in their kind resound their Maker’s praise,
Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays?

The pristine setting thrusts Mrs. Bradstreet’s thinking back in time to creation, where she imagines the first couple in such a setting as she was enjoying, more beautiful at first, but its perfect beauty and innocence lost in the fall into sin (Stanzas 10–12). The mention of sin leads her to reflect further into the initial chapters of Genesis, then from there through the years of her forebears, and back to her present (Stanzas 13–17). This rapid survey through history leads her abruptly to comment on the brevity of life and how we tend to waste it in frivolous undertakings. While the creation repeats an eternal cycle of birth, maturity, death, and rebirth, human beings “darken, perish, fade and die . . .” (Stanzas 18–20). Yet she knows that we were made for eternity.

Sitting now to contemplate a stream, her thoughts turn to the River of Life and the blessings abounding on either shore (Stanzas 21–24). Then her meditation is interrupted by the birds, flitting above her head (Stanzas 25–28). She is caught up in the joy of their flight and song, and the apparently carefree way they go about their daily business. This turns her thoughts to the world of men and the miseries they, the noblest of God’s creatures, foist upon themselves because of sin (Stanzas 29–32). Men are fools who seek to find their greatest happiness in the pleasures of this life:

Fond fool, he takes this earth ev’n for heav’ns bower.
But sad affliction comes and makes him see
Here’s neither honour, wealth, nor safety;
Only above is found all with security.

And so, from earth to heaven to earth and heaven again, she settles on time, “the fatal wrack of mortal things,” which corrupts and corrodes all man’s noblest endeavors. Time seems almost to have the victory over the best that men can muster:

Their names without a record are forgot,
Their parts, their ports, their pomp’s all laid in th’ dust
Nor wit, nor gold, nor buildings scape times rust . . .

But then, as the poem comes to rest on creation and the observer, as one of the race of sinful men, the final couplet recalls the redemption of Jesus Christ and hope of those who have been given a white stone with a secret name engraved on it for all eternity (Rev. 2:17). Thus, viewing a stone, she brings her contemplations to an end by fusing creation and Creator, time and eternity, sin and redemption, death and eternal life in a white stone which she perhaps was holding in her hand.

Seeking the Lord

God is continually calling us to seek him, and he promises that we will find him when we seek him with all our heart (Jer. 29:13). We must certainly seek him in the pages of Scripture; yet we must not neglect the multitude of daily ways the Lord invites us to glimpse his glory through the things He has made. As Anne Bradstreet demonstrates, here await many prompts and provocations to meditate on the greatness and glory of God and to reflect on our place within the divine economy.  

My own sense is that this feeling that we “don’t have time” for poetry—or many other arts, for that matter—is a matter of culture more than anything else. Something about our materialistic and secular age discourages people from thinking that the arts are of much real significance for us average Joes. I recall reading an article in the Journal of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development some years ago entitled something like “Art: the Fourth ‘R’,” which was an appeal for public school educators to try to recover some meaningful place for the arts in school curriculum. If we are not taught to “make time” for the arts—including poetry—during our formative years, it’s not likely we’ll value them much once formal schooling has ended.

All that notwithstanding, I want to argue a case for making time for the arts, and, in this particular instance, poetry. Is the explanation, “I’m just too busy, and I don’t have time to read verse” really valid? The assumption behind that explanation is that really busy people, people who are always active in important matters, are already doing everything they can to live a meaningful and contributing life. But my experience watching such people respond to a lesson in poetry leads me to conclude that they think they’re missing something by not spending a little more time in this subject. Can really busy people find a way to make time for verse, and should they expect to benefit from doing so, perhaps in new and deeply satisfying ways?

As busy as missionaries?

On several occasions I have had the opportunity of visiting with missionaries in the field. They are always busy—with their families, ministries, reports back home, fund-raising—and appear to me to have very little “free” time. This is nothing new for missionaries. During the period of the Celtic revival (ca. 430–790 AD) missionaries from Ireland and Scotland went by the thousands from places like Bangor, Iona, and Lindisfarne to take the Gospel to most of Western Europe. While it may be a bit hyperbolic to claim, as Thomas Cahill does, that their efforts to re-evangelize a continent slipping back into paganism “saved civilization,” still, they made a significant contribution to the renewal of spiritual, moral, and cultural life in Europe.

Celtic missionaries were very busy people. Living as monks in community, their daily regimen included spiritual disciplines—reciting the hours of prayer, reading and meditating in Scripture, fasting—providing for the needs of the monastic community—long hours of hard work in gardens, orchards, and at fishing—and in reaching out to the local populace—preaching, teaching, evangelizing, helping in various ways. In addition, many of these missionaries served as advisors to local rulers, assisting in matters of judgment and the writing of laws. They also spent long hours showing hospitality to strangers, copying manuscripts, making books, and training other missionaries to go from mission stations like Luxeuil and Gall to even more remote parts of the continent.

I doubt many of us are as busy as were these soldiers of the Cross. And yet, they had time to write and share poetry. Indeed, looking at the volume and variety of Celtic missionary verse surviving from that period—compared to all other types of Celtic Christian literature—we can easily get the impression that writing and sharing poetry was regarded as integral to the effort to advance the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ. So much was poetry a part of their daily lives that it seems these diligent servants of the Lord were too busy not to versify as part of their daily walk with the Lord.

To be sure, this was as much a factor of their cultural lives as not reading poetry is of ours today. In pre-Christian Celtic lands the poets, or filid, occupied a very high place in the social arena. They were the keepers of culture and tradition, the archivists of significant historical events, and the primary connection to the unseen world and its various mysteries. In pre-literate Celtic society, the recitation and singing of verse provided a solid foundation and integrating core to community life.

That tradition carried over into the Celtic Christian period, and much of the poetry from that time is the work of busy missionaries, who seem to have understood that versifying was an aspect of seeking the Kingdom and serving the Lord that must not be set aside simply because there’s just so much to do.

Celtic missionary verse

The versifying of Celtic missionaries seems to have served a variety of purposes. Undoubtedly, it brought a modicum of personal satisfaction to a lonely hermit or an exhausted abbot to find time to reflect in verse on events of the day or the manifold goodness and glory of God. Again, such poetry often had a devotional purpose as it was shared within and preserved by members of monastic communities, and incorporated into their disciple-making regimens. Some verse—such as Columbanus’ “A Boat-Song” or Columba’s “Adiutor Laborantium,” might have been used to relieve the tedium of daily work.

