Love: 1 Corinthians 13

    As verger of St Stephen's Anglican Church, Newtown, I attended innumerable weddings. The Reverend Don Meadows and I made a good team.  While he welcomed, reassured, celebrated and preached, I parked cars, secured slipping veils, took flower-girls to the toilet, retied sashes, sorted out spats between mothers-in-law, distracted the odd drunk from disrupting the service, kept the neighbourhood kids quiet and played the carillon.

    Don had just one marriage sermon. He had refined it over the years and used it on every occasion, except when a member of his own congregation was getting married.  He preached it, at different degrees of complexity and with different inserted references to couples ranging from members of the law fraternity to a couple who met at a workshop for the intellectually disabled.  The sermon sought to encapsulate the Love of God in one easy and memorable lesson.

The personification of Charity and other Virtues
drew on the Classical tradition of the Muses.

    Of all the various wedding experiences that I had over the years, I most treasure an occasion when I heard the passage on Faith, Hope and Love from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, read superbly.  I was asked, before the service, to look out for the woman who was reading, because she was running rather late.  She was an actress, and they had asked her specially, because they were sure she would do it well. The Rector, I believe, had advised on a suitable passage of scripture.  

    The actress arrived in time, and when she stepped up to the lectern and smiled graciously, it was clear that something special was about to happen, but the impact of it upon the verger was unprecedented. This woman read St Paul's letter as if it was addressed to her personally, as if she had just received it from far away, opened it and was devouring it eagerly.  She read with growing excitement, with discernible joy, savouring each precious phrase of this, one of the best-known passages of the Bible, as if she was discovering it for the first time.    I was simply thrilled by the power of this actress, to convey all that, within the context of reading an epistle in church.  I told her so, after the service.

    The actress looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and delight. 
    "But, Dahling," she said "I was reading it for the first time! They left it till the last minute to ask me, and, as I don't own such a thing as a Bible, I had never read it before in my life!" 

Khalil Gibran and his spiritual poetry


   
    A later priest, under whom I served as verger, used often to include within the service a poetic reading by Khalil Gibran. I supposed I heard it almost as many times as I heard Don Meadow's sermon. But the sentiments, urging the married couple to stand apart like trees and let the wind blow through their love, never spoke to me of what I considered married love ought to be. I became convinced that, despite all the writing that he did on the subject, perhaps Khalil Gibran didn't understand love at all, and that some of his advice, taken in the context of marriage, may very well be seriously misconstrued.

    Gibran was born in the 19th century to a Maronite Christian family and migrated from Lebanon to the US. Much of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love. But his mysticism is a convergence of several different influences : Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism and theosophy. His best known work is "The Prophet", 1923, and he is said to be the third most widely read poet in the world.

   Today I found a lengthy poem posted on another blog page.  Here is an excerpt:

When love beckons to you,  follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams

as the north wind lays waste the garden.

    The poem rolls on, piling image upon image, sometimes mentioning God, sometimes appearing without explanation, to have jumped from spiritual love to carnal desire and back again.

    Various comments have been made in praise of the beauty and spirituality of this poem.  However, I have quite a few problems with it. While the language uses appealing and seemingly deeply meaningful images, taken as a whole, it means nothing whatsoever. It is as intellectually satisfying as a mouthful of fairy floss.

    The poem obviously draws in part upon 1 Corinthians 13, and like much of Kahlil Gibran's writing, assumes pseudo-Biblical language and phrasing (in much the same way as 19th century translators of the Quran worded it in antiquated King James Version English to give it a "scriptural" feeling.) The words and imagery roll on in a most enticing manner. The content, however, is as hollow as the proverbial sounding brass and as shallow as the clashing cymbal.

    What is actually being said? What sort of love is being referred to?  Is this the profound love of God?   Is it the love that Christians are encouraged to have for one another?  Is it an all encompassing love for humanity?   Is it romantic love?  All these aspects of love are hinted at in passing.

If this poem is about spiritual love, then it fails to inform, to encourage or to sustain. It doesn't tell us that we are loved. It doesn't tell us how we should love. 

God as Love 

      In Christianity "God is Love".  Love is a primary attribute of God.   God is love just as God is truth and God is life.  Moreover, the love of God is distinguished in the Greek by the use of the word "agape" meaning that it is selfless, all-encompassing and voluntary.

    I am drawn to compare Gibran's poem with Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven".  In this poem the writer is pursued by Love.  It becomes increasingly clear that the love which ceaselessly follows, despite all attempts to avoid, to hide, and to find satisfaction in other loves, is the Love of God. It is the selfless, enduring, forgiving love that is offered again and again, and eventually must be accepted.  

