St. Barnabas Affirms Ministry and Plans for the Future

It was my privilege to facilitate a time of visioning and planning for New Westminster’s St. Barnabas parish this morning following the worship service. Since my grandparents were married at “St. B” in 1906 and my dad and all his siblings baptized there, the parish holds a special place in my own life.

For the past few years, with the commissioning of our Westminster Deanery, I’ve been a part of the St. Barnabas Emergency Food Cupboard team – meeting with, listening to, praying with and building community with those who come to St. Barnabas during the week for spiritual and social support. The vital ministries that the parish carries out in the “Brow-of-the-Hill” neighborhood of New Westminster is amazing. The commitment of St. Barnabas’ clergy and congregation to being the presence of Christ in a needy community is indeed blessed.

Our visioning and planning day had to do with aging facilities – the parish hall, in particular – that are nearing the end of life. In order to discern as a community what can be done to sustain well established community ministries – including the Food Cupboard, Community Meal, Thrift Shop as well as spiritual nourishment to the community, a new ministry transition plan is needed. The parish is also anxious to continue serving the community through the provision of space for the current daycare and for several community groups who regularly use or rent the facilities.

A couple of years back as Chair of the Provincial Synod Standing Committee on Ministry,  I wrote a document entitled “Parishes in transition: A Process Guide” outlining a tool for Appreciative Inquiry” as a way to facilitate parish discussions dealing with significant change. I’m grateful to the Rev. Paul Borthistle who introduced me to the widely used process of Appreciative Inquiry.

The strength of Appreciative Inquiry is that it approaches problem solving from a positive perspective of “appreciating” who and what we are and leads us to dream about how we can move forward in the directions we wish to go and God is calling us to go. At St. Barnabas, we began with an overview of the realities of the current situation in regard to aging parish facilities, and then took part in a “Gallery Walk” where people gathered in small groups around the room, then added to a “parish picture gallery” based on six “portraits”:

Who Are We? Guiding principles and beliefs

Why Are We Here at 5th and 10th?

What Do We Want to Do and Continue to Do?

What Are Some Goals for Getting It Done?

How Do We Best Meet Those Goals?

What’s the Best Strategy To Meet Our Goals? (Over-All Plan)

The time of gallery making was animated and designed to give everyone a voice. The “Portrait” making questions are deliberately overlapping so major themes can emerge. And emerge they did.

During our time of “Convergence” we studied the “portraits” in the gallery, identifying key issues that could be put before a special vestry meeting this Spring. The Appreciative Inquiry process allowed us to work together to generate motions for that vestry meeting in the context of a practical plan to move forward: partnerships to be considered, involvement with other faith-based and community agencies, exploring diocesan relationships focussed on ministry support, and evaluating and planning ways to look at the over-all property use at St. Barnabas.

The process was engaging and efficient and my own appreciation goes to Rev. John Firmston and the people of St. Barnabas for allowing me to engage with them in the important work they do. In the words of one of our diocesan initiatives, the community of St. Barnabas is determined to ‘take back the neighborhood’ and has the determination to continue its vital work.

By the way, the St. Laurence table at next Saturday’s “St. Barnabas Trivia Night” has issued a challenge to the competition to throw everything at us that they can. The “St. Laurence Saints” have been regular winners in the annual Coquitlam Library Trivia Night for several years. Come out to see if you can beat us!

Rev. Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam and one of the blog masters at New Westminster Anglican Blog. Comments and contributions are welcome. If you have a special event you want to share with the diocesan family, consider a posting on NW Anglican blog.

 

A Feast with Herb O’Driscoll

Canon Herbert O’Driscoll visited St. Laurence, Coquitlam on February 23 and 24, 2013 and provided a sumptuous feast of insight into Scripture and the essence of Christian faith. With his characteristic humility, humour and godly insight into who we are as human beings in the presence of the mystery of God, Herb invited us to join together to “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

Herb began with insights into the cosmic shift that has taken place in Western society since the 1960′s, likening it to the changes encountered if we were to move from Earth to Mars as detailed in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. In each age the Church has faced new challenges, Herb reminded us, drawing on the kind of analysis central to Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence. Herb’s gift for ‘visual teaching’ was displayed in abundance as he paced out the centuries on the floor and characterized the cultural context of the Christian gospel in each era. Wonderful insights presented in suitable dramatic fashion. “We are all the early Christians of the 21st century; we have to reform and rediscover…discover the wonder of it all again.” A feast indeed.