Still other poetry appears to have been intended for use in instructing the faithful in matters of belief and practice. Here we could include Columba’s “Altus Prosator” and perhaps the Féilire Oengusso of Oengus mac Oengobann. Still other verse celebrates the simple glories of missionary life in a world where God provides richly from the abundance of his fruitful creation, and makes his presence known even in the face of terrifying storms or lonely vigils.

Finally, Celtic Christian verse makes a bridge from this familiar literary form to the hagiographical writings of the later years of this period. Poems like “Amra Choluimb Chille,” which laments the passing of Columba, and Sechnall’s “Audite Omnes Amantes,” celebrating the ministry of Patrick, are the literary forebears of the saints’ lives that appeared in the seventh through twelfth centuries. They may even have contributed something to the form of these quasi-histories, which often read more like prose poems than either historical narratives or devotional handbooks.

We’ll look at two examples of Celtic missionary verse, one each from the two greatest Irish peregrini, Columba (521–297) and Columbanus (543–615). Each left Ireland for a different venue, Columba to Iona off the northwest coast of Scotland, and Columbanus to Gaul and Luxeuil. Each was the founder of his respective monastic center, and each center became a major training and sending agency for Irish missionaries throughout the Celtic Christian period. Each of these men demonstrate a love for poetry and a respectable measure of skill in versifying.

Each man wrote in Latin, although each used a different form. I’ll rely on the translations of reputable scholars for each.[1]

Columba

We look first at “Noli Pater,” a work attributed with some confidence to Columba. Here is the first half:

Father, do not allow thunder and lightning,
lest we be shattered by its fear and fire.

We fear you, the terrible one, believing there is none like you.
All songs praise you throughout the host of angels.

Let the summit of heaven, too, praise you with roaming lightning,
O most loving Jesus, O righteous King of Kings.

The Latin is in perfect eight-beat trochees with feminine end rhymes to each couplet. The fourth stanza is a tercet and rhymes the first and last lines. Here we can see several components characteristic of Celtic missionary verse: awareness of and respect for the creation and its powers; creation as a “thin place” connecting the eye of faith to Christ exalted and the unseen world; grounding in biblical truth and example; and a lorica or “breastplate” component, seeking the protection of the Lord from dangers.

The occasion of this poem appears to be connected with John the Baptist, as Owen and Márkus explain.[2] My sense is that the first half touches on the immediate circumstance of the poet, while the second half (see on) connects that circumstance with John the Baptist as an appeal to exercise faith like the Baptizer. The poem thus incorporates elements of Hebrew parallelism—A, B, C, followed by A₁, B₁, C₁ (both Columba and Columbanus were competent in Hebrew)—and seems to reach for some identification with John the Baptist, some desire, in the face of every threat, to increase in faith like John, in order to gain the martyr’s crown. Here is the second half:

Blessed for ever, ruling in right government,
is John before the Lord, till now in his mother’s womb,
filled with the grace of God in place of wine or strong drink.

Elizabeth of Zechariah begot a great man:
John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Lord.

The flame of God’s love dwells in my heart
as a jewel of gold is placed in a silver dish.

While the approach of John’s feast day may have been the occasion of this brief poem, it seems to me that what Columba wanted to accomplish is a connection between the lightning and thunder of heaven—which praises the Lord—and the thunderous ministry of John the Baptist—who introduced both the Light of truth and the threat of judgment to the curious crowds. The last couplet is deliberately vague. Is this John the Baptist thanking God for his faith and ministry? Or is it the saint of Columba’s day, capturing the lightning of the storm, making it, through John, an emblem of the faith he expresses or desires? Either way, there is no missing the Celtic belief in the power of divine love to transform good things (a silver dish) into even more beautiful treasures (a jewel of gold).

Columbanus

Columbanus composed “Carmen de Mundi Transitu” in 120 lines of 4-beat trochees, with a final incomplete trochee as the last beat on each line. The rhyme endings are thus masculine and the poem (in Latin) reads rather choppy. This is a didactic poem; its focus is on the transitory nature of earthly things and, hence, the supreme desirability of seeking the glory of Christ and his Kingdom. It’s not hard to imagine this song (and most Celtic poems were meant for singing) being taught to new recruits for monastic service. Such men would be leaving behind everything that was familiar to them and taking up a calling which wasn’t for sissies. They would need, at least at the beginning of their preparation, continuous reminding that this world is not our home:

This world shall pass,
daily it declines;
none shall remain living,
no one has remained alive . . .
What to bestow for Christ
they will not, all misers
lose out of season;
after them others gather.
Living but little themselves,
they scarce venture to give to God . . .

This is the basic theme. Try though men may to hold on to earthly treasures and achievement, everything of this life comes to naught. It’s better for men to be thinking, not what shall they manage to accumulate of this world, but what can they give back to God, while they are here.

The poem bears a resemblance in theme to Ecclesiastes—with its fluctuating back and forth between life “under the sun” and “under the heavens”—so its message is soundly biblical. The poem is salted with biblical quotes: “They have loved darkness/black rather than light”; “Lo, all flesh is grass”; “From earthly things lift up/your heart’s eyes”; and so forth.

Especially is the novice to guard himself from lusting for women: “Beware, my little son,/the forms of women . . . ” Columbanus would have been especially sensitive to this, since it was the fear of falling victim to the allure of women that drove him to seek the ministry in the first place. Lust, Columbanus knew, is “even as a deadly bite . . . ” It is to be avoided by every means. The way to keep from lust is to contemplate the beauty of the Lord, and to learn to desire him above all else:

The radiance of Christ’s face,
lovely before all things,
is more to be desired
than the frail flower of flesh . . .

The novice must begin at once to master the discipline of gazing upon unseen realities, that he might be increasingly enthralled by their loveliness and so ever escape the snares of this world:

From earthly things lift up
your heart’s eyes;
love the most loving
hosts of angels;
Blessed family
which dwells on high . . .

Let this vision captivate and guide you all your life, and you need have no fear of faltering in the way or failing to receive the blessed hope of the redeemed when at last you arrive in glory:

Joyful after crossing death
they shall see their joyful king;
with Him reigning they shall reign,
with Him rejoicing they shall rejoice.
Then grief, then weariness,
then toil shall be done away,
then the King of kings, the pure King,
shall be seen by the pure.

