"Sacred Tenderness and Changed Lives"

Ps. 116:5, NIRV  

      Sacred tenderness changes lives!  It warms cold hearts, fills empty souls, empowers weak vessels, and revivifies exhausted spirits.  Today we will look at the lives of two great souls and note how God’s sacred tenderness reinvigorated them when they had lost their way.  (What discoveries might we apply to our own lives?)

     Also of interest will be the fact that the first great soul, the poet George Herbert, left a legacy: a poem that beautifully describes God’s longing-calling-waiting Love and Herbert’s own journey (and struggles) to discover it.  And this very poem, in turn, played a crucial role in the spiritual journey of our second great soul, Simone Weil.

     We begin with the celebrated English poet George Herbert—tracing his intense spiritual struggles, his heartbreak, and his discoveries.  As a young man Herbert seemed to have a brilliant career before him.  A descendant of earls and knights, he was an excellent student at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He became a member of Parliament (17^th c.).  However, not long after that Herbert decided to become an Anglican clergyman (the full story behind his decision is not known). 

     Herbert took a position as rector of a modest village church (Bemerton).  And then somehow Herbert almost entirely lost his way: he lost his vigor, joy, sense of direction, and sense of worth.  Herbert said his soul felt “Untuned, unstrung . . . Like a nipped blossom. . . .”[1]  

     There were multiple issues behind his soul’s discontent: grief over the death of loved ones, a sense of frustration with the mundane, everyday work of a clergyman, illness, and a sense of his own inadequacies and failures—especially the sense that he was not sufficiently using his considerable talents in service to God or his fellows.  All seemed to coalesce and lead to feelings of grief and emptiness of soul: “O what a deadly cold / Doth me enfold . . . ,” he pined.^[2]  His one saving grace during that time seems to have been that all the while he kept praying, e.g., “O cheer and tune my heartless breast. . . .”^[3]

     In his poetry we see Herbert working through processes that we would today recognize as the stages of grief—including the “wars and thunder” of the soul.^[4]  Over and over he processes his feelings, laboring with God and his own soul until at last God’s loving sacred tenderness broke through, and he arrived—perhaps to his own great surprise—at a new place, with a profound sense of acceptance and peace.

     Fresh tones and ideas enter his poetry—a new vision: “My God, what is a heart? / That thou shouldst it so eye, and woo.”^[5]  Here an emerging experience of God’s sacred tenderness is clear.  It is also clear that Herbert becomes aware of a process that had been going on all the while on God’s side.  While he had been blind to see, God had nevertheless been eyeing and wooing his heart.  Why hadn’t he seen this before? 

     Perhaps Julian of Norwich explains: “[T]he use of our reason is now [on earth] so blind, so low, and so simple, that we cannot know that high marvellous Wisdom, the Might and the Goodness [of our God]. . . ."^[6]  Julian’s remedy is that we persistently search and pray to know more—pray that God might overcome our earthbound “reason.”  And Herbert had indeed been faithful in prayer: “O, be mine still! still make me Thine!” he had prayed.^[7]

     The spiritual breakthrough for Herbert seems to have come when somehow he finally began to see and hear the simplest things in a new way:

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

And I replied, My Lord. ^[8]

     What had Herbert discovered?  Deborah Smith Douglas writes: “Increasingly, Herbert seems to have discovered himself to be valued by God not in terms of his usefulness (much less his ‘place of power’) but solely on the basis of God’s loving grace and that mystical parent-child relationship [Herbert's “Child!” above]. . . .  ‘[B]ands of love were ultimately what held him fast’” (emphasis ours).^[9]    

     How often the Bible uses the imagery of the “parent-child

relationship” to speak of the sacred tenderness of God’s

love![10]  And why might Douglas speak of a “mystical parent-

child relationship”?--especially stressing the “mystical” aspect. 

Surely because there is a peace that passes understanding

(Phil. 4:7) as well as a surprising revivification that can come

when we realize that this relationship is, in the end, the great

secret of life—when we learn to draw our strength from this

empowering relationship.  (Note: the word “mystical” does not

necessarily describe an unusual experience; it can also refer

to a sense of Grace that is not quite explicable in mundane,

ordinary human terms.)

