Sorry, Dale. I’m swamped on original reading right. I’m asking you to look again at something fresh in your and short.
How long is this piece you linked here, and how is it related to Lewis’s poem,please?
I don’t know what either of those mean.
270 words, ±?
‘Request’ in the title might indicate it is about prayer.
This reminds me of a semi-retired nun who had a small cottage overlooking the beach, who would spend most of her time praying for all the people she saw through her window. She was found still holding a crucifix, seated at the small table she spent her prayer time at, and various people who knew her wondered if she had even noticed when her mortal body gave up but instead had just kept praying.
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And those words help us better understand who we are taking to, but cannot completely, because we simply cannot fathom God in His entirety. Every attempt fails in itself.
Praise God that he graciously translates our meaning for us into what we can’t comprehend ourselves.
Precisely.
Randy, I love this. My background teaches that there’s a sharp delineation between consciousness in heaven of what is happening on earth. I think there’s biblical reason to question that, or at least say, “We really can’t know.” But if they do know in heaven what’s going on here, Lord, hear their prayers!
Yeah. Exactly. At least it should.
Oh, yes. Thanks for this, Randy. And like a loving parent, he puts up with all our misspeaking and faulty comprehension, wrong ideas, etc. He doesn’t hold those against us, but translates our faulty thoughts behind our inadequate words into what they should be.
Like a burning coal to the our words in our minds.
Merv, this is spot on!
Precisely, Randy. Yes.
Thank you for this example, Randy.
Thanks for this humbling reminder.
Motivator.
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Or a lifetime thinking about words. Don’t forget that Lewis’ profession was philology, the study of words and meaning, and that he was the sort to think about his own words as he was choosing and using them.
Bravo! [Quoted in its entirety because I just got blocked from giving any more up-votes today.]
I recall hearing once from a guest lecturer that the ancient Hebrew term אָב didn’t just mean the male biological parent, it implied a warrior plus legal obligations primarily to offspring but also to all members of a household right down to the least slave (the ancient letters are actually a pictogram for “ox” plus “house”; applied to a man “ox” indicated strength, and a house in terms of people was the entire household, so the two letters together indicated “the strength of the household”). And in terms of legal obligations, the father was responsible for everything that any member of the household did. In an ancient culture, household laws covered all sorts of things that could weaken the tribe or nation, so we get things such as stoning a rebellious son to death – something that in our domestic-oriented eyes is just bizarre, but when it is considered that a son was supposed to be a warrior under the command of his father this has to be viewed as not domestic but military discipline.
Yet fathers today, when their sons go bad, tend to react the same way that Adam did in the Garden: passing the blame!
While working in my yard today I realized that my understanding of the word “father” was skewed because my dad almost never showed emotion, and the relationship was more of fear than anything else. I think I understand God as father better due to having had a service dog and now training a new one; I refused to consider myself to be his dad and instead went with “papa” (thanks to a movie I’ve mostly forgotten except that it involved a Mafia guy and an orphan, and the orphan called the Mafia guy "papa – while the Mafia guy called the orphan “bambino” and undertook to train him and provide for every need) and being first Bammer’s and now Knox’s “papa” has finally put some caring into my concept of “father”.
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I read through the posts after the most recent post of Lewis’s poem. The earlier post was in the TEA thread from last summer, and I posted it after finding a reference to it in Penner’s book (I think page 94).
Part One – Vocab and Theory
VOCAB: (it really helps to know what this means):
Pheidian (having to do with Phedias
(flourished c. 490–430 BCE), Athenian sculptor, the artistic director of the construction of the Parthenon, who created its most important religious images and supervised and probably designed its overall sculptural decoration. It is said of Phidias that he alone had seen the exact image of the gods and that he revealed it to man. He established forever general conceptions of Zeus and Athena.
THEORY
Lewis makes use of the concept of “semiotics,” which is no surprise for an academic in literature to do.
In essence, semiotics is the study of “signs” and of anything that stands for or represents something else.
from: Semiotic Theory – Theoretical Models for Teaching and Research
A visual aid:
In the image we see the parts of the sign, the signified and the signifier. But we still don’t see the actual dog, only representations of the dog. If we begin to contrast those with an actual dog, even the same type in the picture, we will begin to see how far short the picture falls from the thing (dog) itself.