In these last lines we see an affinity with the verse of Columbanus in the mention of a theme that runs throughout Celtic Christianity, that of Christ exalted and reigning, now and forever more.

Columba and Columbanus are but two examples from many of the extremely busy missionaries who nonetheless understood the importance of poetry and took time out to versify. Their poems, songs, and hymns—much like the late eighteenth-century patriotic songs of William Billings—inspired generations to devotion, diligence, and faithfulness in the face of hardship and danger. If poetry could serve that generation so well, should we not expect something of the same for our own?  

Moore’s law both extended and pushed human thought and possibilities. Computer scientists and their collaborators were forced to discard certain mental barriers and open their mind to radical change. And many did.

History is now chronicling breathtaking changes across virtually all human undertakings that can be aided by computer analysis and the use of relatively low cost computing and network power. The exponential reduction in the cost of processing power has paired with venture and research capital to cause rapid change in industries as disparate as energy, medicine, and optical displays. And as much as we Americans like our lists of this and that, it would be irrational to attempt a Moore’s Law list of innovations.

It can be argued that the breakthroughs we are experiencing will both lower the risk profile of life and add to our happiness. Assessing risk and reward requires both passage of time and exhaustive research, yet even now it is clear that Moore’s Law effects are not without their dark side.

As processing power has become increasingly inexpensive, we can now remain connected twenty-four hours a day. Game consoles, smart phones, and the like are ubiquitous. T. S. Eliot warned poetically of being “distracted by distraction from distraction.” Are we entering an era in which the trivial and often salacious relentlessly crowd out the serious?

And what are the implications for evil? While history records evil writ large, often evil is a more solitary phenomenon. Today terrorists make effective use of computer-driven communications and weapons technology.

Closer to home we have recent experience with the “quants” (investment traders whose principal tool is mathematics) devising ever more elaborate formulae for financial products that, as we have recently seen, can radically destabilize markets and render them opaque to most investors. And most seriously, some scientists seem so enamored by the possibilities in their laboratories that reengineering life has become their life.

In 1965, Gordon Moore opened minds, but, I suspect, thought little of the societal consequences of the rapid shifts his law portended. His law was physical, not social. Moore’s Law freed scientists and entrepreneurs. At the same time it begged for a countervailing force—a social energy that advances virtue (as difficult as it is for each of us) as a centripetal force, just as the effects of Moore’s Law exert a powerful centrifugal one.

For those looking for a countervailing force recent history has not been encouraging. Countervailing forces frequently emerge from a wellspring of belief in something greater than ourselves. Yet today, a noisy elite keeps insisting that Darwin’s law has made religious belief obsolete. I am reminded of the Pogo line, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

And then there are the predators who take on the trappings of religion to achieve their all-too-earthly ambitions for power and glory. The thinly disguised religious predators are especially harmful as religion in their hands appears exploitative and is used that way.

In the broadest sense, society needs recognition of divine truth. Humankind needs to advance beyond tribal myopia, as tribal myopia paired with computing power is especially lethal. And if truth is restricted exclusively to theorems and proofs, then humankind is left to what one writer calls the human “arms race.”

Our Senior Fellow Dallas Willard is a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Southern California and a best-selling author. Willard, in his recent book Knowing Christ Today, observes that “[t]he best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be.” He goes on to note, “Only when faith is understood to deal with things that can also be known, only when faith is at home with knowledge, does the project of integrating faith and learning have a manageable sense.”

Faith deals with both the known and unknown. Willard looks for a convergence of faith and knowledge. Can faith be at home with knowledge? Or does faith have a mysterious source that can only be accessed through ancient writings, orthodoxies, and rituals? Is it possible for knowledge to be at home with belief in transcendent laws?

Mysteries and knowledge are not infrequently paired. Science takes us to the edge of black holes and its theories about them. More recently we hear new intimations from scientists of the possible existence of “dark energy” and “dark matter” that may be on the other side of the “looking glass” that we observe as physical matter. All of us alike will always be confronted with mysteries. But mystery, when confronting the infinite, does not preclude using the finite as a source of demystification.

God’s second great commandment is received by the faithful as ethically essential. A scientist might, however, ask for the proof that loving one’s neighbor as oneself will result in a better world. Reciprocal love is a commandment, sublime where practiced, and, as Dallas Willard argues, irrefutable knowledge. As Moore’s Law is true, even more so is transcendent love.

Moore’s Law’s effects have sped obsolescence. Landfills are full of discarded computers. And some people, swelled with pride at the progress of humankind, distill life into scientific theorems and proofs and discard everything else as myth or worse. So we throw away outdated computers—but at what point should we throw away what Willard calls “traditional knowledge”? Interestingly, people who are well-informed about the earth often reject the possibility of knowledge having a transcendent character.

Abraham Lincoln regularly and humbly sought divine guidance and then came as close as any political figure in history to use spiritual disciplines in reconciling seemingly irreconcilable passions. Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years as a political prisoner and then embraced his jailers. Both took God into the most complex and challenging laboratory and brought mankind to a higher level truth. They took the larger truths to the world; they tested their theories of leadership not in the cloistered corridors of scientific laboratories and peer review but in the arena of intense conflict. On a more personal level the iconic psychiatrist Karl Menninger was said to have been asked by a troubled friend for prescriptive advice. He answered: “help somebody”.

I was in New York City on September 11, 2001 and while evil was writ large transcendent love was palpable and sublime. It was the higher truth.

Faith has many sources. Many date their belief to early church and family guidance, while others point to a later spiritual rebirth. I suspect, however, that most believers intuitively recognize the core moral principles of the Bible as a source of reinforcement, if not a crucial element in their belief. How, one might ask, is it possible for an organism that has (according to the strict scientific view) had to survive millennia of physical challenges to its very survival managed to develop such an acute sense of morality? If survival is the organizing principle of life, than almost certainly amorality is its twin. Dr. Martin Luther King, facing a choice between an “arms race” and reconciliation, said “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

Every single one of us has mastered something while failing, at least momentarily, at life as we ought to live it. Sublimity is not our natural state and religious belief is not necessary to understand this truth. Yet, as humankind searches for a countervailing force that might save us that force must be transcendent. Only the transcendent can be truly irrepressible and ultimately true.  

