Theology & horses
Braybrooke, Neville
IN A MEMORABLE phrase in one ot his poems, W.H. Auden brings together the sacred and the profane. The phrase occurs in The Age of Anxiety, and reads: the real world of Theology and horses...
...Commonweal: 702...
...But between artists and theologians there have been fruitful crossings of thought...
...It is a remark with a particular relevance for this century...
...to fancy that a tight rein prevents stumbling...
...They are part of the mystery of the Incarnation...
...The celebration of Christmas unites the sacred with the profane...
...a recurring feature of the Gospel stories is the dependence of Jesus upon his heavenly Father...
...These are the paradoxes with which theologians have grappled through the ages...
...In the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem itself, lamps hidden in striped cotton bags hang from the ceiling, each with a colored ball beneath it...
...In writing of Wittgenstein he refers to "God's presence-in-absence in the world...
...How can the Infant in his mother's arms be omnipotent...
...I am thinking of a pub in the Isle of Wight, off Southampton, where each December plaster figures of the Holy Family are brought out and placed in the window among the bottles of wine and cans of ale...
...The significance of Auden's phrase about the real world of theology and horses is that it challenges the customary orthodox definition of the sacred...
...How gaudy," remarked one woman...
...Bonhoeffer, who was a poet as well as a theologian, formulated for our times the paradox of "religionless Christianity...
...the Roman forces occupying Palestine patrol the towns and villages on horseback...
...A prophecy from the Book of Isaiah reads: "An ox knew his Lord, and an ass...
...At Capernaum, early in his ministry, the people are astonished by the "authority" with which he speaks...
...For such an age, in his Christmas Oratorio called For the Time Being, Auden offers two spiritual counsels...
...Tarshish on the Red Sea, which may have been the home of some of the Magi, is followed by details of a king who lived there and whose ships carried abroad "gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks...
...One reason may be because, at the time of Christ's birth, horses were associated with warriors and war...
...His title Son of God carried with it a sense of generation...
...Not at all out of keeping in a church that honors a child...
...There are many ways in which God may be adored, and if theology means thinking about God (as the Greek word suggests), then it should be possible to find God in all human experience...
...Blake speaks of holiness of the imagination, and poets and painters have used theirs about Bethlehem to inspired effect...
...But, in the wider setting of the poetry of the Middle Ages, the whole drama of Christ's birth, passion, and death is contained in the one line...
...At the center of the Christmas story is the paradox of the Child who is also God...
...I think they are charming," said another...
...They lead us to believe that Joseph was probably a young man when he was espoused to Mary, not the stooping, grey-bearded figure promoted by the church in medieval times...
...When I first came across this Baroque Eclogue, as Auden called it, I remember being reminded of John Wesley, who rode over 100,000 miles of the English countryside with a slack rein and got through a vast library of religious and secular books while in the saddle...
...Only the manger is mentioned...
...When he is still a boy and Mary and Joseph find him teaching in the Temple, he says to 20 December 1985: 701 them: "Do you not know that I must be about my Father's business...
...Herod's soldiers set out on horseback to massacre the innocents...
...knew of the Lord...
...The late Cornelius Ernst, a Dominican whose unique theological essays should be read as a collection of poetry is read, carried Bonhoeffer's paradox a stage further...
...In the scene in question the cry is a mixture of exasperation and a prayer for help...
...To the familiar animals of the crib others have been added, making it almost a second Noah's ark...
...Only twice did a horse of his stumble, and with a nice touch of practicality, characteristic of an itinerant preacher, Wesley advises others that it is "a capital blunder...
...At the Last Supper his final remark to Judas is: "The words you hear are not mine but my Father's...
...In the Gospels themselves there is no reference in the Infancy narratives to an ox or an ass...
...In a different way the schoolmen of the Middle Ages filled out the Nativity texts of the New Testament by drawing on the Old...
...At my parish church in London I like the colored glass baubles and garlands of silver tinsel which decorate the entrance and the sanctuary...
...The mystery of the Word becoming flesh does not alter, although our knowledge of the events surrounding it increases...
...They are: Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety Love Him in the World of the Flesh...
...Also, Christ told his disciples many things they did not understand until after the Resurrection...
...In an early Wakefield morality play, an anonymous author of the thirteenth century makes one of the shepherds cry out: Christ's cross me speed, and Saint Nicholas...
...George Herbert, in one of his poems, brings a NEVILLE BRAYBROOKE, a British writer, editor, and critic, is a longtime Commonweal contributor...
...For just as the eighteenth century, for example, was known as the Age of Reason, so ours, perhaps, has best been summed up by Auden as the Age of Anxiety...
...Despite the fact that this takes place in a stable, the appearance of a horse in Nativity paintings or poems is comparatively rare...
...It is a bitter winter's night and the local lord is a harsh taskmaster...
...Consider the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and how they have brought to light new facts about life in Palestine at the beginning of the first century A.D...
...The theme ot adoration runs through the twelve days of Christmas, in carols and in sacred music...
...These have included camels, lions, leopards, giraffes, elephants, apes, and peacocks...
...In the Christmas story the shepherds are the first to arrive and adore the Child in the manger...
...Christ, in contrast, rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on a donkey: neither the crowds nor the high priests would have missed the point...
...The twelve short verses of Matthew and the one from Luke, in which the story is rooted, have been expanded over the centuries...
...Or, how is it possible that the Babe asleep in the straw can uphold the universe...
...Possibly a descendant of his was Melchior, who appears in tradition as one of the Magi, and who later acquires not only the attributes of royalty, but in some parts of the world has been given the status of a saint...
...But this mystery itself remains the same "yesterday, today, and forever...
...but Israel did not know me...
...Seeking and loving, in this context, describe exactly what the shepherds did at Bethlehem...
...The impact of the seen upon the unseen, so often the concern of spiritual writers, is here reversed: the plaster figures are the reminder of the unseen...
...O come let us adore Him...
Vol. 112 • December 1985 • No. 22
