On the humanities

 

Museum Island, Berlin

Today marks one year since the WHO designated Covid-19 as a global pandemic. In a way, the year has been interesting, with the opportunity to observe all kinds of changes that happen when you remove (or add, I suppose) a number of variables from society. It feels like a million things have changed, but one that has especially stood out to me is how we as a public have lost access to the humanities. Obviously, there are other major factors involved as well, but I don't believe that it's a coincidence that the abrupt closure of museums, concert venues, theaters, etc. has walked side by side with expanding societal unrest. I think the impact of this temporary loss of our artistic institutions betrays the significant role these play in the human experience. It demonstrates how crucial it is to preserve them, because in many ways, they speak to our souls.

Since the nineteenth century, our culture has been steadily moving in a direction that could easily be called iconoclastic. The Enlightenment ushered in an age of science, empiricism, and materialism, putting everything Utilitarian on a pedestal. Within this cultural climate, technological or scientific innovation will always win out against artistic expression because there is no apparent "use" for the latter. Instead, the arts have devolved into mere ornamentation; something you keep on hand to make things look pretty or announce how important you are. We look down on the arts as glorified play; something the soft-minded among us need to leave behind as they grow up and get a real job.

Even modern art is an attack on art itself. Deconstruction has reduced the arts merely into a tool used to investigate or denounce how one demographic wields power over another. The creation of art is no longer possible, because all previously-held notions of what constitutes art are just arbitrary opinions of whatever group of taste-makers was most powerful, and therefore need to be abandoned if art is to be truly free. Thus, thousands of years of representational art give way to the abstract; the subjective pursuit of objective beauty gives way to a celebration of anti-beauty (ugliness); formal technique gives way to chaos. Since we don't like how everyone before us understood art, it's best to attack the concept altogether. It's an exercise in announcing that we aren't like other girls.

 

Both these conceptions of art - mere ornament or tool - strip everything numinous, transcendent, and desirable from it. Doing so has taken away the power of art.

STEM helps us in many ways, and I don't begrudge that at all. But we have done both STEM and the humanities a disservice by guiding the former into territories it has no business entering in the first place. The sciences might help us better understand the world around us, but they don't make the act of living in it any more bearable or worthwhile. This is where the arts come in. In the realm of the arts and humanities, the goals and priorities are different. It isn't really about innovating or discovering or improving something. Many people agree that it's impossible to truly define what art is, but most explanations come back to ideas of expressing, in a beautiful way, what we share in common as humans and how these participate in some greater meaning for our lives. It links us together with one another, but also with the transcendent - with the Divine. It is a balm for our souls. One look at the Psalms confirms this.

In a sadly-ironic turn of events, the last year has revealed the limits of modern science while simultaneously handicapping our ability to cope with that grim reality. We still have recorded music, streamed theatrical performances, and online collections, but the public/communal nature of art has been lost in translation. I miss the experience of responding to art in the company of other people; it makes me feel less of an individual and more of a human.

40 pages and worth every one of them

What is happening with his leg?

I recently read Peter Abelard's Historia Calamitatum, which I was interested in because of his notorious incident with Heloise; theoretically, he sets out to give a short account of the hardships of his life for the supposed edification of his reader. In reality, however, the thing is so melodramatic that roughly half the reviews on Goodreads give it five stars for sheer self-important comedy. You know it's going to be good when this is one of the opening sentences:

This I do so that, in comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of small account, and so shall you come to bear them more easily.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he was a glass-half-empty kind of guy.

 

Anyway, what made me really giggle was a passage that came later on, when he describes the unmitigated joy of presiding over a congregation monastery.

No one, methinks, could fail to understand how persistently that undisciplined body of monks, the direction of which I had thus undertaken, tortured my heart day and night, or how constantly I was compelled to think of the danger alike to my body and to my soul. I held it for certain that if I should try to force them to live according to the principles they had themselves professed, I should not survive.

Those Mondays are just killers.

Calm and uproar

Wisconsin

“I’m not leaving for anywhere, am I?” says the Word of God. Imbed your home in him, place in safekeeping with him whatever you have from him, my soul—if only because you’re worn out by lies. Place in safekeeping with the truth whatever you possess from the truth, and you won’t lose anything. The things that have rotted in you will flower again, and all the afflictions that make you sluggish will be healed, and the things that are slack will be remade and renewed and hold together with you. They won’t drop you in the depths (where they themselves go), but will stand steady at your side and hold their ground in the presence of God, who also stands steady and holds his ground.

(St. Augustine, Confessions 4.16; Sarah Ruden, trans.)