Of course, the problem with that is I’m getting someone else’s interpretation of all that technical language, since I’m not able to appreciate the nuanced, concise, and highly precise meaning of all those Latin terms, medical definitions, or scientific summaries. I’m interested, to be sure, because (like Richard Dreyfus) I know “this means something.” But I have neither the time nor inclination to learn the language of the lab so that I can decipher such reports for myself.

So I depend on summarizers and reporters I think I can trust, especially those who enable me to understand the everyday implications of whatever discovery, breakthrough, or new development may have been the substance of the latest report from the scientific or medical community. I always feel like I’m missing something, though at this stage in my life, I’m just going to have to live with it.

Resigned to doctrine?

I suspect that my resigned status to scientific reporting is the way a lot of people feel about the great doctrines of the faith. Helmut Thielicke lamented the inaccessibility for lay people of much theological language. He didn’t deny the importance of it, as is becoming fashionable in some quarters in the Church these days; rather, he understood it as necessary and useful, in its proper place:

These dogmatic words and terms are indispensable because they have stored within them the spiritual knowledge of a long history of faith. But as such receptacles they can only be used in the theological laboratory. They are intended only for internal, official use. And within this context they serve as convenient abbreviations, stenographic means of making oneself understood.[1]

At just this point poetry can serve as a useful interpreter of theology. By clothing theological language in everyday experiences and terms, and adorning it with the delightful devices of verse, poetry can be a means whereby the abbreviations and stenographic codes of doctrine can have their beneficial effect on the believer’s life, achieving, in the souls of the faithful, more than popular translations and concise essays can ever hope to accomplish. As Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz wrote,

Novels and essays serve but will not last.
One clear stanza can take more weight
Than a whole wagonload of elaborate prose.[2]

Even theologians should welcome the assistance of the poet as he strives artistically to make difficult, even arcane, ideas accessible to readers. As Sallie McFague explains, theologians, in a certain sense, “are poets insofar as they must be sensitive to the metaphors and models that are at once consonant with the Christian faith and appropriate for expressing that faith in their own time . . .”[3]

But finding the right metaphors and models to capture theological truth in memorable forms seems to escape most theologians, although this is not to fault or minimize their achievement.

The believer eager to penetrate the obscurity of much theological language could benefit from finding trusted interpreters to fill theological language with everyday associations that illuminate the mysteries of doctrine and imprint its truths deeply on the soul. This is a task for which poetry is eminently suited.

The mystery of divine providence

Few mysteries of theology are more profound than that of divine providence. Even concise summaries, such as this from The Westminster Confession of Faith, leave us with more questions than answers and a desire for concrete examples of precisely what it means to say that God is sovereign:

God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.[4]

Everything here, of course, is true and accurate—but oh, so concise. Such a cogent statement of God’s sovereignty can be easily learned and memorized; however, it doesn’t fire the imagination to observe God’s providence day by day so that the last three prepositional phrases might become living realities in a believer’s life.

Calvin is rather more expansive on this same subject in his opening definition of divine providence:

And truly God claims, and would have us grant him, omnipotence—not the empty, idle, and almost unconscious sort that the Sophists imagine, but a watchful, effective, active sort, engaged in ceaseless activity. Not, indeed, an omnipotence that is only a general principle of confused motion, as if he were to command a river to flow through its once-appointed channels, but one that is directed toward individual and particular motions. For he is deemed omnipotent, not because he can indeed act, yet sometimes ceases and sits in idleness, or continues by a general impulse that order of nature which he previously appointed; but because, governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so regulates all things that nothing takes place without his deliberation.[5]

Here we sense something of Sallie McFague’s idea of the theologian as poet; still, the general constructs are too abstract and intellectual to allow the believer to connect God’s providence—and, hence, his presence and constant care—with everyday realities.

Augustine wrote, “The divine substance is not visible to the eye, and the miracles of the divine government of the world and ordering of the whole creation are overlooked because of their constancy.”[6] To really appreciate the providence of God we must learn to see his hand in all our everyday activities and all the creation around us. Then we will give him the thanks, praise, and trust which are his due. For such help in slowing down and attending with our spirits to the works of God all around, we need the help of the poet, and I nominate William Cowper (1731–1800) to the task.

Providence in everyday life

Given the assignment of writing a poem about a sofa, Cowper launched into poetic tour-de-force amounting to an augmentation of divine providence in strictly mundane terms. In thousands of lines of near-perfect blank verse, Cowper’s “The Task”[7] celebrates the many wonderful, mysterious, and delightful ways that God in his providence cares for his creatures moment by moment.

Cowper appeared to be mindful of poetry’s ability to serve in such a role as this:

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know. The shifts and turns,
The expedients and inventions multiform,
To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms,
Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win—
To arrest the fleeting images, that fill
The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast,
And force them to sit, till he has pencill’d off
A faithful likeness of the forms he views;
Then to dispose his copies with such art,
That each may find its most propitious light,
And shine by situation, hardly less
Than by the labor and the skill it cost . . . Book II, ll 285–297

The poet’s task is to slow down the ceaseless activity of creation, arrest for a moment the “fleeting images” of the world around him and “force them to sit still” in his brain until he can find the terms and devices to render them into poetic forms. By so doing he hopes to shed more light on what he has observed, so that readers may see and understand more clearly things they otherwise typically overlook and take for granted.

The subject of God’s providence in creation is a continuous thread throughout “The Task.” Cowper returns to it again and again, each time considering some different facet of providence or looking at the doctrine from a different angle or in a different light.

Made to know providence

The first thing we need to understand concerning learning about the doctrine of providence through observing the creation is that we must always do so in the light of God’s Word. Scripture, Cowper insisted, teaches us how to see the world; we must not try to live the other way around:

The mind, indeed, enlighten’d from above,
Views him in all; ascribes to the grand cause
The grand effect; acknowledges with joy
His manner and with rapture tastes his style. Book III, ll 226–229

Human beings are born with a love for the creation, and should be encouraged by this to seek the knowledge of God there, and to be able to discern his providential hand:

Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form
And lineaments divine I trace a hand
That errs not, and find raptures still renew’d,
Is free to all men—universal prize. Book III, ll 721–724

’Tis born with all: the love of Nature’s works
Is an ingredient in the compound man,
Infused at the creation of the kind. Book IV, ll 738–740

However, the ability to know God and to gain some insight to his providence by observing the works of his hands strictly depends on knowing him as Creator, Redeemer, and Sovereign Lord:

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste
His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before:
Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart,
Made pure, shall relish with divine delight
Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. Book V, ll 779–784