Reminding us to step beyond the strictures that the Enlightenment of the 18th century has placed on the last 200 years plus of Western Christian theology and practice, Herb urged an exploration of specific aspects of our great heritage that invite rediscovery – including the heritage of Eastern Orthodox Christian practice and approach to the ‘Faith once delivered to the Saints’. In that context, we need to stop sweating about getting the belief right – a quest that has always divided Christians – and begin with submitting to the mystery that is God and the unfolding of that mystery in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We need to learn to celebrate and communicate the Great Story which is ours, and invite others into its mystery and power.

Long established in the insights currently being explored in Brian McLaren’s latest book,  Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? O’Driscoll reminded us that we’ve created a separate category of life called “religion” and conveniently separated it from human life as a whole. Thus we have stripped our Great Story of its power along with the great stories of the world’s other major sacred traditions. We owe it to the Great Story revealed in Scripture to affirm it in all its fulness as we journey through Lent and approach Easter once again. We owe it to ourselves as Christians journeying with Jesus in the Anglican Way to embrace the fullness of who we are in Christ.

In that wonderful and inspiring context created for us by O’Driscoll’s this past weekend, is the challenge that Brian McLaren lays before us to live as an Easter People:

“Then Easter dawns. The scandal of Easter was not simply that a supernatural event occurred. Minds in the ancient world weren’t divided by the rigid natural-supernatural dualism that forms modern minds. In those days miracles were notable not for defying the laws of nature (a concept that was unknown until recent centuries), but for conveying an unexpected meaning or message through an unusual or unexplainable medium. What was the scandalous meaning conveyed by the resurrection of Jesus? It was not simply that a dead man was raised. It was who the raised man was. Someone rejected, mocked, condemned, and executed by both the political and religious establishments was raised. A convicted outlaw, troublemaker, and rabble rouser was raised. A nonviolent nonconformist who included the outcasts — and therefore became an outcast — was raised….

What might happen if every Easter we celebrated the resurrection not merely as the resuscitation of a single corpse nearly two millennia ago, but more — as the ongoing resurrection of all humanity through Christ? Easter could be the annual affirmation of our ongoing resurrection from violence to peace, from fear to faith, from hostility to love, from a culture of consumption to a culture of stewardship and generosity…and in all these ways and more, from death to life….What if Easter was about our ongoing resurrection “in Christ” — in a new humanity marked by a strong-benevolent identity as Christ-embodying peacemakers, enemy lovers, offense forgivers, boundary crossers, and movement builders?”

(Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World, pp. 174-175  Brian McLaren, New York: Jericho books 2012)

This is our Christ story. In it we live and move and have our being. Thanks be to God!

 

Rev. Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam and a blogmaster at New
Westminster Anglican Blog.

 

 

 

 

 

“Hope of Abraham and Sarah” by Ruth Duck and Judith Snowdon

We sang this hymn at St. Laurence, Coquitlam, this morning as part of a service built around themes of forgiveness and dignity – some of the hard challenges that following Jesus presents us with.

I wanted to share it with you.

“Hope of Abraham and Sarah”

Hope of Abraham and Sarah,

friend of Hagar, God of Ruth,

you desire that ev’ry people

worship you in spirit, truth.

Meet us in our sacred places,

mosque and synagogue and church,

Show us paths of understanding;

bless us in our common search.

Root us in our own tradition,

faith our forebears handed down.

Grow us in your grace and knowledge;

plant our feet on solid ground.

Cultivate the seeds of sharing

in this world of many creeds.

Keep us open, wise in learning,

bearing fruit in loving deeds.

Hope of Abraham and Sarah,

sov’reign God whom we adore,

form in us your new creation

free of violence, hate, and war.

So my Torah, cross and crescent,

each a sign of life made new,

point us t’ward your love and justice,

earth at peace and one in you.

copyright 2005 by GIA Publications Inc. Used with permission.

Words: Ruth Duck; Music: Judith Snowdon; copyright 2006 by Judith Snowdon

Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam and a blog master at New Westminster Anglican Blog. Your thoughts, comments and contributions are always welcome.