Lately, I've been reading Sarah Ruden's translation of Augustine's Confessions, and it's made the book come alive in a way it never had for me before. The prose is beautiful, making Augustine's thoughts vivid, memorable, and - inevitably for 2020 - deeply cathartic. It's been an absolute pleasure to slowly take in, like reading a high-quality, meditative, contemporary novel (meant in the best possible sense). 

In my current mental space, it's impossible to separate the excerpt above from two previous literary moments in my life (Milton in college and T.S. Eliot in grad school). All three of these speak to one of the dialogues in the western tradition that I find most poignant: specifically, the interplay between identifying/pursuing the good life and coping with devastating loss. Especially during the past few years, I've been growing to appreciate how, for an overwhelming number of the authors in our tradition, the two are more closely linked than you'd initially believe them to be.

There is so little permanence in our lives, and it's something I think the world has been collectively experiencing in a profound way for the majority of this past year. Transience and wandering are recurring themes in the Confessions, and I love how Augustine touches on a paradox initially hinted at by Christ ("For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it," Matt. 16.25). By handing the promises God gives us back to Him for "safekeeping," we can be certain they will always be ours. We'll never lose the most important things in life.

Significantly, Augustine assumes that we develop this ethos by engaging with the written word. He identifies God's promises as truth, and truth can be found in Scripture. Immersion in objective truth is the best antidote to despair. (Sidebar: this doesn't necessarily involve going on some painfully-subjective pietist safari of color-coded bible study. I was recently shocked to discover that high-functioning low achievers like me can read the whole thing in a year if you do about 3 chapters a day. That's like 5-10 minutes of reading.)

I've had my share of disturbingly dark moments in recent years, but I'm starting to recognize the hand of God even in the "rock bottom" experiences, because they showed me how much I need Him. As Augustine says just a few sentences earlier, "the Word itself shouts for you to return, and there lies a place of calm that will never know any uproar, where love is not abandoned unless it abandons."

Sunday night Donne

Wilt thou love God as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting—for he ne'er begun—
Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
'Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

(Holy Sonnet 15)

Having never read all of Donne's Holy Sonnets before (and they gave me English degrees!), I fell in love with his writing even more when I read this tonight. Apparently producing some of the most seminal, beautiful poetry in the English language just isn't enough if you don't casually throw it together by framing it in systematic trinitarian theology. In 14 lines he covers:

• Creation
• Theology proper (+ emphasizing orthodox distinctions)
  
• Anthropology
• Biblical covenantal typology
• The fall
• The incarnation
• Christ's exaltation and humiliation
• The atonement
• Double imputation
• Predestination
• Adoption
• Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
  
• Eschatology. 

Did I say this was in 14 lines? In one of the most complex poetic/stylistic traditions in the English language? And he masterfully weaves this together in the spirit of a devotional meditation on the love of God. I love the layers.

More two kingdoms

Another year, another VanDrunen book, another apt passage. This time on Christians and the public sphere. I can't prove it, but I'm starting to wonder whether he's been tracking the zeitgeist of my FB feed these past few months. Just throwing that out there.

Finally, the Christian’s attitude should be charitable, compassionate, and cheerful. If Christians are truly confident in God, as just discussed, they must show charity to their neighbors, for faith works through love (Gal 5:6). They should overflow with the compassion of their Lord (e.g., Col 3:12; cf. Matt 9:36, e.g.). Christians are often quick to view people of different political opinion as their enemies. In some cases, they may indeed be enemies, yet love for enemy is a chief attribute of Christ’s disciples (Matt 5:43–48). It is deeply unbecoming when Christians complain incessantly about the state of political affairs, especially Christians who enjoy levels of prosperity, freedom, and peace that are the envy of the world. It is easy to be angry about losing one’s country—as if any country ever belonged to Christians. It is easy to demonize political opponents—as if Christians themselves are not sinners saved entirely by grace. It is easy to become bitter—as if “the lines” had not “fallen for [them] in pleasant places,” as if they did not have “a beautiful inheritance” (Ps 16:6). Christians have become heirs of a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus they say, “My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices” (Ps 16:9). Those who are heirs of new creation are truly the most blessed of people, and while they wait for their Lord’s return they have opportunity to love and bless all of their neighbors, even those who do not respond in kind, and to do so with a joyful spirit.

(Politics After Christendom, pp. 168-169)

Law and memory

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart,
And on their mind I will write them,”

He then says,

“And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.”

