To Forgive: Reprove, Restore, Reclaim

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Tree of Forgiveness
by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones

Last week, Gerry and I were lucky enough to view this painting
at The Lady Lever Art Gallery
in Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England
Before we proceed, allow me to express my dismay at the preponderance of exclusionary masculine pronouns to be encountered in this post: "restored to himself" ~ "he who will not be taught" ~ "wholly His" ~ "He has forgiven." In scripture, literature, female authors, male authors: How long, O Lord? Naturally, I find the omnipresence of gender - bound sentence structure depressing and distressing; yet, I like all of the following passages and their common theme that forgiveness requires searching your own soul and using your thinking cap:

"In short, I began to think, and to think indeed is one real advance from hell to heaven. All that hardened state and temper of soul, which I said so much of before, is but a deprivation of thought; he that is restored to his thinking, is restored to himself." ~ Daniel Defoe, from his novel Moll Flanders

"Impatient is he who will not be taught or reproved of his sin, and by strife wars against truth wittingly, and defends his folly."
~ Chaucer

"When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts . . . that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever."
~ C. S. Lewis, from The Screwtape Letters

"He has forgiven me not just a great deal, but everything."
~ St. Therese of Lisieux

My friend Joni added this insight on forgiveness . . .

"That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation."
~ 2 Corinthians 5:19:

. . . with her own concluding comment: So if God's no longer counting why are we?

Good question, Joni!

One of my favorites:
"As far as the east is from the west, so far
are our transgressions removed from us."
~ Psalms 103: 12

It took me awhile to notice that our transgressions are removed not only from the mind of God -- they are also removed from us! We no longer have to align ourselves with every old mistake we ever made. As Joni points out, "If God is not looking backwards, why are we?"

***********************************
On both the use of paternalistic pronouns and the topic of forgiveness, I am reminded of the musical, Children of Eden written in the late 1980s by Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz takes some interesting and creative liberties with the Book of Genesis, but, alas, he totally forgot to eliminate the patriarchal sexism. Now, that's what I would have done! Instead, we have the same - old same - old God as grand-dad, with no grand-mom in sight; and the relentless chant of "Father, Father, Father." [See also A Twin Sister For Jesus]

Even so, some of the lyrics are quite beautiful:

Children of Eden
Like this brief day
My light is nearly gone
But through the night
My children you will go on
You will know heartache
Prayers that don't work
And times of bitter circumstances
But I still believe in second chances

Children of Eden
Where have we left you
Born to uncertainty
Destined for pain
Sins of your parents
Haunt you and test you
This your inheritance
Fire and rain

Children of Eden
Try not to blame us
We were just human
To error prone
Children of Eden will you reclaim us
You and your children to come
Someday you'll come home

Children of Eden
Where is our garden
Where is the innocence
We can't reclaim
Once eyes are opened
Must those eyes harden
Lost in the wilderness
Must we remain . . . you will reclaim us . . .


Garden of Eden by He Qi
[artist's bio / previous post]
In the Beginning
This step is one again our first
We set our feet upon a virgin land
We hold the promise of the earth
In our hands

No flood from heaven comes again
No deluge will destroy and purify
We hold the fate of man and men
In our hands

Now at this dawn so green and glad
We pray that we may long remember
How lovely was the world we had
In the beginning

Of all the gifts we have received
One is most precious and most terrible
The will of each of us is free*
It's in our hands . . .

Children of Eden
Grant us your pardon
All that we leave to you
is the unknown

Children of Eden
Seek for your garden
You and your children to come
Some day to come home

[emphasis added]

*As wise Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. observes it in Slaughterhouse Five: "We just can't seem to help feeling so entitled to free will, but what does that really mean?"

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, May 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
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my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Taste & See

The Garden of the Hesperides
painting by Lord Frederick Leighton (1830 - 96)
O Taste and See
by Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997)
British-born American Poet

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.


I never thought much about this particular Psalm until I read Levertov's poem about the "subway Bible poster." (Or Bible button, as seen above!) Nor was Wordsworth's sonnet among my favorites. I could agree with Wordsworth that the demeaning daily barter of the soul is too much with us, displacing Nature and threatening our sense of belonging to each other, to the Earth. But Proteus? Triton? Odd choices! As much as I love Greek mythology, I'm afraid these two gods don't speak to my heart any more than the commercial world of getting and spending. Shops or the Sea? Was that the choice?

The World Is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
English Romantic Poet

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Levertov's poem, however, caused me to take another look at Wordsworth's sonnet. I like the way she contradicts his opening line while asserting essentially the same observation. The world is too much with us? The world is not with us enough? Which is it? It's both. The busywork world is too much with us; the sensuous world is not with us enough, even though it is right in front of us for the taking, in plain sight, within our grasp.

We are separated from Nature: "tangerine, weather . . . plum, quince." And also from Imagination: "grief, mercy, language." But we needn't be. We can open our senses, take the time to taste and see, cross that busy street, visit the orchard, retrieve our hearts. Wordsworth's striking diction -- "a sordid boon" -- vividly conveys what a bad bargain it is to live out of touch with Nature, out of sync with the moon; and Levertov suggests an alternative version of communion and Paradise: "living in the orchard and being hungry and plucking the fruit." It seems so straightforward, yet we have so often been warned against it that we must retrain our senses in order to embrace the world enough.

Levertov's way of being in the garden and her list of verbs -- "To breathe them, "bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform" -- seem to exemplify what Terry Tempest Williams calls a "faith of verbs":

"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers."
Terry Tempest Williams (b 1955)
American author, naturalist and environmentalist
Paintings Above: The Garden of the Hesperides is the Goddess Hera's orchard, in the distant western corner of the mythical world, where was said to grow a grove of immortality-giving golden apple trees, with golden leaves, golden branches, and golden apples. The apples had been planted from the fruited branches that the Great Earth Mother Gaia gave as a wedding gift to Hera and Zeus.

As the blissful garden is near Mt. Atlas, it is the three daughters of Atlas, also called "The Hesperides" who receive the task of tending to the primary tree in the blissful grove. As an additional safeguard, and perhaps to prevent the nymphs from plucking gold apples for themselves, Hera also placed in the garden a serpent-like dragon named Ladon who twines about the tree and never sleeps.

The beautiful Hesperides -- sometimes referred to as The Western Maidens, The Daughters of Evening, or The Daughters of Night -- also serve as the Goddesses of Evening and the Golden Light of Sunset.

STAY TUNED FOR
Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Take a look at
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com