Anglicans at the Metro Vancouver Alliance Community Leadership Institute

The February 1 and 2 session of Metro Vancouver Alliance’s Community Leadership Institute saw a dozen Anglicans meeting with members of various faith groups, community groups and union organizations to learn about the valuable work of the Alliance.

Our neighboring diocese to the south, the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, is already heavily involved with Sound Alliance, Metro Vancouver’s sister organization based in Seattle. Our hope is that our diocese and our individual parishes will take time to become acquainted with Metro Vancouver Alliance and seek to join the number of voices becoming part of “an organization of organizations” that aims to develop individual leadership capacity, strengthen institutions that are a part of the Alliance and work for the common good of civil society.

A very attractive aspect of the Alliance’s approach to community dialogue and creative handling of key community issues, is the philosophy that member groups leave their differences at the door and commit to entering into concerted (in the best sense of the word) efforts to effect positive social change. The goal is to join together to ‘take the world as it is’ and present a vision, issue by issue, of what the world should be. Workshop participant Lane Walker used the metaphor of ‘bringing in the Kingdom of God’ as an expression of this pursuit.

How is this accomplished? I urge you to attend a Community Leadership Institute to find out. Suffice it to say that the Metro Vancouver Alliance follows a well established process built on an “organizing cycle” that includes important and specific aspects of listening, discerning, planning, acting, and evaluating. In its presentation of the components of each of these parts of the cycle, the workshop was practical and inspirational. The networking with people was priceless. After the kinds of interaction featured in the workshop, one leaves with the reality of new friendships with people committed to enhancing the capacity for positive change in their own communities and in Greater Vancouver as a whole.

In terms of faith community engagement in the Vancouver Metro Alliance, the Roman Catholics have a strong presence, along with other churches such as the Church at the Hollywood in Kitsilano. I was especially inspired by the presence of three young men who  are members of Habonim Dror, the youth organization of the Labour Zionist Movement. Habonim Dror works to develop self-motivation, initiative, and an understanding of the concepts of social justice through education, actives, seminars and camping experiences. The organization is part of the Metro Vancouver Alliance.

I was also able to connect with two Roman Catholic nuns who have recently arrived in Vancouver from the Philippines and live on the Downtown East Side in the building that houses St. Paul’s RC Parish (down the street from St. James) and the Open Door where the Lutheran Urban Ministries holds its monthly community lunch. These women are very ecumenically minded, and anxious to strengthen faith community connections that exist in the St. James / St. Paul’s RC parish neighborhood.

So just discovering what other people are doing, and strengthening the realization that working together we can do so much more to increase the effectiveness of our own Anglican community in the Lower Mainland was reward enough for me.

And just a reminder…at her visit to our Bishop, Archdeacons and Regional Deans meeting last June, Metro Vancouver lead organizer Deborah Littman offered to engage parishes, deaneries and archdeaconries in community engagement and community listening workshops. After attending this weekend’s Metro Alliance event, I highly recommend we take advantage of this invitation. You will definitely find your ‘capacity’ increased.

 

Deborah Littman, Lead Organizer for the Vancouver Metro Alliance

http://iafnw.org/canada/metrovancouveralliance  (Vancouver Metro Alliance website)

 

Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam, and a blog master at the New Westminster Anglican Blog. 

 

 

Church of England Rejects Women bishops

What the Church of England has done today in refusing women’s participation in the episcopate is, to put it mildly, disgraceful. It reinforces the idea that, as an institution, this once great expression of the Body of Christ, our ‘mother church’ as the Anglican Church of Canada is simply sinking into social and spiritual irrelevancy.

Why should  anyone not associated directly with the Church of England pay attention to an expression of Christianity that has simply lost touch? There certainly isn’t any moral authority left. Moral authority and bold Gospel witness have been sacrificed to base institutional politics. That in itself is disgusting. Make no mistake. This unfortunate synod decision has nothing to do with “Biblical authority” or theological necessity.

The bright spot is that the initiative to move forward with equality in the episcopate passed in the houses of bishops and clergy. What is wrong with the laity? They are clearly doing their best to fulfill the worst stereotypes about what the Church and Christianity in general are all about.