In this poem, Lewis is considering the problem of praying based on our limited and corrupted knowledge and understanding (signified) of God being what we express in inadequate words (signifier). Because we do not experience the immediate (unmediated) presence of God, and couldn’t tolerate or comprehend it, if we could, everything we know or understand about God is different from what God is in himself.
The best we can get to, is never accurate. Is something other than the original.
How do we refer to someone else’s concept of God that falls short of the real thing?
Lewis takes the problem seriously and literally here in the form of a footnote to append to all prayers, which includes a prayer itself.
Part Two – The Poem
If the reader recognizes Lewis’s problem of imperfect concept of God, corrupted by all sorts of things in life, as well as human inarticulateness, then God’s part or action in this poem is particularly important.
What does God do here to aid the speaker?
(1) Knows to whom the speaker bows
(9 - 10) God, in majestic mercy diverts our unskillfully aimed arrows (prayers) toward Himself.
And what does the speaker ask God to do?
(13) Don’t take the literal sense of our words which reflect faulty concepts of him
(14) Translate our limping metaphors (into what they should be and mean).
Many people probably know what “2CV” means (2nd Commandment Violation). Lewis is talking about that. Even if it’s inadvertent, if God took the literal sense of our prayers, even prayers straight from the Bible, we don’t know and understand God rightly, adequately. Without His help in our prayers, we couldn’t even pray without blaspheming.
And God answers our prayers in this way:
(Someone quoted this earlier, but I can’t find it now.)
Romans 8
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because[a] the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Which makes this possible:
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The difference is that while Jesus used human language when He prayed, He knew what the actuality was behind the insufficient words – while we don’t (yet).
So long as we recognize that if we’re going to preach via prayer, the first and foremost audience of our preaching must be ourselves, to remind ourselves of just Who it is we’re talking to! I’d say it’s very much a beam & splinter situation: never preach anything in a prayer unless you have neither beam nor speck in your behavior related to what you’re preaching!
Interestingly the ancient church included very specific “preaching” in prayer, aimed at declaring Who God is by addressing Him with some of His attributes relevant to our petition. This links back to the Old Testament memorial prayer where the petitioner “reminds” God of Who He is and one that basis asks God to remember who we are in terms of that.
The writer to the Hebrews speaks of there being just one church and we are all together part of it regardless of where we are or on which side of death we stand, so I suspect that they know “what’s gong on here” quite well.
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It’s a cool chapter in its entirety, but a good one one on prayer. I was going to quote that as well, and a bit more, so I will:
(In case someone inclined to universalism pulls that last verse out of context, read the whole chapter, noting verse 33.)
Exactly.
Just what Lewis was getting at.
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A couple of quotes from “Cry, the Beloved Country” struck me again:
“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country
“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.”
― Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
Sometimes we see our own troubles in a new light by reading the poets of other countries. We share them, and learn anew how to approach them in our own land.
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Just a bit off the beaten path, but does anyone have a short story they particularly recommend? In high school I read “Shaving,” by Leslie Norris; and “Sunrise On the Veld,” by Doris Lessing–and their poetry (concise, succinct prose) sticks with me, much like “Cry, the Beloved Country.”
Thanks.
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I’m not much of a short story fan, but was introduced to the genre in college and discovered how much fun it is to write literary analysis. I appreciated those classes. The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky is one that I remember first getting into and discovering that I actually had something interesting to write about a story. I don’t remember the story now, but I’d like to reread it and see if I still have what I wrote.
By the way, I started listening to Cry, the Beloved Country and found it eye opening and lovely, but the audio format didn’t work with the way the text is written. That’s one that I would have to follow along with the text while listening.
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Not putting it forward as any great recommendation, but I do remember enjoying the story by Asimov titled “The Feeling of Power” which was a futuristic story set in an era when machines did all computations and humans had forgotten how. It has an interesting plot twist, even if it all would be considered quaint and ‘clunky’ by today’s writer and plot standards.