     "Yet to be Thine doth me restore," Herbert wrote.^[11]  Or, "Who would have thought my shriveled heart / Could have recovered greenness?"^[12]  And he prayed: "Let suppling grace . . . / Drop from above."^[13] 

     Now Herbert knew that through the "mystical parent-child relationship" peace, Grace, and divine Love had entered, surrounded, renewed, and revivified his life.  (Note also that the "mystical parent-child relationship" is one way to describe our relationship with God in God's great sacred romance.  This was discussed previously in our post "The 'Great Divine Romance of Heaven' for us & its Frequent Neglect."^[14])

     Before turning to Simone Weil, we close our discussion of Herbert with one of his loveliest poems.  (We will also return to Herbert briefly near the end of the post).   Herbert’s poem below is a summary of important aspects of his spiritual journey.  It is also a poem that was to make a huge difference in Simone Weil’s life.  Watch for the immense tenderness of the host (Lord/Parent) and the movement toward God’s Grace as it is gradually made clear in the poem.  Also watch for the great hesitation of the guest (or beloved child—us!).

“Love (III)”

Love bade me welcome: yet my heart drew back,

   Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

   From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

   If I lacked anything.

“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”:

   Love said, “You shall be he.”

“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

   I cannot look on thee.”

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

   “Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame

   Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?’*

   “My dear, then I will serve.”

“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”

  So I did sit and eat.

(*For clarification of this line see Rom. 4:25; 2 Cor. 5:17-21; 

references that recall St. Catherine of Siena’s words: “[N]ails 

would not have held the God-man [Jesus] fast had not love 

held him there.”)

* * *

     We now move to Simone Weil’s discovery of God’s sacred tenderness.  Simone was born in Paris in 1909, daughter of a noted physician.  Simone’s parents, who were of Jewish ancestry, were highly educated, progressive agnostics, who taught Simone nothing about the Jewish faith—not even retaining its cultural traditions.^[15]  

     Their daughter was a brilliant, sensitive child—very much attuned to the upheavals around her in the world (two World Wars and the Great Depression).  In all this Simone was highly responsive to the suffering of others; she could not look the other way or separate herself from it. 

     In spite of living through disruptive times, Simone grew up in a comfortably well to do, loving family and was able to receive the kind of education that challenged her exceptionally inquisitive mind.  She was a natural philosopher—becoming qualified to teach philosophy in secondary schools.  However, Simone felt additional callings beyond teaching, noble as that calling is.

     We go back now to discuss Simone’s sensitivity to the pain of others.  One story that is often repeated about her is that at only age six Simone refused sugar because the soldiers of World War I had none.  This was a pattern of solidarity with suffering souls that continued throughout her life.  In her young adult years she threw herself into many causes—standing at the side of workers and the poor and often leaving her room unheated so that she could contribute to their causes.^[16]  

     Then, in spite of her credentials, she chose to take menial jobs in factories as an act of solidarity with the working class during the Great Depression.  She felt she could only know their experience by actually living it.  It was then that she said she learned what it is to be a slave.  Simone often suffered from intense migraine headaches.  She was also naturally clumsy.  The factories of the time were simply no place for her.  Simone once said she felt like a mere beast of burden in the factories.  She observed that the factories turned people into mere things—with little thought being given to the rights of workers.  Yet, Simone persisted; she was intent upon her act of solidarity with common laborers.  Finally, her health was nearly ruined.  “The affliction of others branded my flesh and my soul,” Simone said, speaking of this experience.^[17]      

     Simone’s parents stepped in to rescue her when her health became perilous.  They took her to a quiet place to rest.  It was there that Simone’s spiritual journey began.  Simone’s spiritual experiences are most interesting because she was not in the least interested in pursuing a spiritual journey.  What Simone sought was "truth" in the face of the affliction that she had witnessed and experienced herself.  Her spiritual experiences would open out from her effort to gain some sense of perspective—some sense of "truth"—about affliction.  With the mind of a philosopher she ruminated upon the problem.  Since she had been raised as an agnostic, she could not have been more surprised when she began to have spiritual encounters. 