Once we have come to know the Lord, and our souls begin to be one with him, then we may with profit search out his mysteries in the creatures around us, and thus increase our knowledge of and admiration for our glorious God:

The soul that sees him, or receives sublimed
New faculties, or learns at least to employ
More worthily the powers she own’d before;
Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze
Of ignorance, till then she overlook’d,
A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms
Terrestrial in the vast and the minute;
The unambiguous footsteps of the God
Who gives its lustre to the insect’s wing,
And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds. Book V, ll 805–814

Aspects of providence

Cowper unpacks the various aspects of the doctrine of divine providence, beginning with the doctrine of creation. God is the Author of all created things, having brought everything into existence “With means that were not, till by thee employ’d” (Book V, l 850). He spoke creation into existence, at the same time, making the creation a “speaking voice” to bring praise to God through those who know him (Book V, ll 857–860). Thus God created all things so that, through understanding, enjoying, and appreciating the things of creation, men might turn their hearts to love, honor, glorify, and enjoy God himself: “But O thou bounteous Giver of all good,/Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown! (Book V, ll 903, 904)

Second, the great patterns of the cosmos—the seasons of the year, for instance—testify of God’s all-animating presence in the creation and in his care for his creatures. What Calvin implies in his doctrine of providence, Cowper explicitly declares: that God is in all the details of every aspect of the creation. There is no such thing as chance and what unbelieving men call “laws” of science—as though the creation were self-regulating—Cowper insists are but the constant patterns of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God:

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is Nature’s progress, when she lectures man
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God. Book VI, ll 181–185

Some say that in the origin of things,
When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements receive a law
From which they swerved not since. That under force
Of that controlling ordinance they move,
And need not His immediate hand who first
Prescribed their course, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God
The encumbrance of his own concerns, and spare
The great Artificer of all that moves
The stress of a continual act, the pain
Of unremitted vigilance and care,
As too laborious and severe a task . . .
But how should matter occupy a charge,
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
So vast in its demands, unless impell’d
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause? Book VI, ll 197–220

God is the motive force and everywhere-present power of the vast cosmos. Nothing happens but what he personally moves or causes; all creation subsists and is sustained by his great power, wisdom, and love:

The Lord of all, himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire,
By which the mighty process is maintain’d,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;
And whose beneficence no charge exhausts . . .
. . . One Spirit—His
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows—
Rules universal nature. Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of his unrivall’d pencil. He inspires
The balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth. Book VI, ll 221–230, 238–245

Third, God cares intimately and incessantly for his creation, and he is offended by those who mistreat his creatures or do not share his love and care for that which he has made (Book VI, ll 459–482). The various creatures God has made are for man’s use and enjoyment in serving him. Our love for God and gratitude to him are strengthened as we receive his creatures and employ them as he intends, as good stewards of that to which he himself continually attends by providential love and power (much of Book VI is taken up with this theme).

In all God’s creation there is no place for chance: “Thy providence forbids that fickle power” (Book V, l 871). His sovereignty rules over all the creatures as well as all the affairs of men. Instead, as Cowper lavishly illustrates, all the details and events of growing up, the tragedies and foibles of sinful men, the various gifts of honest work, and all the individual flora and fauna with which we come into daily contact, all are the handiwork of God, both in creating and sustaining them by his all-wise and all-comprehending power. And all of them invite us to engage him in his glory and live before him in thanksgiving.

Cowper achieves in “The Task” what theologians point at in their professional language and tight summaries. Thus poetry shows us how to bring learned doctrines into everyday life, teaching us to observe frequently and with care the inherent beauty, wisdom, goodness, might, and love of God in all the things he has made.  

“Slow down!” the refrain pleads, “Baby, now you’re movin’ way too fast.” The Fab Four were singing about a love relationship that was getting a little ahead of itself, but their message is good advice for our hectic, fast-paced generation: “Slow down! Don’t get ahead of yourself! Make the most of the moments of your life!” We hear this heart-cry in various ways: “You gotta stop and smell the roses.” “Take it one day at a time.” “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

Human beings seem ever to be rushing to the next event, situation, duty, or meeting. In the process, we take for granted the moments of our lives, seeing them as little more than stepping stones to the next big thing. In the process of rushing through our moments to get to the times that matter, we miss the beauty and truth of much of what is happening around us. And it is precisely here that poetry can help us to slow down and learn to discover the glory of God hidden in our overlooked moments.

Moments matter

Jonathan Edwards wrote that time is God’s most precious gift to us. He insisted, “upon time we should set a high value, and be exceeding careful that it be not lost; and we are therefore exhorted to exercise wisdom and circumspection, in order that we may redeem it.”[1] He urged his hearers concerning the time of their lives, “Lose it not either in sleep or in carelessness, inattention, or wandering imaginations.[2]

It’s the inattention part that poetry can help us to redress. Busy people tend to think ahead to the next important activity, and this can cause them to be unmindful of the many ways God may be speaking a word to them through the world (Ps. 19:1–4). The Scriptures speak broadly about God’s manifesting himself through all manner of created things—wind, skies, trees, animals, flowers, water of various kinds, even people and their several activities and occupations. Jesus understood this well and drew widely on all these categories to incite the minds of his hearers to attend to the witness of God in created things (Acts 14:17).

This means there is depth—spiritual depth—to every moment of our lives, even those we are too busy to attend to because our minds are already working on whatever we perceive to be the next important thing. In the depths of the moments of our lives God has hidden wonders of beauty, goodness, and truth which, could we learn to observe them, would enhance our lives with the assurance of his presence and delight in his works.

Poetry can train us for a more fruitful use of the precious moments of our lives.

The depth of a moment

Molly Peacock observes that “Poetry is the art that offers depth in a moment, using the depth of a moment.”[3] What she means is that reading verse can enable us to observe, feel, appreciate, and grow through the moments of our lives. By training us to pay more attention to the “hidden glories” God has set in his creation (Prov. 25:2), poetry can enrich our experience of the presence and steadfast love of God and strengthen our steps as we daily walk with him.

Every moment holds a certain amount of spiritual depth. Because Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is upholding and sustaining all the moments of our lives (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:17), we should expect the evidence of his handiwork to be visible to the eyes of faith. Think, for example, of how Jesus transfixed the moments of those who heard him comment on our duty to Caesar and to God by holding up a coin. Or the way he caused Nathaniel’s moments of meditation beneath a fig tree to rush back into his mind, suddenly filled with new meaning and wonder. Every moment is like this, and we deprive ourselves of opportunities for wonder, praise, and witness by failing to appreciate the divine whispers emanating toward us all the moments of our lives.