(Hebrews 10.11-17)

Characteristically for Hebrews, this passage comes in the midst of a discussion of Christ's role as mediator of a new, better covenant for us. I like how the author describes what takes place during this process, particularly in the parallelism he draws out concerning memory and double imputation. In "renewing our minds," God permanently fixes righteousness in our memory and heart. Meanwhile, He promises to forget our sin. We now remember righteousness, and He discards the memory of our sinfulness.

Staying alive

At some point during the last few months, the thought occurred to me that this business of living in quarantine during a global pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to read Boccaccio's Decameron. It was always a text I was interested in, particularly for the influence it had on Chaucer (and to go rather niche, Marguerite de Navarre), but I'd never felt drawn to it until now. My husband has several preexisting conditions which make Covid 19 more dangerous for us, and so the sense of isolation, uncertainty, loss, and - in the cases of New York and Italy, horror - feel like common experiences linking this to the past. From what I understand, Boccaccio is considered an important source for our information on what the Black Death was like, and although our current pandemic is thankfully a much less severe phenomenon than his, it's eerie to see all the parallels between what happened then and what is ongoing now. I always thought that quarantines and large-scale diseases were inherently old-fashioned things, and it just seems so bizarre to be living though one today.

Anyway, one significant theme throughout the stories in the Decameron is the question of how we grapple with the devastating consequences of sin in the church - whether institutionally in leaders or personally in laypeople. Recent years have been a challenge in this arena for me, between getting caught in the middle of an ecclesiastical disaster and witnessing the increasing polarization of Christianity in politics. I've seen hatred on both individual and corporate levels that I never realized was possible in the church, especially in the response to the current pandemic. All of that tends to get you feeling pretty hopeless about the present state of affairs, but, as you see in the late medieval church, widespread sin is nothing new for us. During the first day of Boccaccio's collection, there's a story about a Jewish businessman who converts to Christianity after visiting Rome, and his explanation for it seemed as timely as ever.

After Abraham had rested for a few days, Jehannot asked him what sort of opinion he had formed about the Holy Father and the cardinals and the other members of the papal court. Whereupon the Jew promptly replied:

'A bad one, and may God deal harshly with the whole lot of them. And my reason for telling you so is that, unless I formed the wrong impression, nobody there who was connected with the Church seemed to me to display the slightest sign of holiness, piety, charity, moral rectitude or any other virtue. On the contrary, it seemed to me that they were all so steeped in lust, greed, avarice, fraud, envy, pride, and other like sins and worse (if indeed that is possible), that I regard the place as a hotbed for diabolical rather than devotional activities. As far as I can judge, it seems to me that your pontiff, and all of the others too, are doing their level best to reduce the Christian religion to nought and drive it from the face of the earth, whereas they are the very people who should be its foundation and support.

'But since it is evident to me that their attempts are unavailing, and that your religion continues to grow in popularity, and become more splendid and illustrious, I can only conclude that, being a more holy and genuine religion than any of the others, it deservedly has the Holy Ghost as its foundation and support. So whereas earlier I stood firm and unyielding against your entreaties and refused to turn Christian, I now tell you quite plainly that nothing in the world could prevent me from becoming a Christian. Let us therefore go to the church where, in accordance with the traditional rite of your holy faith, you shall have me baptized.'

(Boccaccio, Decameron, pp. 40-41)

Thankful that God grows and nurtures the church despite its best efforts.

Keach and poetics (pt. 3)

Hohenschwangau, Bavaria

2. Christ is the Spring, or the Original
Of earthly beauty, and Celestial.
That beauty which in glorious Angels shine,
Or is in Creatures natural, or Divine,
It flows from him: O it is he doth grace
The mind with glorious beauty, as the face.

(The Glorious Lover, II.iii.49-54)

Following his discussion of the desirability of Christ's beauty, Keach turns his attention to its originality. 

Although there isn't any explicit reference to it, I think it's possible that Keach is interacting with Platonic thought in this passage. This comes through in several ways. In one sense, we see Plato's theory of forms in the tension Keach highlights between contingent, finite beauty we experience as humans and its relationship to its perfect, infinite “counterpart” in the character of God. Earthly beauty exists as a shadow of divine beauty, because the created by its very nature can only serve as a sort of typology for the creator. Earthly types and heavenly fulfillment is a common theme in puritan writing, as seen in Lewis Bayly's flagship text on spirituality, The Practice of Piety:

“...if thou believest that God is beauty and perfection itself, why dost not thou make him alone the chief end of all thine affections and desires? for if thou lovest beauty, he is most fair; if thou desirest riches, he is most wealthy; if thou seekest wisdom, he is most wise. Whatsoever excellency thou hast seen in any creature, it is nothing but a sparkle of that which is in infinite perfection in God...”