     In an introduction to Simone’s spiritual testament Waiting for God, Leslie Fiedler writes that Simone had “a series of experiences perhaps unequaled since St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross.”[18]  Simone’s spiritual journey can be described as unfolding in a series of epiphanies.[19]  The first was after her year of factory work.  It was relatively modest; she was deeply touched by a poignantly beautiful religious ritual.  Simone tells us that at this time—after having felt like little more than a slave in the factory—she “was, as it were, in pieces, soul and body.”  She continues: 

     In this state of mind then, and in a wretched condition physically, I entered the little Portuguese village, which, alas, was very wretched too, on the very day of the festival of its patron saint. . . .  It was the evening and there was a full moon over the sea.  The wives of the fishermen [men who faced the perils of the sea] were, in procession, making a tour of all the ships, carrying candles and singing what must certainly be very ancient hymns of a heart-rending sadness.  Nothing can give any idea of it.  I have never heard anything so poignant. . . .  There the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves [i.e., the downtrodden] cannot help belonging to it, and I among the others.^[20]  

This ritual touched some unknown longing in Simone’s heart, and she also began to see the depths with which Christianity can speak to the afflicted.  Hesitantly, she pondered; hesitantly, she sensed that she was “incapable of resisting ‘the religion of slaves.’”^[21]       

     Sometime after, Simone encountered George Herbert’s grace-filled poem “Love (III),” quoted above.  (Note: we are jumping ahead. We have not elaborated upon all of Simone’s epiphanies; for others see Waiting for God, a collection of her letters and essays.) 

     Simone once called Herbert’s line the “most beautiful poem in the world.”^[22]  (And if we truly plumb its depth of meaning, we may catch something of Simone’s vision regarding it).  She reports that she would often recite the poem “at the culminating point of a violent [migraine] headache . . . clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines” (emphasis ours).  She comments that this apparently had the “virtue of a prayer.”  During “one of these recitations” she experienced a spiritual encounter: “Christ himself came down and took possession of me,” she writes.^[23]  Although “completely unprepared for it,” Simone reports experiencing the awareness of “a presence more personal, more certain, and more real than that of a human being; it was inaccessible both to sense and to imagination, and it resembled the love that irradiates the tenderest smile of somebody one loves” (emphasis ours).^[24]     

    

     Later, Simone said she did not even know such experiences were possible—thus she could never have “fabricated an absolutely unexpected encounter.”^[25]  However, Simone had surely discovered God’s sacred tenderness and the intimate, tender face of Love that so many before her had discovered as the face that Christ presents to/within the soul.  (Here we see an experience of sacred tenderness that has some similarity to earlier spiritual encounters we’ve discussed: see Sojourner Truth, Corrie ten Boom, and Julian of Norwich’s experiences discussed in previous posts.^[26])

     Simone wrote of her experiences in letters to friends, saying that she only told her experiences because somehow she guessed that her life would not be long (she was right!).  She was also, perhaps, a bit perplexed about her experiences and thus needed to record them, almost as one might in a journal.  She wrote, “In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility . . . of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God.  I had vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them.”^[27] 

     However, ultimately Simone would not think her experiences were that unique.  “Through our fleshly veils we receive from above presages of eternity which are enough to efface all doubts on the subject,” she wrote: suggesting that if we come to God in genuine waiting and seeking, we, too, might know hints of something beyond.^[28]

     Although her life would be short, Simone left us a vast legacy of writings, which reflect her deep spiritual understanding and her ruminations as a philosopher and social commentator.  George Panichas comments that in her writing Simone was able to express a deep “prophetic awareness of the human condition.”^[29]

     We conclude the story of Simone’s life by comparing it to Herbert’s life.  Both were diligent seekers after truth. Both died of tuberculosis at a young age (Simone was 34; Herbert was 40).  Both died with their luminous writings being virtually unknown; both entrusted those writing entirely to the care of friends.  Both died in peace (resting in the Everlasting Arms), even though in the world’s terms—and in their own time—they had accomplished very little.  However, because friends later saw the value of their writings, both left the world a rich literary legacy.  Both discovered the beauty of God’s Grace and revivifying power.  Both experienced God’s sacred tenderness—perhaps in their short lives knowing more of God’s love and tenderness than many (less diligent seekers) experience in a full lifetime.  With the Apostle Paul, they surely would have said: “[H]ope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts . . .” (Rom. 5:5, NRSV).  Both, indeed, experienced God’s love being poured into their hearts—in each case as a surprise, an epiphany.  And, finally, both passed what they had learned on to us—to help us on our way.

     In a poem appropriately entitled “Even-Song,” Herbert spoke words that we might apply to his final days and to Simone’s as well:

My God, thou art all love.