I want to look at three examples of poetry stopping time, as it were, to draw out the depth of moments for our enjoyment and enrichment. Each of these uses a variety of poetic devices to freeze a moment and draw us deeply into it, where we discover that there’s more to these moments than first meets the eye.

Three moments

Here is Denise Levertov’s wonderful poem, “Celebration”:[4]

Brilliant, this day—a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green—
whether it’s ferns or lichen or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes—
greener than ever before.
          And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for blessing,
a festive rite, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

Levertov breathes in the first moments of a new morning, and they are filled with observations of various kinds, which she enlarges and beautifies by piling metaphor on metaphor. From the onset we are aware that she knows this moment didn’t just “happen.” It is the product of “deft hands” and offers “blessing” to encourage an otherwise gloomy soul. By layering metaphors of sound (“virtuoso”, “chant”, “brass band”) and touch (“sharpest scissors”, “spindly bushes”, “hold new cones”) on her heightened descriptions of the content of the moment (“brilliant”, “prodigy of green”, “shines in the cold”), she draws the moment out for inspection from a variety of angles. And the anthropomorphizing of the whole (“cut”, “impatient”, “hold”, “transcribes”, “swinging along the street”) has the effect of making us one with the creation that greets us through her verse. A day that confronts us out the door with a blast of cold air is thus transformed into a “festive rite” of celebration by a more careful consideration of that first moment and its contents.

Wendell Berry provides another example with even more profound spiritual depth. Here is his “Sabbath Poem III” from 1979:[5]

To sit and look at light-filled leaves
May let us see, or seem to see,
Far backward as through clearer eyes
To what unsighted hope believes:
The blessed conviviality
That sang Creation’s seventh sunrise.
Time when the Maker’s radiant sight

Made radiant every thing He saw,
And every thing He saw was filled
With perfect joy and life and light.
His perfect pleasure was sole law;
No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures
And their whole pleasure was to be
What He made them; they sought no gain
Or growth beyond their proper measures,
Nor longed for change or novelty.
The only new thing could be pain.

Here is a moment familiar to us all—the light of the sun glimpsing through the leaves of a tree. We look up, see it, squint and shade our eyes, and turn away. But not Wendell Berry. The moment transports him in two directions—back to the original creation, when everything was without sin, very good, and wholly pleasing to God, and into his own day when grasping men inflict pain on the creation and one another in pursuit of novelty and greed-driven gain. The moment of seeing those light-plashed leaves evoked simultaneous emotions of faith, hope, and joy, along with sadness and regret. His poem reminds us that even the most common moments can call us to reflect on our own sinfulness and the goodness of God, and provoke us to rein in our selfish interests and serve the joy and glory of the Lord.

As a final example, Seamus Heaney shows how a single moment can change one’s entire course of life, if only we read it clearly. As a child Heaney delighted in the small creatures ready to hand—dragonflies, butterflies, and tadpoles especially. He was fascinated by the metamorphosis of tadpoles into frogs, and frequently gathered handfuls of spawn, putting them into jars to observe the process over time. He must have fancied that he might become a naturalist some day. But all that changed in a moment, as he relates in the final stanza of his poem, “Death of a Naturalist.”[6] The first stanza is full of the fun and wonder of watching small creatures and capturing tadpoles. But the mood changes in a moment when Heaney discovers himself the object of observation by “angry frogs”:

     Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass and the angry frogs
Invaded the flax dam; I ducked through the hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

The sight—in a moment—of those frogs, “poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting”—was all it took for Heaney to change his vocational aspirations—and we’re glad he did. That instant colored his whole experience in the fields that day. What, we gather from the first stanza, were typically filled with wonder and delight, were now “rank with cowdung” and “thick with a bass chorus”—ominous olfactory and auditory images, which only took on that aspect against the horror of those “gross-bellied frogs”, “cocked” and ready to wreak vengeance on a child.

Preparing for the moments

Paul exhorts us, as Edwards noted, to make the most of all the time God has given us (Eph. 5:15–17). The moments we fail to attend to will be lost, along with the wonder and glory we might have discovered there. By reading poems like these I’ve cited we can learn to slow down in the moments and pay more attention to what’s going on around us. As we contemplate our surroundings, we can allow metaphors, images, and associations to invade our minds, and reflect on the teaching of Scripture to guide us in how to appreciate the depth of the moment we are engaged in and to discover the glory God has hidden for us there.

Not all poems do this, of course. But there are enough of this variety that, if we will take the moments necessary to read them slowly, they may teach us how to plumb the depth of beauty and spiritual insight whispering to us in all the moments of our lives.  

Winter can be unforgiving, especially in a world occupied by both bees and beekeepers. Bees know their job. They organize for it with sublime results. But my job as beekeeper is not without consequence.

One of the true joys of life is that first spoonful of honey following the harvest. But that moment of joy is now two seasons away for me. I could have harvested honey in September, but not without risking the delicate balance that is the crucial natural link in our relationship.

Francis Collins finds the language of God in intricate DNA patterns, but I don’t need to look beyond pollination and honey. Nature is God’s gift and warning. We often enjoy the gift while paying little attention to the warning. But it is no accident that in biblical writings, “nature” is often linked with sin, as in “our sinful nature.”

Some years ago I was talking with a friend about the possibility of moving to New York City. He referred to New York as “the great indoors.” And increasingly life is lived indoors or in over-manicured and domesticated outdoor settings. Paddle boats on the local lake are a far cry from canoes on a quiet stream.

For most of us, nature is yet another packaged consumer experience. God’s warning is masked or muted. We build homes in flood plains assured that our levies and insurance policies will protect us. Those who do navigate our rivers don helmets and sit on the edge of a raft. Nature rushes by while the passengers enjoy one more adrenaline rush.

God’s gift is pollination and honey. God’s warning is: exploit the bees and you lose the gift. This wonderful lesson and ultimate truth could be gleaned from Aesop’s fables, but nothing moves the heart and mind more than learning while doing. Humanity labors to build ever more intricate hypotheses about life and its perpetuation, but many of nature’s vivid truths are better revealed over time in responsible, humble cultivation—and enjoyment.

