MOTHERING SUNDAY

Mothering Sunday, when we give thanks for Mother Church, seems like the right time to post this golden oldie.

I had been reading the Saturday Newspaper’s listing of Religious Institutions and their Service Times when I came across a church’s description of itself as: Independent, Fundamental, Pre-Millennial, and Missionary Minded. The song wrote itself.

The italicized words in square brackets are spoken. Enjoy.

THE BIBLE BELT

[This is the story of the hand Fate dealt

In a part of the Country called the Bible belt

On a hot summer day when I wanted a nice, cold beer

I didn’t know where the tavern was

But I saw a young lad and thought ‘I bet he does’

And said, “Excuse me, son, can you point the way from here?

I’m a weary pilgrim, feeling cursed,

I’m looking for a place to slay my thirst

I need a spirit or two to help me cool down

Now, he was carrying a Bible and I should have known better

But I thought I’d die in this hot weather, and he said,

“I know just the place for you in this town”]

“Well … there … is …

First Four-Squared Open Bible Seminary

Reformed, five-point Calvinistic, Missionary

Free-will, Christ-Centered, Independent, Fundamentalist

Primitive Baptist Church”

“And … they … have …

AWANA Youth Groups, hearing-aid audio loops

Wheel chair ramps, elevators, summer camps,

Greeters at the door, plus a whole bunch more at the

Primitive Baptist Church”

[I said, “Young man, young man, listen to me

Let me explain and I think you’ll see that

We have got a misunderstanding here

The ‘spirits’ I want are the earthly kind

Secular, worldly if you don’t mind

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge

Would you tell me, am I near?”

He said: “I’m sorry that I misunderstood

But I’ll direct you to that neighborhood

Where you will find the awful things you crave

I would never go to such a place

With their worldly ways and actions base

Yet I’ll point the way and hope the Lord will save”]

“Well … there … is …

Old Memorial, highly editorial,

Social, liberal, literary-critical

Open, caring, feelyweely-sharing

E-pis-co-pal Church”

“And … they … have …

Tai Chi, Tie-dye, Yoga where you learn to fly

Roll playing, politics, agitation, meditation

Feminism with a bang, Meetings up the Yin/Yang

E-pis-co-pal Church”

[I said, “Young man, my friend, it is getting late

And what we got here is failure to communicate

I don’t want religion … I want to be amused

I want a lounge, a Club, a place to go that’s

Air-Conditioned with a stage and show

Now please help me; I’m tired and I’m confused

He said: “Well now I know the thing you want

Like Hollywood – a fleshly haunt – where people go

Because they like the show

I’ll point you to the place, but I hope you see

It is a Den of Iniquity

But I’ll tell what it is you want to know”]

“Well … there … is …

Holy Roller, re-born, tongues of fire, faith-alone

Renewed, unglued, always in a prayin’ mood

Get saved; know your fate, Exorcism while-you-wait

Pentecostal Church”

“And … they … have …

Guitars and a big drum, cushioned pews for you bum

Light-shows, TV Station, Tongues with translation

Miracles, prophecies, get a vision when you please

Pentecostal Church”

[Well my head was sore and my throat was dry

I felt like I was about to die, and I said,

 “Look at me, and get this through your head

I’m looking for a place to have a beer

Now can you tell me if there’s one near

If you soon don’t help me we both might end up dead”

He said, “My oh my, what a fool I’ve been

Pointing to all these churches when

What you really wanted did not dawn on me

You’re not looking for a Reformed Bible Church

That is not the purpose of your search

For I do believe that you might be ‘R C’”]

Well … there … is …

Hail Mary Full of Grace, Holy water in your face

Sacred Heart Family, purgatory, pay the fee

Sacramental Church of Rome, Papalism in the home

Roman Catholic Church

And … they … have …

Confession, fasting, bingo everlasting

Incense, K of C, Holy Sea and rosary

Homilies to bore ya, Saints, Medjugoria

Roman Catholic Church

And there used to be a tavern …

Owned by a lapsed Methodist …

But it closed!!!

© 1994 Dale Petley (Petitcodiac, N. B.)

LENT

 HOLY SONNETS - XIV

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

~ John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person’d God …

The image is one of a battering ram and the language is that of war. Why does Donne address the Almighty in terms of martial conflict? He might just as easily have written: ‘capture my heart,’ or ‘open my heart.’ (Neither would have disrupted the metrical flow of the Sonnet’s loose iambic.) However, the poet’s employment of siege imagery is in keeping with his conviction that his life has been hijacked by a usurper, and that refusing to relinquish control, this tyrant must be overthrown.

Donne makes his appeal regarding his ‘heart’ because the heart is the seat of loving-knowledge. As a metaphor ‘the heart’ represents who we are at our center - our fundamental identity. When we know something ‘deep-down in our heart’ it means we have more than merely an emotional appreciation or a purely theoretical understanding. It means we get it. It means the distance between subject and object has been bridged, the veil torn in two.  The heart as the center of loving knowledge represents who we are as those created in God’s “own image and likeness.” The address to the ‘three person’d God’ is at once an appeal to the Holy Trinity and a cry from the heart to the One in whose image all hearts are made. The supplicant is pleading for nothing less than to be conquered by his own eternal reality.

I suppose most of us don’t focus much on our eternal reality or even believe in it for that matter. Instead each of us identifies singularly as an isolated psychophysical entity convinced that we are somehow separate from the rest of the world, out there, and God. Perhaps this is why Origen maintained that Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs should be studied together. Proverbs concerns our turn to wisdom; Ecclesiastes, in maintaining  the futility of seeking fulfillment in the passing vanities of the world, points to our growth in wisdom, and the Song of Songs celebrates the soul’s homecoming in loving union with God. Most of us get stuck somewhere in Ecclesiastes, yet to be convinced of the vanity of it all.

The poet declares that God knocks, breathes, shines, and seeks to mend. God invites, inspires, enlightens, and welcomes us to wholeness and fullness of life but we are captivated by our selfishness and find that we cannot stand upright unless we are overthrown. We are constantly betrayed by our nagging fear, our need to control, our victim identity, and our sense of never being enough. As our own worst enemy we must be broken and refashioned by a master craftsman. “Break, blow, burn, and make me new,” cries the author. He knows that he cannot overcome himself and that all ‘labor’ to do so solidifies the false identity. He pleads to be enthralled and ravished, terms expressive of the radical, fierce, reality of grace. He yearns to rest in the love which never forsakes us and never lets us go; a love which feeds us, and sustains us, and gathers up all our broken pieces so that not one fragment remains.