Good for Christina Rees, a synod member and former chair of Women and the Church. She affirms the central Christian  hope for human justice which is to be our centre as servants of Jesus Christ in her statement that “Women bishops will come, but this is an unnecessary and an unholy delay”. Unholy indeed.

With women serving as bishops in other major provinces of the Anglican Communion, the ‘mother church’ has been left in the dust and can no longer be considered a leader of the Communion it originated.

“How much energy do we want to spend on this in the next decade?…” remarked Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The fact is a lot of energy will be spent needlessly because of this arcane decision; energy that could be used to further the ministry and mission of the church. The C of E will be further torn apart and spiral downwards, sinking in its own ineffectiveness. But at least, Williams expresses hope.

The reality that conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics – streams of Anglicanism that have contributed so much to the richness of the Anglican Christian expression – could contribute to this unfortunate situation is sad indeed. To argue that a “male only clergy” is “God’s will” is to belittle both God and the entire will of God for humanity. It’s incomprehensible and cannot be defended.

Good for Canterbury designate Bishop Justin Welby, even though his warnings were not heeded widely enough. He urged the gathered synod to compromise and vote for the measure, reminding delegates that the horrible conflicts in the Middle East and Africa are examples of what intractable differences can lead to. “We Christians are those who carry peace and grace as a treasure for the world. We must be those who live a better way, who carry that treasure visibly and distribute it lavishly”.  Apparently not so for some members of the Church of England. Welby’s declaration makes Jane Patterson’s plea not to “bow to cultural pressure” totally irrelevant and inconsequential. The rights of women to be bishops in the Church of God is not some kind of weak bowing the knee to Baal. Patterson talked about being “serious about sharing the Gospel with the nation”, but in terms of her argument, her stated intent is ironic, almost to the point of black humour. There will be no “sharing of the Gospel” when people perceive the intended vehicle of that sharing irrelevant and archaic, bound by its own institutional absurdities.

One major hope remains. Priest and religion commentator Peter Ould remarked of the future Archbishop of Canterbury, “This is a guy who’s gone off to Nigeria where he was nearly kidnapped and killed trying to bring conflicting parties together – I think he can handle the Church of England”. Let’s hope Welby’s leadership under the guidance of the Holy Spirit can restore some sense, credibility and relevance to the Church of England. There is certainly a significant number of women religious leaders on the world stage; the Church of England needs to contribute in all the ways it can.

Rev. Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam, and a blog master at New Westminster Anglican Blog. Your comments and contributions are always welcome. 

George Herbert’s “Crown of Praise”

As we near the end of our journey through The Temple, we see that Herbert’s ultimate ‘crown of praise’, is the ‘icon’ of his poetry. His art is an offering to a loving God with whom he is in relationship in the fullness of who and what he has been called to be. His poetry, as icon, represents a fusion of aesthetic simplicity and complexity through the introduction of a definite kind of order into the elements (prosody, statement of truth, imagery, diction, symbol, allusion, rhetorical devices) of specific poems so that those poems will be acceptable to God and spiritually illuminating to the human reader. As a poet/priest, the persona Herbert creates in The Temple serves both the God in whom he dwells and the human community where he has been placed to minister.

Nowhere is this situation more vividly illustrated than in such poems as “The Collar” and “Aaron”. In the former, the verse pattern moves from a marked disorder (which the poet initially conceives of as freedom) reflected in the rhythm and rhyme patterns to an ordered simplicity, a structural unity from which emerges the truth of the poet’s completed state of “childhood” in God. As Herbert scholar Joseph Summers noted some time back, in the last quatrain of the poem the “order in violent disorder” of the first eight quatrains is replaced with a true order which signifies Herbert’s renewed submission to the simplicity of God.

In contrast to the complexity in disarray of the first eight quatrains of “The Collar” is the completely ordered complexity of “Aaron”, the ultimate effect of which is a simplicity from which emerges the ‘simple’ truth of Christ’s all sufficiency for humanity. “Aaron” is thus faithful to the simplicity of spiritual truth which Herbert sought to reflect in his poetry; yet it illustrates Herbert’s mastery of complex poetic skills.