I am drawn to quiet rivers and streams. They are glorious in their beauty and they reflect God’s truth in their delicate and fruitful ecology. Their watersheds, though, are often a story of human disregard. As we look upstream we see this disregard encroaching. Much of life is downstream; what happens upstream is determinative.

We often seem oblivious to the causes of the detritus downstream and the unwitting role we play. We want “life, liberty, and happiness” but not “under God.”

I have no definite prescription even though my mind fights for one. We live in angst about nature because we are estranged from it and the lessons of God it reveals. When I talk to others about beekeeping, often the first question is “how often are you stung?” But this is a downstream question. We are not mere passengers on a guided tour; life’s sweetness does not originate on a store shelf and wait for our convenience. Learning true gratitude for God’s gift of nature includes learning to respect its warnings.

To find our place and role in God’s world, we must look upstream to God’s message of love—and what it requires of us—and then probe our experiences and relationships to determine its truth and relevance. We can find truth; we don’t need to wait for scientists to let us know what to believe—or how to act.

Dallas Willard closes his recent book Knowing Christ Today with the ultimate lesson from the book of Proverbs. I certainly cannot do better.

If you indeed cry out for insight,
And raise your voice for understanding:

If you seek it like silver,
And search for it as for hidden treasures—

Then you will understand the fear of the Lord
And find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 2:3–5

William Wilberforce, once considered an obscure historical figure, has made a comeback in the public consciousness as the leader of efforts he believed God had placed before him as his “two great objects”: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners and morals. The almost miraculous accomplishment of both took not only Wilberforce’s lifelong dedication, but also that of a close circle of friends who became known as the Clapham Sect (named after their neighborhood of Clapham). But while it has become increasingly clear that the Clapham Sect was as essential to the British abolitionist movement as Wilberforce, few know much of those who gathered that band of friends.

One such little-known but highly influential figure was Lady Margaret Middleton. In our Reading on Wilberforce, biographer John Pollock writes that “the principal agent in securing Wilberforce” to first offer a motion to Parliament to abolish the slave trade “was Captain Sir Charles Middleton of the royal Navy and his artist wife.” Lady Middleton is worth remembering as one who used her gifts of hospitality, friendship, and a passion for justice to gather for conversation (and later, strategizing) the friends who would become the leading abolitionists of her time.

Lady Middleton was born Margaret Gambier sometime in the 1730s. She was from a family of Huguenot émigrés and the niece of a Navy captain and seems to have been converted at a young age to an active faith under the preaching of George Whitefield. While visiting her uncle, she met Charles Middleton, then a teenage midshipman. The two fell in love, but because her family disapproved of the match (and eventually disinherited her) and Middleton could not support a wife, they did not marry until 1761, nearly twenty years later.

During the intervening time Margaret lived with a school friend in Kent named Elizabeth Bouverie, another Huguenot who owned the estate of Barham Court in Teston. This friendship continued after Margaret’s marriage, as Charles came to live at Barham Court, farming it during a twelve-year lull in his distinguished naval career (and later inheriting the estate).

No personal letters of Margaret Middleton survive. Most of what little we know of her is through the letters and diaries of her friends such as Hannah More and William Wilberforce, who testify repeatedly to her influence on their lives and actions. We do know she was what was then called “highly accomplished,” and a noted portrait artist. She and Elizabeth Bouverie hosted a wide variety of artists, activists, and intellectuals at Teston, including Samuel Johnson (who called Margaret one of the wisest people he knew—no small compliment) and the painter Joshua Reynolds.

Her social standing is noteworthy, for the times in which she lived were as hostile to public faith as anything we know today. Resisting such strong social pressure took courage and the wise use of social capital. And we know that she did resist and helped others to do the same. Sir Charles later credited his wife for fostering his own deep faith. Hannah More was always vocal about her debt to Lady Middleton’s friendship and personal example of faith and philanthropy, which became an ideal that shaped the Victorian age.

After Charles was made a baronet in 1781 he brought in a friend, James Ramsay, to become vicar of Teston and his personal secretary. Ramsay had served with Middleton at sea and had observed the treatment of slaves at first-hand. Ramsay’s two decades of correspondence with Lady Middleton on issues of moral reform led directly to his landmark book-length tract, the Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. She continued to support and encourage him—helping to shape and edit several drafts—until it was finally published in 1784, with a preface featuring a long uncredited letter of hers.

Ramsay’s notoriety brought more people to Teston, where Lady Middleton made her home a center for the abolitionist cause. The Middletons’ social clout helped forge alliances between a variety of groups interested in the issue but previously unknown to each other. Then their daughter married a close friend of William Wilberforce, through whom they met the rising MP, and introduced him to Ramsay at Teston.

So many important discussions were had and plans made at Teston that Hannah More wrote that Teston should become known as the “Runnymede” of the African slaves. More’s own best-selling Thoughts Upon the Manners of the Great, published in 1788, was a direct result of strategies for changing the cultural climate devised at Teston, and its early drafts were seen only by Wilberforce, Mrs. Bouverie, and Lady Middleton. The real work for Wilberforce’s first 1789 bill against the slave trade was done at Lady Middleton’s home in Teston.

Margaret died suddenly in 1792, the same year John Thornton purchased the estate in Clapham that became abolitionist headquarters. Thus by the time the Clapham circle was formed, the work toward abolition and the reformation of manners—Wilberforce’s two “great objects” of his famous 1787 diary entry—was already well underway. The work got its start and first took its bearings in the salon of the remarkable Lady Middleton.

Margaret Middleton’s life demonstrates the essential role one unsung individual can play, by exercising unique gifts and abilities within a framework of community, in radically changing a nation and the world. Wilberforce, the more public figure, was given “two great objects” to achieve, but he was not asked to achieve them alone. He was able to do so, with God’s grace, only through the assistance, encouragement, and influence of others, including Lady Middleton. Like them, much of what we are called, even commanded, to do cannot be done alone. The story and legacy of Lady Middleton is another illustration of the truth that often our callings can only be lived out in the context of community—and that historical prominence is no true measure of faithfulness and influence.  

Butz is the brother-in-law of Corazon Aquino, who died of cancer on August 1. At the time of the dinner Ms. Aquino was president of the Philippines. She had displaced its autocratic president, Ferdinand Marcos, in the aftermath of what turned out to be a relatively peaceful revolution. While the revolution had many causes, the trigger had been the 1983 assassination of Butz’s brother and Cory’s husband, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, as he was returning to his country from exile to contest Marcos.

