Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions
Words have formed my whole life. They are my unraveling and my restoration.
This article is the first in a planned series from Robert, Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions.
My journey to understanding myself: the good I’ve done and the messes I have made are inextricably tied to words that others wrote. I owe a debt I cannot express to those who planted the love of words in my soul. But I’m going to try, not only because they deserve recognition and thanks for this ever-enriching gift, but because the power of language—in its cadences and rhythms—has guided me through all the major turning points in my life, for good and ill. First and foremost among those to thank stand my parents and (especially) my elder sister, Ethel. All three were English majors from UCLA and our home was a place of reading. The books I plucked off the shelves are the backbone of my intellectual life and of this series I am calling Devotions Upon Divergent Occasions. More on this odd title in a bit.
The ideas and experiences that form us lie deep and layered, like forgotten memories. They influence us, form us, though we can’t explain or trace the connections. In particular, the words of classic authors opened my mind and heart to ways of thinking and living. And I may never have had the joys, pains, and loves of this journey without my older sister reading to me. My mom’s lack of maternal instincts made way for Ethel, thirteen years my senior, to read to me, filling my ears with the sounds of great literature. The stories of Winnie-the-Pooh, The Wind In The Willows, and The Chronicles of Narnia wove the auricular tapestry of my childhood. My love for children’s literature persists, and I will often reread passages and poems that give me a pleasure I cannot quite explain.
If you are going to go on this journey with me, you will have to put up with a few poems, like this one from A.A. Milne’s book of children’s poetry, When We Were Very Young:
The Invaders
In careless patches through the wood
The clumps of yellow primrose stood
And sheets of white anemones,
Like driven snow against the trees,
Had covered up the violet,
But left the blue bell bluer yet.
Along the narrow carpet ride,
With primroses on either side,
Between their shadows and the sun
The cows came slowly, one by one,
Breathing the early morning air
And leaving it still sweeter there
And, one by one, intent upon
Their purposes, they followed on
In ordered silence... and were gone.
But all the little wood was still
As if it waited so, until
Some blackbird on an outpost yew
Watching the slow procession through
Lifted his yellow beak at last
To whistle that the line had passed...
Then all the wood began to sing
Its morning anthem to the spring.
Poetry should be read out loud, of course. I’d love to read A.A. Milne to you - if you’re willing, hit play on the article voiceover at the beginning of this piece.
The whimsical poems, arresting passages, and enthralling stories from great authors were the psychological building materials I used to construct a safe haven, a place of happiness and comfort I could return to again and again when life was confusing and painful.
[A side note: if, for whatever reason, you have not had the pleasure of being read to, there is an unbelievably rich world of audiobooks for you to explore!]
One day I picked up a worn and dog-eared book that would become one of the most important resources in my life: Norton’s Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1. In due course I discovered Volume 2 and the Volumes of American Literature. These 2,000+ page tomes contain poems, essays, short stories, and excerpts from all the great writers of my ancestry: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Brontë, and TS Eliot to Emerson, Poe, Melville, Twain and Faulkner, and many more.
A cultural disclaimer: I am not advocating that anyone should read any of the authors I will cite in this series; that’s not the point. This is my journey, and the journey of many who grew up inculcated in the canons of Western civilization. I am grateful that our world has changed. I rejoice that beautiful voices from other cultures and traditions now form part of most educational pathways. In future essays in this series I will speak of the broadening of my horizons made possible by reading and listening to those marginalized by the cultural gatekeepers of the West. But for now, I want to honor the beauty in the heritage that is mine, that formed me to cope with the world.
It was in Norton’s anthology that I first encountered John Donne. Here was a man I admired. His writing resonated with me. As I learned more about him there was much that the budding rebel inside me found enchanting: he was a poet and a warrior. He pushed against the norms of his day. The erotic poems he wrote to his wife were never published during his life; polite Stuart society was not ready for them, even though by our standards they were fairly tame. My favorite of these, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” showcases his clever use of extended metaphors or conceits - he likens their relationship and love to the arms of a compass, even using the words “grows erect.” Hot stuff for genteel prudes!
While I am tempted to turn this into an essay on Donne’s poetry, I will (I hope wisely) turn away from this excursus and get back to why I’m bringing him up.
Sometime in his 20s, Donne converted to Anglicanism, which set him on a course that would eventually land him a job as a preacher at St. Paul’s in London. The Norton Anthology sums up this achievement:
In the 17th century, among court circles and at the Inns of Court where lawyers congregated, preaching was at once a form of spiritual devotion, an intellectual exercise, and a dramatic entertainment. Donne’s metaphorical style, bold erudition, and dramatic wit at once established him as a great preacher in an age of great preachers.