Love says:

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 

I am He Whom thou seekest! 

Thou drivest love from thee, who drivest Me.

Christian symbols for Love 

The Pelican.  A symbol of Christ's love, dependent on a
misunderstanding of the habits of Pelicans. 

      Within the context of the Christian Church, there are a number of symbolic images that stand for "Love".  One is the image of the crucified Christ which says to the Christian, in the most graphic terms: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." 

     Another image of love, used since Medieval times, is that of the pelican with a nest full of young.   It was believed that the pelican so loved its young that it would pluck feathers from its own breast and feed the hatchlings on its blood.  The image of the pelican became the symbol of Christ's sacrificing love for the Church, and the pictorial motif is used particularly at churches with the dedication "Christ Church".

    The third image is that of Charity,  the "caritas" or caring love that evolved with the Latin translations of the Greek scriptures.  Charity, with her sister virtues of Faith and Hope, was to adorn many fresco, tomb and stained glass window, from the late Middle Ages through to the early 20th century.  All three, like other virtues, were given feminine persona.  Fide (or Faith) is depicted clinging to a large cross,  Spes (Hope) staunchly carries an anchor, while Caritas (Love) is a breast-feeding mother, often shown with twins.

Loving others

     In 1 Corinthians, chapter 13,  the message and its context are perfectly clear.  The context is not about what love can do to or for a person. The whole context of this passage is the necessity for a Christian person to have love for others.  Not a lustful love, not a one-on-one reciprocal love, but an enduring, selfless Christ-like love.     

    The Christian teaching does not make "love" an Eros-type persona, and talk about how it affects the one who yields to it.  In Christianity, the affect upon oneself is always down-played. The importance of love, and the reason why one needs to possess it, is entirely how it affects others.

    1 Corinthians 13 shows love to be a quality that a Christian person is fully obligated to possess, because if they do not, then all other gifts that they may have, are of little value.

"Love bears all things.....endures all things....
Love never ends." 

What are we told, in 1 Corinthians 13, are the characteristics of Love?

"Love is patient and kind; 

love is not jealous or boastful; 

it is not arrogant or rude. 

Love does not insist on its own way; 

it is not irritable or resentful; 

it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 

Love bears all things, believes all things, 

hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never ends..... 

So Faith, Hope and Love abide, these three; 

but the greatest of these is Love." 

NOTES:
The Crucifx of Archbishop Gero of Cologne, c. 970, Cologne Cathedral, is possibly the oldest extant large sculptured crucifix. The backing mandorla is modern.

The personifications of Faith, Hope, Charity, Truth, Justice, Temperance and other Biblical virtues or gifts of the spirit had a practical purpose. They were often publicly displayed, with their various attributes, such as the sword and scales of Justice, and the jugs of wine and water of Temperance, as statues around the exterior of public buildings and as decoration inside venues such as town halls, to remind both the public and those in power of their duty towards each other.

The pelican with its young formed part of the rich iconography of the Medieval Church and takes its place among the many and diverse small images that may be found as carvings in wood and stone within ancient church buildings. However, where one may find foxes, cats, bears, and wolves in all sorts of odd places, the pelican is nearly always displayed in an elevated position, having direct association with both the sacrificial nature of Christ's love, and with the Church itself.

Italian poem No 11.

The Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua

Pilgrimage to Padova

Do you remember Sant' Antonio's?

The domes and towers and pinnacles and sky;

two ancient nuns who, limping arm in arm,

each bore a portion of her sister's load,

pied against the orange bricks of noon,

a focus of intensity and eye? 

Gattemelata by Donatello

Do you recall the warrior on his steed,

so purposeful, yet humble, looking down

over the chasing children and the crowds

of tourists and of pilgrims and the town

that once he served and set him up on high?

And does your mind still hold

that vision of perfection-

dark and light,

the arches and the heavens and the gold,

the blazing star on blue mosaic night;

the tiny babe of bronze

with face so sweet

that sits within the Virgin Prophet's lap

as if still in the womb and raises up

his little hand to bless the majesty

of frankincense and gold,

the dripping candles and the thousand prayers

laid daily by the humble at his feet?  

Remember how we walked by the canal

as darkness fell that night,

and looking up,

we saw those minarets against the pink

and smoky blue of evening?

Swallows flew in pairs and suddenly

a bell rang out,

so clear and cold and high.

Ding-ding! Ding-ding! Ding-Ding!