Butz occupied a unique position; he was the brother of a martyr and the brother-in-law of the President. He was also a powerful senator and a popular political figure. He was in great spirits that evening and indulged his American guest with a story that was well known to his other friends. He must have told the story numerous times, but the revery that accompanied its retelling seemed fresh to me.

Butz had been a leader in the “People Power” revolution that overthrew Marcos and brought Cory to power. He had been instrumental in organizing street marches and rallies, and in particular became a compelling symbolic figure in the four-day revolt that culminated on February 25, 1986. That night he told how the popular revolution gathered force as thousands and then tens of thousands journeyed to Manila to join the growing mass of Manilans who wanted Marcos out. Each day there were demonstrations in Manila’s central city, with Butz at the head of the forward phalanx.

On the day Marcos fled, Butz related, there were well over 100,000 people shouting for his fall. Marcos had dispatched the armed forces to break the will of the revolutionaries; troops were gathered behind tanks on cobblestone streets just off the square. General Fidel Ramos, who later succeeded Cory Aquino as the Philippine president, commanded the military.

As the tanks were told to move forward, Butz said, the people facing the tanks at the head of the crowds knelt in prayer. The tanks began to rumble forward. Butz called it the most horrifying sound he had ever heard. One can imagine—metal tank tracks rolling across cobblestone streets. “I wanted to run,” Butz said, “but I looked to my left and then to my right and there were nuns kneeling and praying. I couldn’t run; you know us Filipino men and face. How could I run while the nuns stayed?”

Just as his troops reached the front line of the resistance, General Ramos halted the tanks and joined the revolution. Marcos was out. Cory Aquino, the woman in the yellow dress, would replace him.

After her funeral, The New York Times reported, “more than 100,000 people thronged the streets of Manila as the body of Former President Corazon C. Aquino was driven slowly through swirling winds and rain for burial.” Butz was there, too. I am sure his mind must have often gone back to that extraordinary day in 1986 when faith in God animated courage that broke the back of an autocracy and gave Phillipinos a leader of grace and resolve.  

The article noted that the students promised they would, among other things, “serve the greater good,” “act with the utmost integrity,” and guard against “decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.” About half the class took the pledge; the Economist’s writer noted that “such naivety, if that is what it is, will not survive long beyond the university’s walls.”

Milton Friedman is frequently quoted as saying the only obligation a good capitalist has is to “maximize profits.” One can, of course, come up with multiple complex definitions of what that phrase means. Does it mean shorter- or longer-term profits? If the latter, over what span of time? Any discussion about maximizing profits must also include brand value, accounting treatment, the allocation of available cash, potential mergers or acquisitions, and on and on.

Over the years I have managed both small and relatively large enterprises without an MBA—or a pledge. I have tried, clumsily and episodically, to be attentive to my faith in God and to the ultimate importance of his commandments. There have been internal tensions as a result, as well as some external clashes, and I will be the first to admit to the difficulty of aligning faith and action in a postmodern society. But whatever my mental or spiritual processes, I was never naïve about the expectations of business or God.

One of my first encounters between my faith and market realities came in the mid-eighties after reading the lyrics of some hard-rock songs in a radio industry trade publication, Radio and Records. The lyrics promoted drugs and promiscuity, and I told the program director of an FM station that my company owned to take those records off the air. He was incredulous and said we would lose audience share. My memory doesn’t provide me before-and-after market share numbers, but the business did not fail.

My often-spontaneous analyses begin with God’s exhortation to love our neighbors as ourselves. In contrast to other biblical passages that sometimes seem to be in conflict about the ultimate result of profit (that is, the enlargement of wealth), love of neighbor is a good concrete starting point. In the case of the rock lyrics, it was clear to me I would not want somebody airing those records for my daughters.

Unintended consequences often strike the most insouciant. Howard Stern was continually getting his employer, Infinity Broadcasting, into trouble while I was Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. His humor was vulgar, racist, and misogynistic and Infinity was fined three times for “indecent broadcasting.” Stern was not only derisive about our actions, at one point he got so worked up on the air that he wished me dead. But some years later he went ballistic for another reason as his daughter, an aspiring actress, was required to perform in the nude for an Off-Broadway production.

None of us want to be misled about a stock’s prospects, sold a product that doesn’t deliver what its advertising claims, or pay prices that bear little relationship to costs. Simply stated, we want to be treated fairly and should reciprocate. But what about a pledge to “serve the greater good”? What does the phrase mean? Is providing music entertainment over the radio serving “the greater good”?

Modernity offered more and more to the consumer. Now the so-called postmodern period continues expanding, and often improving, the supply of goods and services. But we are increasingly confronted with “zero-sum” arguments. Arguably, selling tasty food at affordable prices is serving the “greater good,” but then critics counter with claims that the fast food industry promotes obesity and harmful industrial farming. Providing electricity seems to meet the test, until critics profile your company’s carbon footprint. Some environmentalists promote the use of “renewable energy” while others object to the visual pollution they claim is caused by wind turbines.

Regardless, I applaud Max Anderson’s pledge initiative. While the greater good can be an elusive objective, we all should pursue our careers in light of personal and public goals that are larger than the size of our paychecks, options, or office.

Still, I can’t help but believe that a business school pledge is more complicated and less inclusive than is needful. And it ultimately carries scant weight, as the writer at the Economist suggests.

In recent decades many in the cohort demographers refer to as “influencers” have derided faith as superstition or mere emotion. The accelerating momentum of this condescending attitude led predictably to a tendency to pay less and less attention to the divine commandment for reciprocal love which compels fairness and justice in human relations. Equally predictably, the attendant neo-Darwinian ethic of survival of the fittest has come to occupy more and more centers of power.

The Trinity Forum’s newest Reading features selections from Adam Smith’s classic Theory of Moral Sentiments and is introduced by Bill Pollard, formerly CEO of ServiceMaster. Bill notes: “The up and down cycles of the economy cannot be eliminated—but we can do a much better job of constraining and managing the natural forces of greed and self-interest as we focus on being guided by a moral compass that points to a true North and involves a care and concern for the interests of others.”

We should all pledge to orient ourselves to “true North” regardless of our degree or school. Critically, the author of this ultimate pledge assures us of real consequences, plus and minus.