“Aaron” in its complexity (intricate bell-shaped stanzas, complexly woven verse patterns with rhyme and line parallels, and the pervading music metaphor — all of which practically invite one to read the poem six different ways by juxtaposing parallel lines) represents the creation of simplicity by a beautiful symmetry. If we look back in The Temple,  we begin to see more and more of this deliberate ordering of poetic intricacies from the subtlest pun to the most profound ‘metaphysical conceit’. The ultimate effect is a simplicity that for him manifests the presence of God in his art through the ‘simple’ statement of spiritual truths, but which does not destroy the complexity and subtlety in which the reader delights. Truly, the simplicity arises from the complexity.

Thus a spiritual ideal of simplicity, the basis of which is a particular concept of the nature of cosmic order and harmony, is translated into concrete aesthetic terms. In effecting this translation of ideals from the realm of the spirit to the realm of art lies much of Herbert’s true greatness as a lyric artist.

We close with a word about “Love III”, the climactic poem of “The Church” that represents the poet’s achievement of full Union with God. In “Love III”, the ideal and the real, or the transcendental and the everyday world, time and timelessness come together as the poet is lost in the simplicity or all-encompassing wholeness of God. It’s one of the most powerful moments in The Temple , for the most complex and heightened state of spiritual awareness is ultimately conveyed in terms of overwhelming simplicity; the poet approaches mystical Union with God as he sits down to a meal in response to a simple invitation:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my deare,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.

(“Love III”)

Not only does “Love III” reflect Anglican spirituality at its best, but it represents a skillful and aesthetically complex ordering of mystical, conventional love, and domestic statement, diction, and imagery. Yet the essence of the whole is a simplicity emerging from a purposefully ordered symmetry which in turn manifests both the spiritual simplicity of God seen in God’s response to humanity as all-embracing love (“You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat”), and God’s demand for nothing but humanity’s response of faith in return. The ordering of the spiritual life is the continual experience of the simplicity or the wholeness of being which is the image of God (“So I did sit and eat”).

In “Love III” Herbert once more fulfills his desire to embody the reality or presence of God in his art. For Herbert, ‘child of God plus priest plus poet’, makes an integrated personal whole. Herbert’s “utmost art” is this personal integration – a being at peace with itself as a perceived simple whole and as part of a greater simple whole. This situation, for Herbert, is to be ‘fully alive’.

We are all called  to create the icon of “Utmost Art” in our lives in Christ, and we each take our own paths to get there. Insight into George Herbert’s path makes us richer as Christians, as Anglicans and as human beings. We are all called to Simplicity in God as a state of life, ordering ourselves as part of something we embrace that is beyond ourselves.

That is the challenge of our Anglican expression of Christian faith; it is the basis of our wonderful Anglican diversity and opens us to the most profound questions about the Gospel and the One who embodied it, and whom we serve.

Thank you, George Herbert.

*  *  *  *  *

This series of essays on George Herbert is presented in honour of my beloved mentor Dr. Paul G. Stanwood, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia who inspired me in my own exploration of our rich Anglican spiritual tradition as embodied in the literature of 17th century England. It is based on a thesis I completed under Dr. Stanwood’s supervision, entitled “George Herbert’s Search for Simplicity in The Temple: Art and Life in the Image of God”.

Dr. Stanwood is a long time member of St. James’ Church in Vancouver. My son, Mark, also enjoyed Dr. Stanwood’s teaching as part of his degree in Religion and Literature. Paul has impacted two generations of the Bailey family. Thank you, Paul.

Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam, and a blog master at New Westminster Anglican Blog, blogsite of the Diocese of New Westminster. Your contributions and observations are welcome. 

 

Herbert’s Poetic Dilemma: Language and Simplicity of Life

Herbert’s restlessness with divesting himself from the best practices of poetic language and rhetorical practice is clearly brought to conscious expression in “The forerunners” where his rejection of “sweet phrases” and “lovely metaphors” is less than convincing. “The Forerunners” pictures the poet/persona supposedly in advanced age, losing his poetic skills. In his predicament, he embraces an aesthetic simplicity similar to that which we have seen a number of times before (“Antiphon I”, “Jordan I”, and “A True Hymne”) which will, he hopes, embody the “true beautie” he seeks to celebrate according to his stated intentions in “Jordan I” and “Jordan II”. The tone, however, is one of resignation. He loves his “sweet phrases” and “lovely metaphors”. They have, in fact, helped him to embody “true beautie”, the presence of God in his life and art, all along:

Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors.

