Not being Berry, I can only answer as Kendel-who-is-new-to-Berry. A large part of my connection with this poem is that Berry has stripped down the mechanisms of shame that people use on each other. Whew! I was reading Berry describe my own experience…I suspect it’s universal.
Other people use mockery and humiliation to manipulate us. And it works, because *we want “forgiveness,” in this case, their good opinion. And that’s the key, I think. The forgiveness we think we seek really isn’t forgiveness at all. We seek their good opinion, and that is the trap.
“There is now power against them,” because WE have given them all the power they need over us.
“Candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity,” takes practice, and perparation, (“Be ready.”) Know your own mind without reference to someone else’s opinion of you. Remember why you think what you do. It’s not ungrounded.
And thinking about @Dale ’s and @heymike3’s responses to this poem, I will point out what a contrast we see in how God does really forgive us. Although we really don’t deserve his good opinion, he has done all the work we need and gives us assurance after assurance after assurance of his love and forgiveness. He tells us NOT to be afraid. He tells us that he has violently killed our shame. He tells us NOT to mourn endlessly over our sin, but that the joy (of our forgiveness in him) is our strength.
These two scenerios are so vastly different. The contrast can help us see more clearly how we confuse ourselves and put power in the hands of the merciless.
That’s so good. And if I didn’t know the rest of the story, I’d suspect that a great reversal is in the not too distant future.
Ed Welch is wonderful in his book Shame Interrupted. The word didn’t exist in my vocabulary until a few years ago. Right around the time I found his book, or because of it (I can’t recall), I learned the meaning of the word in my life.
Too true. Where my particular reaction was aimed (and knowing something of what Berry thinks on this front), I was reading this poem as a response against the traditional Christian approach to evangelism: First convince the person what a desperately needed sinner they are, after which they can now be receptive to your message of deliverance.
Don’t get me wrong here - I am and remain a Berry admirer; and even on this front I trust Berry’s reactive instincts against the hypocrisy he sees. While this particular offering (thanks for sharing it - I don’t recall ever having seen this!) is spot on toward the goodness of God’s creation and positive reassurance to me about who I am, I nonetheless also have sober reflections - especially as I get older, about how I’ve hurt other people, and how I too often continue to do and say stuff that will have bad repercussions on someone else, or not do things I ought when I ought. Evil is a real thing, meaning that sin is real too. To me, those reflections are all part of a necessary reality that will need to be accounted for - and I say that not as a Calvinist trying to press on others universal doctrines of total depravity and such (which may also have been what stimulated some of Berry’s negative reaction to now-traditional Christianities). But the fact that I can think this of myself, means that I can entertain the same possibility about others too, in imagining that I’m not all that unique. I just don’t think it’s my job to convince somebody else how much they need something. If or when they become hungry - that is when they will earnestly seek the nourishment that can satisfy. How dare I try to artificially insert dissatisfaction into their lives, just as profanely as a corporate advertiser needing to sell their product! So I’m with Berry on that.
And yet, I feel Berry’s critical gaze back at me in these words too, since I have adhered to something of orthodoxy, and I am willing to read Paul more charitably than perhaps Berry was willing. My sense is that he could never quite forgive Paul for turning Christianity into a “this world is not my home” religion that, so convinced of the imminent end of things, some became willing to abandon all sense of place here in the present creation in favor of a hoped for place in some far-away heaven. And Berry is all about rootedness in place. Two thousand years later - this world still plodding on - it has long seemed clear that it is Berry’s attitude that is vindicated here; and even Paul can be read in these more charitable lights if one wishes. For somebody who was convinced of Christ’s imminent return, even with that Paul certainly doesn’t advocate for complete abandon of any worldly considerations. So in that sense - I still hold out hope for organized religion where perhaps Berry (not without justification) sees despair on that particular front. We still live in hope of a new (redeemed) creation - a putting on of the imperishable. But that hope is not divorced from our care for our neighbors, including our cares and attention to the blessings God has already given us here and now.
You know something happens when you remove the lens of inerrancy and just read Paul as an early Christian who had a remarkable walk with God… for me his words were precious, and I’m willing to allow for others to have a different experience.
His words are precious to me too. Even the ones where he effectively says that he’s got opinions, just like everybody else, and that not everything he’s saying need be considered as “a command from the Lord.”
