It’s Ironic Isn’t It?

 I have been reading The Great Code by Northrop Frye, the eminent literary Critic.   The subtitle of the book is, The Bible and Literature.  The Great Code does just what the title promises and gives us a Code or key to a deeper understanding of the Bible and unfolds myth and metaphor as a way to unlock meaning woven into the texts that lie in its pages. 

There are many parts of the book which had a profound impact on me.  However, one passage that resonated particularly with me in the book is found on page 73, “The Bible’s vision of misery is ironic rather than tragic.”   This book is not light reading but is it most worthwhile delving into the depths of Frye’s approach to the Bible.  This phrase was up there with the most puzzling.  I wany to try and unpack this statement and explore what is behind this statement.

The first thing I became aware of in considering this is that I was not completely sure what irony actually is.  One thing I could be sure of is that it wasn’t “rain on your wedding day” as claimed by Alanis Morrisette in her breakthrough hit, Ironic.  Here’s a link if you want to be reminded about the song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tqW-Gno2k.

Just because it rains on your wedding day doesn’t make the occasion or the experience ironic.  One clear definition of irony is, “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.”  There is often a humorous result.  Some examples of irony in literature which I fund on-line include:

·         In the[GL1]  final act of Romeo and Juliette, Shakespeare employs dramatic irony to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.  Friar Laurence sends a messenger to tell Romeo about Juliet’s plan to drug herself into deathlike coma. We watch in horror as the messenger fails to deliver this vital piece of information. And though we know that Juliet is not really dead, we see Romeo poison himself because he cannot live without her.

·         Johnathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a classic example of verbal irony. He begins seemingly in earnest, discussing the sad state of destitute children.   whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. Seems reasonable enough. But things take a very ironic turn.  I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.  Is Swift sincerely proposing that we eat children? No, but he has indeed inverted our expectations and written a wonderfully ironic essay which critiqued the situation in Ireland.

There is no humor in the first example but there is very dark humor in the second so we can see that humor Is not an essential component of irony.  However, to turn back to Frye’s statement, can the misery in the Bible be seen as ironic?  In his preliminary discussion of this, Frye notes that literature (remember Frye is treating the Bible as literature), has two great organizing patterns, comedy and tragedy.  Comedy does not relate to humor but, rather, is the restoration of the natural order i.e., a happy ending.  Tragedy does the opposite; toward a fulfillment of the saying, “no man is happy until he is dead” to use Frye’s example.  Frye notes:

To see misery as tragic, as a destroyed and perverted form of greatness and splendor, is a primary achievement of Geek literature.  The Bible’s vision of misery is ironic rather than tragic, but the same dialectical separation of the two worlds is quite strongly marked. 

Frye goes on to explain the difference between God’s time and our time as God declares in Isaiah, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

I believe that Frye is stating that misery (tragedy) in the Bible is ironic because in God’s time all will be restored.  There may be events that are tragic from our perspective but in God’s time, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)   

May you be blessed with a portion of irony and may all be well on your journey.

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 [GL1]

What is Biblical Truth

Yesterday I was strolling around the internet and came upon an interview with Richard Dawkins.  For those of you who don’t know Dawkins, he is a big name in the religion debunking business and what I could call the cult of atheism in popular social media today.  The title of the interview, which says a lot about Dawkins, is Outgrowing God: Richard Dawkins in Conversation and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Sf2eNVWVs.

Now from my observation of Dawkins, his approach is to set up straw dogs of fundamentalist religious beliefs so that he can make a splash of knocking them down.  In this case, Dawkins was describing a discussion two people were having about the creation story in Genesis and disagreeing about whether Adam and Eve were tempted by an apple or a fig.  Dawkins dismissed this out of hand and stated his concern was that the Garden of Eden story never happened implying that the details of the story didn’t matter.