But will ye leave me thus? when ye before

Of stews and brothels onely knew the doors,

Then did I wash you with my tears, and more,

Brought you to Church well drest and clad:

My God must have my best, ev’n all I had.

(“The Forerunners”, ll. 13-18)

In truth, he has saved the elements of the poetic art from the “soil” of misuse rather than renouncing them in favour of a barren kind of simplicity. His responsibility as an artist makes such a renunciation impossible:

Lovely enchanting language, sugar-cane,

Hony of roses, whither wilt thou flie?

Hath some fond lover tic’d thee to thy bane?

And wilt thou leave the Church, and love a stie?

Fie, thou wilt soil thy broider’d coat

And hurt thy self, and him that sings the note.

Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung

with canvas, not with arras, clothe their shame:

Let follie speak in her own native tongue.

True beautie dwells on high: ours is a flame

But borrow’d thence to light us thither.

Beautie and beauteous words should go together.

(“The Forerunners”, ll. 19-30)

Implicit in the very tones of doubtful resignation which pervades “The Forerunners”, then, is Herbert’s realization that “Thou art still my God” just is not the way to write poems even though this kind of simplicity has been valued in the past. The air of resignation becomes even more marked toward the end of the poem:

Yet if you go, I passe not; take your way;

For, Thou art still my God, is all that ye

Perhaps with more embellishment can say.

Go birds of spring: let winter have his fee;

Let a bleak paleness chalk the door,

So all within be livelier then before.

(“The Forerunners”, ll. 31-36

The “birds of spring” are difficult to give up. That which strips him of resources as a poet is a “harbinger”, indeed, and not a purifier. His art must be full, not scant, and yet ‘simple’. It must fulfill the aesthetic requirements which challenge the master of a beautifully complex art, and yet retain the simplicity which manifests the image and presence of God. Herbert cannot sustain an artistic identity which demands that

Invention rest,

Comparisons go play, wit use thy will:

(“The Posie”, ll. 9-10)

Ultimately, his “crown of praise” is not “Thou art still my God”, or “My God and King”, but the “wreathed garland”, the skillfully woven art of the poet which, when infused with a simplicity that manifests the image of God, becomes a crown of praise:

A wreathed garland of deserved praise,

Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,

I give to thee, who knowest all my ways,

My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,

Wherein I die, not live: for life is straight,

Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,

To thee, who art more farre above deceit,

Then deceit seems above simplicitie.

Give me simplicitie, that I may live,

So live and like, that I may know, thy wayes,

Know them and practise them: then shall I give

For this poore wreath give thee a crown of praise.

(“A Wreath”)

In “A Wreath”, Herbert prays for the simplicity of God which will introduce order into his “crooked winding ways”, making them straight.  Life, found only in the simplicity of God, is identified with that which is “straight” or ordered. Death is found in the “winding wayes”, and is identified with an unordered state of existence. It is the life of ordered simplicity that lives and practices the ways of God, responding to God with the “utmost” in life and art. Awareness of order is the genesis of true simplicity in life and art.  Thus “A  Wreath” in one respect represents a climax of Herbert’s investigations into the nature of the simplicity for which he has striven in seeking throughout The Temple to conform his art to the image of God. The threads of his investigation converge with his final arrival at a complete awareness that simplicity in art as well as in life is the result of a particular ordering of things which without the unifying presence of that order reflect a sheer complexity or disarray foreign to the image of God.

The intimate relationship between life and art that has been celebrated since “The Thanksgiving” is given its ultimate expression through a direct appeal to the ideal of simplicitas which brings together the four thematic movements that we have identified as basic to Herbert’s quest for poetic simplicity in the context of his dual audience : (1) the discussion of the relationship between life and art which stresses that poetry embodying the image of God comes only from a life conformed to the image of God; (2) the discussion of the ordered life which manifests the image of God as a life of simplicity; (3) the discussion of the ordered life of simplicity in aesthetic terms; and (4) the discussion of the poetic art in terms of a search for aesthetic simplicity. The journey is being completed.

Next time: What can we conclude from our journey through The Temple?

Steve Bailey is a deacon at St. Laurence, Coquitlam. George Herbert was a 17th century English poet and priest who represents one important stream of Anglican spirituality. Your comments and contributions are always welcome.