Bibles Laid Open, Millions of Surprises

by Susan Dewitt, CSJP

A long time ago, when I was a proudly agnostic graduate student of English literature, I was captured by the poetry of George Herbert who spoke to God with intimate love and longing. He spoke to me as well, this well-born gentleman who, in 1629, turned away from courtly and political success to become the Anglican pastor of Bemerton, a small country parish.

My experience of God at that time was familial and theoretical: my ear was tuned to the rituals and language of the Anglican Mass and I knew a lot (or thought I did) about Christian history and theology, but I could not have imagined saying in anguish “Ah, my dear God! though I am clean forgot, / Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.”

His voice lived in my ear and heart for many years, along with the voices of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton and so many others. I wanted my attention to be aesthetic, appreciative, but God kept breaking through. My friends, who knew me better than I knew myself, gave me peculiar gifts: a paperback Lives of the Saints, folk art images of St. Francis, St. Luke and – of course – St. Joseph, a simple cross. Or, as Herbert says, “Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, / Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.”

One day in that long journey toward the Beloved I drove up the long dirt road through chamisa and sagebrush to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in the Chama River Valley of northern New Mexico. There in the simple adobe chapel washed in the light from the mountains was a lectionary open to words that called me. And I knew, and cried, and remembered:

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.

A few years later, that long journey led me to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and another mountaintop experience in Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park, British Columbia. Called to become a Catholic and then a CSJP, I found again my own gift for words and poetry. Herbert knew all about that:

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
and relish versing.

There is still so much more to be transformed in me, so much that is careless and inattentive and callous, but I hear what George Herbert knew so well: the path of love is opened for us by the One who calls us and loves us. In his best-known poem, Love III, Herbert speaks from the feast of love:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: 
So I did sit and eat.

 

This article appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue of Living Peace.

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