As it happened, this was a great example of what I was preaching about yesterday at St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Souris PEI.  Dawkins uses the facts of the biblical account as a straw dog to try and destroy people’s belief in God.  The Gospel Reading for the day was the account in Mark of Jesus feeding 4000 men with a few loaves of bread and a few small fish.  I believe that when dealing with miracle accounts in the bible, it is not constructive to engage in issues of facts i.e., did the events in the biblical account happen the way they are recorded.  Rather, I think that we can find common ground in why these accounts - these stories are part of our scriptural heritage.  In other words, what is the message in these stories that are important and necessary for our understanding of who Jesus is and how God works in the lives of the people in the bible and in our lives today.

St. Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians this way of understanding those things which God gives us including an approach to scripture, “Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually.”  If we approach the accounts of miracles spiritually – as a gift of God’s Spirit we can begin to understand what these miracle stories mean for us.

With that let us see what the spiritual message is for us in this account of the feeding of the multitude.  The account tells us that Jesus began with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.  There is not a lot to work with in in terms of food for such a large number of people.  However, with this beginning, they are fed – we can assume they were filled to the point of their appetites were probably more than satisfied.   In fact, there was more than what they had to start with.  From seven loaves and a few fish they ended up with seven baskets of leftovers – I wonder who got to take some of that home?  We can look at the number seven and if we investigate this, we find that seven is a number which signifies perfection or completion.  There is the seven days of creation and the seven seals in the book of Revelation for example.  We could say from this that the followers of Jesus were completely fed with spiritual food.  Those followers and by implication, we are offered by Jesus, food for our souls which will completely satisfy us.

This is reminiscent of the account in the Gospel of John in which Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well:

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus gives to that Samaritan woman and to the four thousand people gathered to hear him the bread of life and the water of life.  If we eat that bread and drink that water we will be fed spiritually.  Our spirit will never again be thirsty in a dry and barren land and will never be spiritually hungry.  Therefore, let us follow Jesus for he offers us the bread of life to eat and he offers us the water of eternal life to drink.

May you be blessed to receive the bread of life to eat and he offers us the water of eternal life to drink on your journey.

Change for Good or Ill or Both

Those who know me are probably aware that I don’t necessarily embrace the new with open arms.  Being an Anglican at heart, if not by birth, I appreciate the value of the tradition that has enriched our lives.  The three pillars of Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. 

There is the joke about change and Anglicans: how many Anglicans does it take to change a lightbulb?  We don’t change, we’re Anglicans.  That joke, perhaps unintentionally, illuminates (pun intended) the problem with this approach.  Perhaps it would be better to say challenge rather than problem.  Sometimes change can be a good thing and sometimes it is even necessary.  If we didn’t have the development of the COVID-19 vaccine we would be in deep do-do to use a technical term. 

 

Change for change sake, on the other hand, can turn its back on much that is valuable.  This is as true in religious matters as it is in secular matters.  Being at our cottage in Prince Edward Island, our religious life is emersed in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) as opposed to the updated service book, the Book of Alternative Services (BAS) which is not that new now being introduced to the Canadian Anglican Church in 1985.  I presided at a service on Sunday using the BCP liturgy and was reminded about the strengths and weaknesses of the that liturgy.  As is often the case when the pendulum of change swings, it goes perhaps too far along the arc.  It will be interesting to see where it lands when a new prayer book is brought to life in the future.  In any case, it is the tension that perhaps is inevitable when change rears it (I won’t say ugly) head.  However, sometimes it can be divinely intended tension to borrow a phrase. 

 

I was reminded last week that sometimes change can produce wonderful results.  One of the Daily Meditations of Richard Rohr which arrive in my inbox daily focused on the adaptation or rewriting of the Lord’s Prayer by the New Zealand Anglican Church.  I was introduced to this more than 10 years ago at a Summer Dream Conference of the Haden Institute held in North Carolina.  I was deeply moved when I heard it and have appreciated beauty and spirit filed language ever since then.  Some traditionalists might object with changing the words of a prayer of Jesus but it is good to remember that Jesus did not speak English - the Queen’s or otherwise – and translations always change the original meaning to a greater or lesser extent.  There are also two versions of the Prayer on the bible – one in Matthew and one in Luke - so even the Gospel writers couldn’t get a definitive version. 