Another answered lower

and another, slower, deeper still,

till one by one each bell was called to chime

until within the sweet cacophony

the last and largest spoke with solemn voice

that told of death and of disaster grim.

Dong! Dong! Dong!
Do you remember when
that dreadful man appeared

out of the darkness while I stood alone

upon the bridge? 

The moon over Sant'Antonio's

My flesh turned to stone:

I could not call for you or run away!

And suddenly you loomed against the sky

in that big jacket,

looking hugely broad and tall and fearsome!

How he shrank away

and vanished like a startled rat!

Remember then how smug you took my hand

and pulled it through your arm?

"Let's now wind up the day,

and go and find a place to eat!" you said.

We took our dinner in a small cafe.

Remember how the waiter made us laugh?

He walked like Charlie Chaplin with his tray

and scuffing feet

and dragging cuffs;

the same moustache:

it could have been his brother!

So the happy day

drew to a close

regaled by music of the concertina;

blissful sleepiness of food and wine,

of feet tired out with walking,

eyes with seeing,

mind with taking-in.

Do you remember still

the day we went to Sant' Antonio's?

I always will! 



© Tamsyn Taylor 

Italian poem No 8.

"The Funeral of Santa Fina", Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1485 

NOTE: The story of the painting and the origins and iconography of the poem are to be found at  ".....favourite things....." in the blogs "Tea with Mussolini" and "Santa Fina and the violets"

Santa Fina

for Dame Judi Dench

Little maiden
with your flaxen hair
and forehead neatly plucked,
(bearer of pain and visions),
how long did we nurse you
motionless
upon your wooden pallet?
Death soft as sleep
enfolding like the petals of a rose
your virgin body
lying sweet
and winsome
while the gentle chorister
presses his sightless face
against your small cold feet.
The chapel blazes bright.
What healing power is come
from hand of one
no nurse’s care
or chaplain’s prayers
could heal?
Let Adam and Eve consume
the fruit of sin
and armies perish,
ravaging disease
corrupt the flesh,
cruel arrows
of intolerance
pierce the mind;
let humankind
mock goodness,
spit on mercy,
stand spectator by
the murder of the innocent
while dynasties decay
and Hell yawns wide.
Yet may you rest
till morning’s glorious light
and scent of violets
wake you
and the bridegroom’s
laughing voice
says “Girl, rise up
and dance with me
between the laden vines
above the shimmering fields,
past swaying towers
on paving gold
through gates of Paradise.”

        © Tamsyn Taylor    

Italian poem No 6.

  

                                  Flowers for Larry

A boy kneels down before the Primavera-
Rome has passed him by:
a symphony of roaring cars and tooting horns
and rattle of a thousand motor bikes
punctuated by a policeman's whistle.
At the Trevi Fountain
spray was blown his way
and wet his face and jacket.
Catacombs smell damp and musty.
In Saint Peter's there are echoes
and the Sistine Chapel
is a maze
of shouting noise and shoving people
where it's difficult to find one's parents.
Florence has a tower with bells
and one enormous bell
that bursts upon your senses.
People laugh and talk in foreign language.
Horse and carriage clip-clop on the stones
and everywhere are pigeons.
One sat on his shoulder for a moment
and another past him at such speed
its wingtip grazed his cheek.

Now he's kneeling there before the Primavera,
with his eye so close the surface
that security is pacing
but a yard away unnoticed.
Above his stooping head is Venus
gazing out with gentle face.
He's oblivious to her beauty
and the graces of the maidens
simpering, diaphanous,
fingers linked in ceaseless dance.
He does not perceive the painting
like the connoisseur or tourist
He's a boy who never sees the bigger picture.
There exists for him
only the narrow compass of a little lens
that's hardly larger than a watch-face.
"Look at this!" he cries,
"No-one has ever painted flowers        
more beautiful than these!"
And there they are,
nestled in grass of darkest green-
flowers of the sweetest loveliness
that breathe the scent of Spring's perfection!
But has anyone
within five hundred years of seeing,
writing, rapture, contemplation, 
really looked at them before?
Down the years
I thank you, Sandro,
for your gift of minutiae!
While your Venus and her Graces
are for all the world to worship;
in your masterpiece you planted
tiny flowers
and made them grow
for Larry. 

©   Tamsyn Taylor  

Italian poem No 5.