As is true of all good fiction, including science fiction, it is at heart a critique of society and our values.
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I wonder if that’s the one my dad always used to quote when we struggled with math! He told of a story where everyone forgot how to add, subtract, divide and multiply, and we relied on calculators all the time (which went kaput)!
I’ll have to look that one up. I’ve been trying to use that for my kids, and not knowing the origin, my persuasiveness has been muted.
Thanks!
I like this observation. Thanks!
I’m trying to remember the parts I loved of the short stories. “Veld” reminds me of the plains in West Africa where I grew up, though it was probably drier where I lived. The exultation of walking in the cool morning, and Lessing’s taut, concise descriptions, evoked just enough of the colors and openness to stimulate my imagination. The moral comes that not only are we not as strong as we think we are, but if we are not careful, we are just as horrible as the pitiless, dangerous nature around us. One phrase, as he leapt on the floor and exited the house, “And it was cold, cold…” is onomatopoeic, reminding me of how a boy reacts to putting bare feet on the cold ground, or in a cold pool, gathering his thoughts around him to protect himself. Here is a short description, but I can’t find a copy for free, unfortunately.
In “Shaving,” a boy, at the head of his football team, realizes that the praise of his friends matters not at all compared with comforting his weak, dying father by shaving him. The pitiful contrast of the strong, young man, caring for a loving father who can not even shave himself, by cradling his head under his arm, evokes a desire to look for what is most important in life.
I learned that Leslie Norris mostly wrote poetry. The entire short story is here
Barry cradled his father’s head in the crook of his left arm, so that the man could tilt back his
head, exposing the throat. He brushed fresh lather under the chin and into the hollows alongside the
stretched tendons. His father’s throat was fleshless and vulnerable, his head was a hard weight on the
boy’s arm. Barry was filled with unreasoning protective love. He lifted the razor and began to shave.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “Not at all. Not about anything.”
He held his father in the bend of his strong arm and they looked at each other. Their heads were
very close.
“How old are you?” his father said.
“Seventeen,” Barry said. “Near enough seventeen.”
“You’re young,” his father said, “to have this happen.”
“Not too young,” Barry said. “I’m bigger than most men.”
“I think you are,” his father said.
I hope you can enjoy these stories sometime–especially the last one.
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Randy, how about a little Poe? In our time, I think “The Ballon Hoax” and “The unparallelled Adventure of Hans Pfall” are appropriate.
“I read/saw/heard it in my favorite newspaper/on my favorite news site/from a very reliable source.” It must be true.
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What happens when I can’t sleep … for better or worse, you are subjected to my attempts at a poem that I’ll self-publish here. Consider this a rough draft, shared here first. Honest feedback and suggestions welcomed.
The Hapless Herald (or alternate title: “So, how’s that workin out for ya?”)
The pious noticed drums and beat and staunchly disapproved.
Let the devil have the music – we don’t join that groove.
And so he took it, yes he did; and much was made for him.
“Remind me how that werked fer y’all?” our herald later mused.
The pious read all ‘bout the world, and marshaled chapter and verse.
We see the devil in this place, this ain’t our universe.
And so he took it, yes he did; his playground it became.
Years gone we hear “how’s that werked out?” - the question’s still the same.
The pious felt the tug of flesh; desires to be sated.
The devil must be in that too, already desecrated.
And so he took it, yes he did; and we just let him be.
We age and ache and dimly hear: “how’d that work out fer ye?”
The pious heard all ‘bout the mind; and perils of education.
Science! It’s the devil’s too – We’re Jerusalem. Not Athens!
The hapless herald disturbs our slumber; prods us still again,
and to our corner the echo comes; as he repeats the question.
Then the pious man was asked, “Now what about yer soul?”
He looked. And looked again.
I know I got it somewhere!
Just gimme a moment – I’ll find it – yes – and afterwards I’ll answer.
And the moment became eternity.
-Merv Bitikofer 2023
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Merv,
I find it incredibly gutsy when anyone is willing to put their creative writing out in public, that is, to publish it.
Bravo!
I like the way you are handling the subject.
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