 

Rohr’s Daily Meditation noted that the New Zealand version honours and reflects the Maori culture which makes it very appropriate in this time of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.  Below is the excerpt from Daily Meditation which included the version of the Lord’s Prayer: 

 

We invite you to pray this modern version of the prayer of Jesus from the Anglican Church of New Zealand, which both honors and reflects indigenous Maori culture.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples
        of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
        sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
       now and for ever. Amen.

 

May you be blessed with the Divinely Intended Tension of change on your journey.

What Time is it Anyway?

Yesterday, I commented to Lorna that it seemed we have been at the cottage for a lot longer than the three weeks we have been here.  She agreed with me which is nice because that doesn’t always happen.  In some ways, our time here has been timeless.  It always does to some extent but it seems more so this year perhaps because most of this time has been in quarantine and focussed around getting tested for COVID and getting our second shot which happened last week.  There has been a sense that one day flows into the next without too much to differentiate one day from the other.  In any case, I want to be clear that it has been a very pleasant time as it always is here at our Island home.

That experience of timeless time does raise a question for me about time and our focus on time in our culture today.  Our culture is very much ruled by time and time is to a greater or lesser extent our master.  We are used to measuring our days by what we have scheduled which, of course, is governed by time to a great extent.  This is less so when we are retired – our schedules are more flexible but there are still the surprizing number of activities which we participate in – numerous Zoom events which are scheduled to begin at a particular time – meeting and lectures and workshops and classes.  Zoom seems to have become pervasive in our lives along with the occasional Skype meeting. 

Another aspect of time is its flexible nature.  I’m sure that you are aware of how time can seem to slow down or speed up.  Sometimes a few minutes seem an eternity and sometimes an hour or more can seem to go by in the flash of an eye.  I have said before and will say it again that the longest two minutes in my life has been the two minutes of silence in a Remembrance Day Service.  This, of course, has nothing to do with it not being significant – just the opposite.  Every second of that silence holds deep significance. 

Exploring the issue of timelessness further, when we move from time to timelessness, we are entering the area of God’s time versus our time.  In timelessness we can speak of eternity.  Eternity does not mean a long time.  Eternity is beyond time – it is a state in which time does not exist.  This is something which is difficult for most of us to grasp.  We are like fish swimming in the water of linear time.  Our lives are measured by time which passes – things begin and end.  We wake up in the morning and check what time it is if we are fortunate enough not to be woken up by an alarm clock.  We begin an activity at a particular time and end it after the passage of time.  Time flows on and there seems to be no stopping it.  As the Joni Mitchell song says, “it won't be long now, till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”  

When we move into timelessness and eternity we are moving from our time to God’s time.  I have been listening to recordings of Northrop Frye’s lectures on the Bible and Literature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Swyk_ZRy8.  He notes that the creation story in Genesis did not happen in linear time, it happens in God's time.  In effect it is a timeless event which is happening all the time. 

As Frye notes, the Bible speaks of time in two different ways; time is either Kairos or Chronos.  Simply put, Chronos is measurable time which has a beginning and an end.  Kairos, on the other hand, means an opportune time, a moment or a season such as harvest time.  Paul uses Kairos in the passage from Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  

If you have ever been caught in a moment when time seemed to stop or disappear, you have moved from Chronos to Kairos.  We need to be aware of when we want things to happen on our schedule, in Chronos and become aware that they sometimes happen in Kairos.  It is a reminder that as much as we like to believe it, we don’t often set the agenda.  That can be frustrating but it can also be liberating.

May you be blessed on your journey to experience it In Kairos and well as Chronos.