Thus into my life stepped a rake, a warrior, a cleric, but most importantly a man of words. Words that helped me make sense of my faith and, above all, an unapproachable God. In his poetry there was a feeling about this God of paradoxes: full of wrath yet a peaceful shepherd; unflinching Judge and tender father. As my religious training taught me more about my wretched condition before this pure and holy Other, I found a sense of security in the words of Christians like Donne who had gone before, expressing love for this frightening God.
In one of his most famous “holy” sonnets, Batter my heart, three-person’d God, Donne closes with these lines:
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd 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.
To be ravished by God! My young mind and heart could not begin to comprehend what this might mean, but it captured my imagination and became the goal of my life.
Donne’s memorable turns of phrase appear again in his prose writings, like his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a series of meditations that he wrote while afflicted with a serious sickness (it is thought a form of typhus) that seemed likely to end in his death (it didn’t.) The title of this series acknowledges my debt to Donne. His 25 Meditations trace the course of his disease, from onset to convalescence to eventual recuperation.
The most famous of these, Meditation 17, opens with this epigraph:
Now this bell tolling softly for another,
says to me, Thou must die.
It has also given us the iconic lines:
No man is an island…
and:
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Here’s the thing: when I’m sick, about the last thing I’m thinking of is creative ideas; I just want a bowl of chicken soup and sleep; so it’s pretty badass to write some of the greatest lines in history while lying sick and fevered and aware that this might be the end. And for all the seemingly dour material, when you read the entire meditation (which I encourage you to do here) you feel the heart of a man who loved mankind, a generous soul wrestling with what he believed, trying to make sense of it all, to bring some hope and comfort to his readers.
Donne stood squarely in a Christian tradition that believes in a hell of torment. As I read his work, though, he seems to be of a wholly different spirit than, say, the American revivalist preacher, Jonathan Edwards, whose most widely published sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” traumatized generations of Christians and non-Christians with passages like:
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
It took me decades to see that this sermon and the millions of hellfire sermons it spawned are unutterably alien to the spirit of Jesus. In a future Meditation, I’ll dwell on the subject of Hell. For now, it’s enough to note that I grew up in this Reformation tradition; the tradition of theologians like Edwards and Calvin, and also of writers like Donne and C.S. Lewis. The tension within this tradition is what this series is all about.
I’m journeying back into my history, to those watershed occasions where I had to make sense of what I believed by choosing a way of thinking about the world and the God that I believed in. These occasions are divergent, hence the title - my choices often set me on a path, not of spiritual and emotional health, but a way of living that ultimately wreaked havoc in my personal life.
Speaking of these paths, a couple of years ago, when I was still on Instagram, I was driving across the country. During a stretch that took me through land where my kin came from, I posted the following:
Travel Journal: The Land of My Ancestors
500 miles through Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas today. No audiobooks. No voices. Just instrumental music and watching the plains go by and the horizons recede.
Our souls are fed from elusive origins: A copse outlined by clouds. The brilliant green on green of fields lit by the preternatural glow of the setting sun.
I imagine this campestral call is akin to the child, born of mariners, who sees in the joining of sky and sea something more than a post for Instagram.
The mystics have truly told us that the Other beckons to us in the liminal spaces of time and place. And perhaps this is more than just an eternal fantasy. Perhaps this is food for Now, food for souls who look beyond the pain of the everyday and choose to define meaning and purpose in the serendipitous meeting of beauty and time.
Perhaps in these places and spaces we are called to our best selves by They who know us.
This series, these Devotions, are my journey back to the elusive origins of my journey. I am hoping that in this journey much that has been confusing will be clarified. If my wonderings and wanderings into my past find resonance with you, that would be an unlooked-for boon.
Nevertheless, the havoc and destruction have been very real, and whatever redemption may be found in these musings, I don’t want to assume that the fault lies all on the side of my training and tradition; I am culpable; I made choices. There are many wise, good, and loving people who have thrived within the structures of traditional Christianity. They continue to inspire me, even as I seek to resolve what my path of faith needs to be.
If you, like me, have many regrets yet hold to a faith in a good God, in a benevolent Universe where all will ultimately be healed, I invite you to join me on this journey of pain, confusion, and love, where I have found hope and peace even as troubling questions remain unanswered.
I am calling this a series of Devotions, not simply as an homage to Donne, but because at my core, I believe. I am a man of faith, and while my devotion is to a God who meets me in nature, in yoga, and in the most quotidian moments, I find my center and the great peace of these later years in the devotion and gratitude I feel toward a God of benevolence, a God who invites me–invites all of us–to a relationship of love and healing.
Grace and peace to you, to me, to every living thing.