Liberty

The eyes of David,
the eternal vigilante,

warn the approaching tourist
from beneath their jutting brow.
Stone cold flesh
glows palely in the sunlight.
Herakles is pausing for a moment
before he murders Cacus
and not far away
Judith, the Queen of Israel,
slits the throat
of one Holofernes,
while on his almost-Nouveau pedestal
the hero Perseus
holds up the frightful head
of the Medusa.
Thus of old
did Florence put on show
intolerance of tyrants!
Rising up before me,
brick on brick
and crowned with battlements and mighty tower
stands the Palazzo Vecchio,
home of the republic.
Slowly
I pan my camera up the building-
just beneath the cornice is a row of shields,
and on each shield, an emblem.
Holding still, I zoom the image
and I read the word
"LIBERTAS"
proclaimed in letters gold
against an azure field.  

That night 

at Barbara's cosy pensione 

I play my movie back, 

and it is there! 

I hear it every time; 

the voices coincide 

exactly, 

just as if I wrote a script! 

Above the general noises of the square, 

so faint and far away and yet so clear 

I hear a man's voice shouting, fierce and free- 

"Libertas!" 

it cries 

and then again, 

pale as an echo and more high and wild 

a woman's voice cries 

"Libertas!"  

©Tamsyn Taylor 

 Picture: CC. Georges Jansoone, 2005, from Wikimedia Commons

Italian poem No 4.

     

       The Watchman of the City

        The young man stands so seemingly relaxed,

        weight on one foot, 

        the other leg is forward, loose at the hip;

        his huge stonemason's hand

        is gently resting on his thigh.

        But look again!

        The head is turned to watch, the neck is taught,

        the eyes are fierce and brave.

        That nonchalance is only show-

        this man is dangerous!

        He knows just what they do with tyrants,

        here in Florence!

        All around this gay piazza

        there is murder, mayhem and revolt!

        So much of beauty has been made of death!

        This city that has always, at the heart,

        been a republic

        has a way to cut tall poppies

        and to lionise

        the ones like he

        who bring a giant's demise!

        ©     Tamsyn Taylor   


When Michelangelo, at the age of 25, was commissioned by the Overseers of Works for Florence Cathedral to sculpt a statue of David, he was presented with the challenge afforded by creating a work of enormous proportions out of a block of  second-grade marble that had already been worked on by two previous sculptors.  The figure was intended to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral, along with a number of other prophets, some of which had already been created, not in marble but in terracotta.   


The finished product was awe-inspiring, but threw the department of works into a panic.  It was obviously too large to be hoisted up to the gable.  Brunelleschi would have taken on the challenge, but he was dead and no-one else was prepared to attempt it.  A committee was formed (of course) to decide what to do with it.  They were split three ways.  The architect Giuliano da Sangallo, supported by Leonardo da Vinci, said the the marble was bound to deteriorate and that the safest place to display it was in the Loggia Lanza, a sort of permanent grandstand adjacent to the Palazzo Vecchio.   The second group wanted it placed near the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio, which was the seat of the Signoria, or city council, replacing a rather horrifying bronze by Donatello of Judith hacking Holoferne's head off.   Botticelli, a devout man, said it should be placed in the vicinity of the cathedral, where its magnificence would do honour to God,  as originally intended, as well as to the City.   The City prevailed, and David was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio, with his gaze turned threateningly towards Rome.  


Giuliano and Leonardo were right of course.  It should have been under cover.  In 1873 it was removed to the Accademia Gallery where it stands framed by a large niche and tall columns, as the focal point of a hall in which are also displayed the struggling giants intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II.   At its installation in the Accademia,  the statue was positioned with the same orientation that is found so often in drawings done by teenage boys i.e. the body is full-frontal, displaying the width of the shoulders and in this case the genitals, but the face is in profile.  Another male committee? The three -dimensional nature of the contraposto is minimised, and although one sees close-up photos of the face, full-on, it is very difficult to get a broad view of the statue from the  most appropriate angle.  One must rely on the many casts and copies.   In 1910 a replica was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio, and another overlooks the city from the Piazzale Michelangelo,  the favourite location for photographing the vista of Florence. 

Italian poem No 3.

The psychiatric unit of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence treats between ten and twenty people each year who are so overcome by certain supreme masterpieces that they suffer disorientation, palpitations and sometimes manic or depressive symptoms. Among the artworks that trigger this response are Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Michelangelo's David. The condition is known as Stendhal Syndrome, after the writer.  Sufferers are usually single middle-aged visitors. Italians appear to have a natural immunity.  This poem is for Anne and Delphie.