Keach also emphasizes way God's beauty is the origin or source of beauty as we experience it. Its function as a fountainhead for created beauty establishes its authority over the latter, as well as showcasing its role as the source which creates and empowers it. Because of this relationship, earthly beauty, at its best, is characterized by its humility. It is not something that is meant to draw attention to itself, but rather to draw the beholder's attention back to its divine origins. Yet, at the same time, this relationship also elevates earthly experiences of beauty because of their ability to connect humanity with the numinous.

I think it's also important to note that while the philosophical undertones are an interesting possibility here, it's likely that Keach is primarily focused on emphasizing orthodox trinitarian concepts like God's aseity and simplicity, and the way we bear his image in His communicable attributes. Not only is He the font from which we receive our experience of beauty or even beauty in its perfection, He is beauty. There's a sense that this portion of The Glorious Lover synthesizes New Testament discussions of God's ontology with the bride's joy in the beauty of her beloved in the Song of Solomon:

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.” (Romans 11.36)

“The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.” (Acts 17.24-28a)

“My beloved is dazzling and ruddy,
Outstanding among ten thousand.
...And he is wholly desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.” (Song of Solomon 5.10, 16)

-----

Keach concludes the passage with an interesting distinction between beauty of the “mind” and beauty of the “face.” On one level, this can be understood as a comparison between inner and outer beauty. In Sonnet XV of his Amoretti cycle, Spenser devotes the first twelve lines of his poem cataloguing his beloved's appealing physical traits, but, in the turn, he declares that her most important/precious feature is her character:

“But that which fairest is, but few behold,
  her mind adornd with vertues manifold.”

However, it's crucial to recognize that this is not simply a distinction between internal and external qualities (I'm staring at you, Every Contemporary Beauty Movement), but more precisely, a focus on the relationship between beauty and intellect. In the Renaissance context, beauty was not valued only for carnal/physical considerations, but, more importantly, for its intellectual qualities. To view it as a merely material phenomenon was to debase it to an animalistic drive and turn it into lust. This is where we get all the epithets about “brutish” appetites. Beauty was pure and true when it engaged all aspects of being human; in this context, it elevated the individual. Thus we see in Shakespeare's (most?) famous sonnet language that glorifies the enduring nature of an intellectual love connection over the vanishing appeal of the senses:

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
...Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come...” (CXVI)

All in all, it's an emphasis on conceptual beauty, or, in other words, virtue gained through understanding. For Keach, this ties back to the reformed dogma that faith and knowledge necessarily go hand in hand. Hearing the Word brings about faith (i.e. the ability to see Christ's beauty), and once we have this faith, we can finally begin to know Him.

Finally, I find it interesting that Keach doesn't mitigate material/earthly beauty here, but rather, affirms it. The key is that it must always be tied to virtue. And so we circle back to the ubiquitous Renaissance understanding of aesthetics, of art as something intended to “delight and instruct” (Sidney). I think that we can see this as yet another instance of Keach's project of reinventing the romance genre into something fundamentally wholesome - a marriage of aesthetics and devotion.

[Part One]

[Part Two]

Keach and poetics (pt. 2)

Hofgarten, Munich

1. His Beauty is so much desirable,
No souls that see it any ways are able
For to withstand the influ’nce of the same;
They’re so enamour’d with it, they proclaim
There’s none like him in Earth, nor Heav’n above;
It draws their hearts, and makes them fall in love
Immediately, so that they cannot stay
From following him one minute of a day.
The flock is left, the Herd, and fishing Net,
As soon as e’er the Soul its Eye doth set
Upon his face, or of it takes a view,
They’ll cleave to him, whatever doth insue.

(The Glorious Lover, II.iii.37-48)

In the sections following his "prologue" to beauty, Keach outlines eight ways his revision of the epic/romance genre baptizes literary art. The beauty of Christ does not simply transcend earthly beauty; it transforms it into something like itself.

The first in the list is the desirability of Christ's beauty. Keach seems to be especially interested in connecting this trait with a broader theology of effectual calling that recurs throughout the poem. Divine calling of a sinner to salvation, in this light, is so attractive that the subject finds it irresistible. Keach goes out of his way to subtly underline the sinner's ability to even apprehend or conceive of such beauty; the credit does not lie in our capacity to recognize divine desirability, but rather in its "influence" that - though we try to "withstand" it - must necessarily overpower us. It's very reminiscent of the final talking point of Luther's Heidelberg Disputation: 

"The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it."