Not one poor minute [e]scapes thy breast,

But brings a favour from above;

And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

     Psalm 103 assures us that as “tenderly as a father treats his children,” just so God treats us.  We have a father who “crowns” us with “faithful love and tenderness” and has immense “tenderness and pity” for the woundedness, pain, or frailty of each beloved child.^[30]  At three points Psalm 103 assures us—mightily—of the tender love of God.  Both George Herbert and Simone Weil learned to rest at peace in such love: “And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.”  These authors offer us beautiful examples of the discovery of God’s sacred tenderness.

     In his own unique way, Pope Francis sums up what Herbert and Weil surely experienced: each would have learned God’s science of tenderness (in one commentator's summary of Pope Francis's ideas).^[31]  Explaining, Pope Francis tell us that God’s love is symbolized by the “shepherd”: “And this is closeness: the shepherd close to his flock, close to his sheep, whom he knows, one by one.”

     Pope Francis continues:

“Tenderness!  But the Lord loves us tenderly.  The Lord knows that beautiful science of caresses, the tenderness of God.  He does not love us with words.  He comes close--closeness--and gives us His love with tenderness.  Closeness and tenderness!  The Lord loves us in these two ways, He draws near and gives all His love even in the smallest things: with tenderness.  And this is a powerful love  . . . closeness  and tenderness reveal the strength of God’s love.”^[32] 

     Herbert and Weil had sought and found; they experienced God’s approach and God’s tenderness.  They shared their stories because they wished us to know (as does Pope Francis) that we are all God’s beloved children.  In our own way, we are all meant to know God’s nearness and tenderness.  And, in our own way, we are meant to pass this great blessing on so that others might know the peace, joy, and renewal of life that comes with God’s presence as well.

     We see this same thought expressed by the early founders of AA (Alcoholics

Anonymous) who wrote: "To watch the eyes of men and women open with 

Wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives … fill with 

new purpose and meaning … and above all to watch these people awaken to 

the presence of a loving God in their lives--these things are the substance of 

what we receive as we carry A.A.’s message …"{33]  (Note that in previous

posts we discussed this same discovery leading to changed lives of other

individuals: Henri Nouwen, Paul Tournier, St. Jane de Chantal, St. Gertrude

of Helfta, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Sojourner Truth,

Corrie ten Boom, etc.[34]).

“The LORD your God wins victory after victory and is always with you.  

He celebrates and sings because of you, and he will 

refresh your life with his love”; Zeph. 3:17, CEV.

* * *

We close with thoughts for meditation, prayer/poetry/proverbs:

An opening to prayer/meditation (in times of discouragement):

 

     (With reflection upon promises such as those found in Ps. 23, 25:9-10;

Prov. 3:5-6; Josh. 1:5; Isa. 30:21, 58:11; Mt. 7:7-11, 28:20; Lk. 1:79;

Jn. 14:26, 16:13; James 1:5; etc.  Note: I am not being audacious here

[i.e., speaking for the Lord] but am only paraphrasing a collection of

promises.)

* * *

  

“Translucent Moments (a Meditation)”

“Two worlds are ours ...” - John Keble

* * *

                                                                        

"The Final Secret (a child’s prayer--and ours)"

 (With reflection upon Deut. 33:27, NIV; also see Mt. 18:3). [35]  

"Christ has made the children our teachers . . ." - Martin Luther

* * *

Praying with Psalm 103:

                     

As “tenderly as a father treats his children,”

so are Your ways with us.

You “crown” us with “faithful love and tenderness”—

“tenderness . . . and pity.”

Three times the bold psalm promises

Your abiding Tender Love! ^[36]

                     

What then are we to say?—

save teach us that we may see;
teach us that we might

know!     

* * *

“Mystery's Design”

Let go (What “still small” voices call?)

   To join the dance of spring!

You cannot hold your destiny

   But only give it wings.

It must be given over

   To Mystery’s design.

You cannot hear Those Footsteps,

  But they will be on time!                                       

     (With reflection upon 1 Kings 19:12 [RSV] and wisdom from

AA and other "Twelve Step" groups: Let go ... let God!)  

* * *

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove

from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”; Ezek. 36:26, NIV. 

* * *

And finally, simply in celebration of the season and its lessons:

Snowbird, with your fine white breast, 

   Fluffing out your wings, 

Guard yourself; the day is cold, 

   But do not cease to Sing!