City of Enchantment

Ah, Florence, flower among cities!
Who could resist your charm?
How your admirers come
with starry eyes
to gaze upon your beauty!
How you entrance the mind
and hold the heart
and steal the soul
of those so blessed to know you!
There you stand
between the gliding Arno and the sky
like Venus born again for our delight -
with knowing eyes
that hold a promise in that look,
at once so secret, coy and warm -
you know the power of the enchantment
that will lie on us
once we are in your realm
and give our helpless senses
to your pure distilled intoxication.
Let us pause and look a little while    
before we venture in.

We see you standing there before us -
glowing flesh caressed by light of day
skin of transparent marble veined with grey, 
and your tress of orange tiles swept

over your shoulders like a sunbleached mane -
such thick, bright, fragile stuff to shield and hide
the precious cache of treasures you maintain.
Here we see your dress for everyday,
the fabric made of terracotta pink
bordered with formal ornament
and scattered with stylised flora;
here and there the golden edges glint
and catch the sun.
Now we feel
fresh breezes from the sea come up the valley
breathing the showers and flowers that give you life.

Florence, the Queen of Cities!
Mistress of many a mad infatuation!
Oh how we who are you suitors
long to be where your warm arms enfold us,
where your charms outspread
such a delightful feast of varied joys
that even the appetite of glutton
must at last be satiate.
What are your offerings?
Beauties too rich to purchase!
Thoughts too intense to dwell on! 
Joys too divine to dream of!

Queen of the heart! 

You stand 

at once so warm and cool, 

so welcoming and shy 

folded in hills 

and robed in flowers  

between the drifting water 

and the pale sky. 

Botticelli's Birth of Venus is renowned for
provoking attacks of Stendhal Syndrome.

©   Tamsyn Taylor

Italian Poem No 1.

Afternoon in Venice

Italy

You promised me Italy-

the dream of bumble bees,

the hazy loaves of Tuscan hills

and colonnaded shadows deep with wine;

Steep streets with red checked tables cut to stand

where no chair ever could;

Pale shutters faded to the shade of autumn grass;

Light, iridescent glinting sparkling twinkling

in the long rays of the pale autumn sun;

Pale frescoes

faded to the pink of autumn skies;

walls of ripe apricot and sanguine orange,

crumbling ochre and the pale red bricks:

the flesh of Italy beneath its plaster skin;

Cool streets of small cafes and purple shadows

and the smell of bread warm from the oven

and of shining fish scales in the afternoon;

The sacred goldfinch in a window cage

sings of the Passion to the patient pheasant

who awaits his sacrifice upon a faience dish

decked with the fleur de lys;

The Ancient Roman shop-front,

and inside, the fashion of today, this minute,

never seen again:-

the shoes, the bags, the scarves, the gloves, the style;

the cars, the motorbikes, the leather jackets;

and the taps that will not turn, the drains that block,

the creaking lift and trains that do not go.

The singing countryside,

the hilltop town with bells to wake each morning;

and the nightingale

among the orange trees

to penetrate the stillness of the night

with essence of a long past Tuscany

where man and wife,

now smiling on their tomb in cool display of their commitment,

once clung with lust,

once sank, longing and deep

into each other's souls of desire:

their sighs are wind in pine trees,

the sudden rain that falls upon the earth,

their procreation and the dust
that lies across the bonnet of the hired car

was once child of their love, long turned to earth

and now part of the richness and the sacrament

of this enchanted feast,

the bread and wine,

the broken meat,

the olives and the fish.

And how I long to eat this feast,

and walk on hills whereon my feet

crush pungent oregano as I go,

and tiny strawberry plants

show trefoil leaves

beneath the holm oaks:

and the Trinity,

God of all wonder and all sacrifice,

God of all inspiration and all life

is there for all to see,

vision of colour and geometry

deep in the magic painted recess of a crazzled wall.
Part of my soul, my self, is in that land.

My spirit soars to fill the vaults and domes

of smoky sensuous darkness

and gold light of candles. 

My spirit rises like the bells on drafts of air

up from the swaying towers,

and sings with painted angels,

tier upon tier

in perfect cacophony

vermilion, green and lapis lazuli.

My spirit hangs suspended like the cross

between the pointed arches of the sky above

and marble floor beneath.

It burns with the brightness of the sacred lamp,

red as a pomegranate, in the sanctuary.

The Virgin smiles for me.

The Child forever lifts his hand for my atonement.

I am one with them:

A stranger in that place,

and yet belonging by adoption.

You promised Italy,

my place of dreams,

my church of golden singing

and rich banquet of the senses.

Take me there,

to satisfy my dreams

and hone the edge

of my appreciation

and my appetite for more.

©    Tamsyn Taylor