Since I’m not an infallible reader, whatever notions of “inerrancy” moderns typically dream up are useless to me anyway. It’s like telling me how important it is that the water issuing from a tap is 100% pure - not a single molecule of contaminant anywhere in it. I glance down at the dirty cup I’m about to receive that water into before I can drink any of it, and shrug. Sure - it it makes you feel better to think that. Meanwhile, I do need water! Fill my cup, please!
As a single Christian awhile back, single for nearly 10 years as a believer, I often wrestled with Paul’s instructions for singleness. And I feel a real sadness for single believers who do not see the crisis or distress the Corinthians faced as being particular to them. In a way we would also be wise to consider, but it is such that in one verse Paul can say widows should not remarry, and in another he says widows should remarry.
Mr Berry is right. Cherish what light you have and never trust those who claim only they have it. These are only zombies who were too scared to hold onto their light, fell to their knees and now pursue anyone who dares to walk by the light they’d been given rather than joining them in searching out to squelch any light that does not come through self abnegation. Thanks Kendel.
Thanks, Merv for such a rich and thoughtful reply. I am anxious to get to know Berry better. @jpm included a link to it up in post 508 in his reference to Russell Moore’s newsletter. I followed up on that link.
This poem certainly has wide application, even just between the two of us, and I notice other replies I haven’t read yet.
Mmmm hmmm.
Our participation in evil can’t be ignored. It’s a real thing that we have to deal with, both the past part that is fixed and the future part we hope to do differently. I’m confident there are other poems about that. And I look forward to the wisdom they bring regarding the matter.
My feel in this poem, however, is that Berry is talking about a different kind of shame that is not related to genuine guilt. One we can combat with candor and inward clarity.
Although those are both necessary in dealing with genuine guilt as well. And facing that kind of guilt candidly and with clarity takes enormous courage. Then wisdom in understanding what to do.
Yeah. I’ll add the hard-core Arminian church I started out in as a little kid. “Sinners in Hands of an Angry God” seemed sort of light-weight compare to sermons and lessons I’d heard at that church, where you never had any real assurance at all. I know the bristling reaction to that kind of message. The simultaneous crush and rebellion in the heart.
This is an interesting time for me. My education is entirely secular, start to finish. I value it deeply. It’s forced on me questions, ideas, knowledge and people that I couldn’t deny and had to deal with–it forced change on me. [One either changes or has turn up talk-radio a lot louder. I think I was in some classes with people who did that. I ended up turning it off…entirely.]
But I’ve never experienced an analogous situation with Christianity, where one is in contact with many variations in thought, tradition, assumptions and conclusions as I am now. There’s a lot to learn to understand. Things I brought from secular experience always made me a bit of an oddball in church, but I’ve nearly always been around Christians with mostly the same basic (orthodox) understandings as mine.
So, I will probably become more aware of Berry’s critical gaze as I read more. I’m aware of many critical gazes. The variety is huge (virtual and actual). I am practicing not worrying about the good opinions of others, though. Because that is no good reason for agreement or belief. It doesn’t lead to faith. It only leads to control.
Merv, you’re written so much worthy of discussion and thought. Normally, I spend quite a bit of time with thoughtful posts from around the forum, reading and chewing and rereading. This will be another one of them. Thanks.
You may be quite right about that. It’s probably more revealing about me than about Berry that my first inclination on reading it was to feel defensive on behalf of historical, institutional Christianity.
…and your reading, I think, sees the deeper beauty in it.
Mark, thank you!
Reading your and Merv’s (@Mervin_Bitikofer) replies, I think I had a much different image in my mind, related to this line above. Mine comes from spending time with book-hoarding friends and work in libraries, particularly my work for 20 years as church librarian, well, and also histories related to book banning, gathering and burning.
And now I am sure I’ve read the line unorthodoxly.
When grad students I knew visited each other, there were always loads of books around. And while we waited for the food to come out, or someone else to arrive, we combed each other’s bookshelves and book stacks to get a feel for what the other treasured enough to aspire to read or had read. We saw our book collections as a reflection of ourselves and themselves. (Well, I still do.)
Working in my former church’s library for 21 years and leading the collection development (and weeding) for at least 15, that library largely reflects what I value in theology and Christian ideas–with restraint. I’ve often wondered, if people used the library more, particularly the non-fiction section, would they see it as I did (a place where any lay-person could get a decent basic seminary education for free), or a place where there were too many challenges to THE faith (and believe me I stuck very closely to the doctrinal statement – well except on Communion and Eschatology, but the best eschatology book was routed out by a deacon’s wife who was volunteering). How many pages could I be confronted with: “I can’t believe you put this in the church library! How could you!?”
