THE TEMPLE - GEORGE HERBERT
Once again I reveal my lack of an English Education Proper – prior to this week, I had never read George Herbert’s The Temple (first published 1633) in its entirety.
I was introduced to Herbert through Simone Weil, who in her Spiritual Autobiography testifies that profound experiences of union with Christ are kindled within her by and through the memorization and ceaseless Jesus-prayer repetition of “Love (III).” I read the Autobiography in a time of great spiritual crisis. I hagiographized Weil; I memorized Herbert’s poem. “Love (III)” is often what I’m mouthing when I’m kneeling on the prie-dieu. “So I did sit and eat.” I’m eating, Love. I’m eating Love. I promise.
The Temple is in three parts: THE CHURCH-PORCH, THE CHURCH, and THE CHURCH MILITANT. Poems throughout reference aspects of church architecture, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the canonical hours, and the liturgical calendar. I think the book can be read in the voice of one speaker, chronologically – although I’m hesitant to ascribe to the text a clear linear progression from unfaith to faith. Yes, each poem unequivocally concludes that Christ is Savior, that God is Love, that Christianity (and a rigid conception of the Christian Life at that) is necessary to redemption, to salvation, to eternal life. The temerity of the speaker, however, ranges from poem to poem – some, such as “Praise (II)” sing out with the devotion of angels; others express tremendous gut-wrenching doubt on the path to their ultimate conclusion (“The Pilgrimage,” “The Collar”). I think this is perhaps more accurate to the experience of faith than an “Amazing Grace”-esque “I once was lost, but now I’m found” – faith/unfaith, conviction/doubt, and submission/resistance are all in continuous interplay in the life of she who tries to conform to the will of God. Simultaneously: I also think this dramatic variation in confidence can be read as a moment’s capture of all voices at-once speaking within a holy place.
I was very affected by The Temple. Herbert depicts salvation in Anselmian terms: humanity owes God a debt which we necessarily cannot repay. The only means through which the balance can be settled is the sacrifice of the Deus homo, the God-Man. God is Love, but grief abounds in this book: the grief of human mortal existence. The grief of the Christian life, which Herbert repeatedly figures as shackles which must remain unbroken (in “Perirrhanterium”: “who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself”; the title of “The Collar,” which calls to mind the Scottish jougs, although I wonder if this today might be read biographically as referring to the clerical collar, though I don’t think these would have been worn during Herbert’s lifetime). The grief, of course, of Christ.
“Was ever grief like mine?” This is the refrain of “The Sacrifice” – a poem which, though it comes rather early in the sequence of the book, I found to be the emotional centerpiece of The Temple. Written from Christ’s perspective, “The Sacrifice” forces its reader into something like a medieval contemplative practice of empathetic meditation on Christ’s suffering. How, really, would he have felt? Knowing all he knew, and yet experiencing betrayal, humiliation, torture? Herbert’s rendering of the Passion makes me feel sick and anxious and sad, especially as it ends, almost abruptly, on the moment of Christ’s death. “Easter Wings” is soon to come, but there is no resurrection in “The Sacrifice.” I worried over Christ’s question while reading this poem – heartrate accelerating, stomach knotting – thinking of all the human suffering of abuse and war and genocide, known to me and unknown, which does parallel Christ’s, which does prove to me the extent of human capacity for evil. There will ever be grief like his. Does that truth minimize, or even negate, the Christian account of Things As They Are? Does it strengthen arguments for the account, because it emphasizes the universality of Christ’s human life? I’m not sure. I’m distressed about this.