Tiny personality, 

   Three inches by two, 

Artwork incomparable      

   Patterned into you!

(Recalling Julian of Norwich's emphasis upon the noble nature

of all creation--including us.[37])

* * *

(See additional blog posts after the “Notes” in “Older/Newer Posts.”)

……………..

Notes:

1. From George Herbert’s poem “Denial.”

2. George Herbert, “A Parodie.”

3. Herbert, “Denial.”

4. Ibid.

5. George Herbert, “Mattens.”

6. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Warrack (London:
Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1901, 1949), p. 65 (Chap. 32).  

7. George Herbert, “Clasping of Hands.”

8. George Herbert, “The Collar.”

9. Deborah Smith Douglas, “George Herbert at Bemerton: ‘Thy Power and Love,
My Love and Trust,’” Weavings, May/June 1999, p. 23 (quoting Herbert’s poem
“The Church Militant”).  (We offer our deep appreciation to Deborah Smith
Douglas for first calling our attention to the profound correspondence between
Herbert’s spiritual journey and his poetry.)

10. As in Jesus’ many references to God as loving Father.  Also see multiple references to

parenting love, including maternal metaphors for God’s love in our post “Sacred Tenderness--

Lost in Translation?”; http://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/02/sacred-tenderness-lost-in-translation.html

11. Herbert, “Clasping of Hands.”

12. George Herbert, “The Flower.”

13. George Herbert, “Grace.”

14. See our earlier post "The 'Great Divine Romance' of Heaven' for us & its Frequent Neglect;

http://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-great-sacred-romance-and-its.html

15. Robert Coles, Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1987), p. 7; George A. Panichas, ed., “Introduction to ‘A New Saintliness’,” The Simone
Weil Reader (New York: David McKay Co., 1977), p. 8.

16. Francine du Plessix Gray, Simone Weil (New York: Viking, Penguin, 2001), pp. 8-9;
also Gabriella Fiori, Simon Weil: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989), p. 63.

17. Quoted in Gray, Simone Weil, p. 99; also see Dorothy Tuck McFarland,
Simone Weil (New York: Frederick Ungar Pub., 1983), p. 66.

18. Leslie A. Fiedler, “Intro.,” Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd
(New York: Harper & Row, 1951), p. 10.

19. Panichas, ed., “Introduction to ‘A New Saintliness’,” The Simone Weil Reader, p. 8.

20. Weil, Waiting for God, p. 67.

21. Fiedler, “Intro.,” Weil, Waiting for God, p. 23.

22. Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York:
Pantheon, 1976), p. 330.

23. Weil, Waiting for God, pp. 68-9, 24-5.

24.  Simone Weil, The Simone Weil Reader, p. 91 (Letter to Joë Bousquet).

25. Quoted in Fiedler, “Intro.,” Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p. 25.

26. See our earlier posts: "Restless/Anxious or Clothed in God's 'Familiar Love'":
http://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/02/restlessanxious-or-clad-in-gods.html;

“Missing Sacred Tenderness and Missing Women’s Voices”: http://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/03/missing-sacred-tenderness-and-missing.html

27. Weil, Waiting for God, p. 69.

28. Ibid., p. 90.

29. Panichas, ed., “Introduction to ‘A New Saintliness’,” The Simone Weil Reader, p. 3.

30. Psalm 103: 4, 8, 13, NJB (see NIRV translation for a variation on “three times”).  

31. Emer McCarthy, “Pope [Francis] at Mass: The science of tenderness”;  
http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2013/06/07/pope_at_mass_the_science_of_tenderness/enl-69928

32.  Ibid.

33. Co-founders of AA, “12 & 12,” Step Twelve, “The Twelve Steps.”

34. See “Traveling Companion--A Tender Image”;

https://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/04/traveling-companion-tender-image_23.html

(Also see references in Note 26 above.)

35. Meditations, prayer/poetry/proverbs by Lorraine B. Eshleman (the last

six in this post).

36. See Note 30 above.

37. See Clifton Wolters's introduction to meanings in Julian's 13th

Revelation: Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Clifton

Wolters (Middlesex, England, Penguin Books, 1966), p. 103 (Ch. 27 and Ch. 1),

Long Text.  Also see Julian of Norwich: Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge,

O.S.A. and James Walsh, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 134 (Ch. 6),

Short Text; p. 176 (Ch. 1), p. 303 (Ch. 63), Long Text.