Sometimes one is condemned for the ideas one engages with or holds (or doesn’t engage with or hold or know about) as someone grabs a hated volume, opens the page, and confronts one with it (maybe even metaphorically). “Is this what you really think? How could you? How could you be so ________?! …”
Or a “page” from our own “history”. “Look what you’ve done! I never would have expected this of YOU.” or “Well, my lowest expectations have been met here today.” or any number of similar expressions of shame.
Yep, I have a lot of books I thought of donating to our vestigial library, but wonder what would happen if the wrong (right?) people read them. Perhaps the poem should give me courage to do so.
I’m not familiar with the term “vestigial library”. Is that your church library?
If it is, please, have mercy on the volunteers. Find out who is in charge and how many books they can deal with, what their policies are for donations.
As a church librarian I have had to deal brutally with mass book-shelf-clean-outs. There is not enough time in the world for it. Much just had to go.
Some places to donate books, if you need recipients (but please make sure to check on the rules/guidelines for donations):
Salvation Army, Good Will
Jail ministries (in our area I have worked with Forgotten Man Ministries. If you call your county jail, they will surely be able to help connect you with someone. Make sure to stick carefully to the rules, or the items will just be trash. All books had to be paperbacks for obvious reasons. They liked discards from the church, because they weren’t violent or porn. Every place probably has different rules, though.)
Local public libraries Better World Books
Biologists (or medical people) use the term to refer to organs that are evolutionarily residual from past useful organs (like the small leg bones still found in whales) that are no longer useful for that function, and in some cases it seems (presumably) maybe not useful for much anything at all - though that becomes one of the creationist hot buttons to push on as you might guess. At least, like your appendix, whatever it might do for you, it must not be all that essential since we can obviously live fulfilled lives without them.
In other words … Phil’s Church’s library is probably suffering the same neglect as I imagine all our church libraries are: Underuse.
[@jpm, if you have any books you might not want to be seen with, maybe your church library is just the place for them: where they’ll never be seen by anyone again!]
[This is all reminiscent of Philip Gulley admitting that he would keep his progressive Christianity magazines tucked away under his mattress where his mother wouldn’t see them.]
In general the church does a lousy job understanding singles as normal and fully-functioning parts of the Body of Christ. It’s heartless to singles and limiting to the church. Those few verses in Corinthians should not be confusing, but we choose to use them as ridiculous excuses for treating singles as some other category or deficient. And then we married folks in the church try to make stupid pronouncements about how singles should be.
Ugh!
Poetry lends itself to wide varieties of reception. It can be fruitful to talk about it and find out what other people are thinking, as I do from you and the crew around here. Thank you for putting the time and energy into explaining what you saw in it. I find your comments valuable.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1
It’s kind of fun to have the few “way out there” titles I have hidden in plain view (rather than under the mattress) with the rest of the books. I don’t think anyone has noticed. I guess we need to widening the hospitality net! Especially now that we’re feeling a bit more comfortable having people in the house.
(Which also means I need to start cleaning it now and again.)
I’ve made some younger married folks (ok, the husbands in particular) really mad in Sunday school discussions a few years back, when our class was working through 1 Cor. I talked about the advantages I had as a young single being able to nimbly change direction, precisely because I was unattached. Moves, some overseas and back, took place with two suitcases or a tiny moving van. I had one person whose paperwork and passports and doctors and etc I was responsible for. As a married woman with no kids, I had different responsibilities and another person to consider (who also had another person to consider). Years later, when we added kids to the mix, we were even less nimble. There were other advantages, but nimbleness was not one of them.
One particular young (immature) husband really took offense at my comments, assuming that any comparison was equivalent to a poor evaluation of marriage–what did he think I was saying about my own marriage?!. He is the type that is deeply invested in what feels to me like the Cult of Traditional Family and is unable to see the value in a variety of arrangements of human households (traditional family, traditional single, singles in a housing co-op/shared house (I don’t have a good English word for this), singles living within the household of non-relatives, etc.) or some other arrangement that treats singles as mature, functioning adults.
The verses you referenced were part of the whole discussion. I honestly found it bizarre and disappointing to hear from anyone in the church.