-----

Additionally, from a literary standpoint, it's interesting to see how Keach features sight as a motif in this section. One way he develops this theme is by exploring a sense of double blindness. The pre-conversion sinner is totally blind to the spiritual reality surrounding him: she cannot recognize or even see the beauty of Christ, much less appreciate it or take hold of it for herself. She is utterly disabled. However, the post-conversion Christian also experiences a type of blindness, but this time, it is toward the things of the world. This, combined with lines 40-41, suggest an allusion to Psalm 73:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (vv. 25-26)

Just a glimpse of Christ is enough for the Christian to leave behind all secular concerns and gaze on Him - a gaze so strong that Keach considers it a kind of "cleaving." This focus on Christ effectively blinds the Christian to the doubts and material threats that accompany a relationship with God, because the Christian's eyes are "enamoured" with the greater spiritual reality now visible to her.

Keach's use of the word "enamour" here is interesting, given the Renaissance literary background The Glorious Lover emerges from in England. Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare often connect the experience of being in love with sickness and sorcery (the connection between the latter two would be familiar to readers because of the Greek term, "pharmakeia"). When Titania recovers from her love potion in A Midsummer Night's Dream, she exclaims:

My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamored of an ass. (IV.i.77-78)

To be "enamoured" was an inherently visual experience, as Shakespeare's Titania conceives of her love as a type of vision. Similarly, in his old Arcadia, Sidney utilizes the term in conjunction with the devious acts of Cupid (who is known for his arrows that, when striking someone, cause the victim to fall in love with the first person they see):

But whom to send for their search she knew not, when Cupid (I think for some greater mischief) offered this Plangus unto her, who from the day of her first imprisonment was so extremely enamoured of her that he had sought all means how to deliver her. (54)

Thus, to be enamoured is to be enchanted. Though he dispenses with the sinister undertones of the term present in mainstream literature, Keach remains very interested in its magical connotations. The Calvinism undergirding Keach's theology underscores the supernatural nature of conversion, and the notes of magic in his language reinforce both the spirituality as well as powerful intervention in natural affairs that is taking place.

Keach is not the first devotional poet to be drawn to the spiritual sight/blindness motif. There's a parallel moment in The Temple, in which Herbert frames conversion in language of sight and restoration:

 Our eies shall see thee, which before saw dust;
       Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blinde:
       Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kinde,
Who wert disseized by usurping lust:

       All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
       And praise him who did make and mend our eies. ("Love II")

It isn't surprising that Keach is drawn to the sight motif in order to carry his point, given his extensive work on Scriptural metaphors and the prevalence of the trope in biblical literature. In Tropologia, Keach's introduction to the segment of metaphors pertaining to the word of God includes a lengthy discussion of light and sight. He writes:

As light is Glorious because it is the most Excellent Rayes, Resplendency and Shinings forth of the Sun; so is the Gospel, because 'tis the glorious shining forth and resplendency of Jesus Christ the Sun of Righteousness.

The light of the Gospel - contained in the words of Scripture - awakens faith in the sinner, enabling her eyes to see the glory and beauty of Christ.

-----

The overall tone of this passage is one of the spiritual transcending, intervening in, or overriding the carnal. The supernatural nature of the Gospel miraculously restores spiritual sight to blind eyes while simultaneously blinding them to the distractions of the world. Conceptions of beauty and ugliness become fluid in the accompanying reversal of values. This primacy of the spiritual echoes Keach's apology for his work, in which he condemns worldly versions of the romance genre and reinvents these forms for his spiritual task:

How many do their precious time abuse
On cursed products of a wanton Muse;
On trifling Fables, and Romances vain,
The poisoned froth of some infected Brain? (43-46)

Here’s no such danger, but all pure and chast;
A Love most fit by Saints to be embrac’d:
A Love ‘bove that of Women... (51-53)

Spiritually-enlightened poetry, which demonstrates the desirability of Christ by highlighting His beauty, redeems the romance genre from its corrupt uses in the secular realm. Enlightenment is a key theme in Keach's poetry, something he reinforces by baptizing the very genre itself.

[Part One]

Comedy and the Psalms

"The Kiss of Peace and Justice," Laurent de La Hyre

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
Praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord
From this time forth and forever.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations;
His glory is above the heavens.

Who is like the Lord our God,
Who is enthroned on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and in the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes,
With the princes of His people.
He makes the barren woman abide in the house
As a joyful mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

(Psalm 113)

We frequently sing this psalm in church, and - confession here - it wasn't until recently, when the tune was stuck in my head for a week, that I thought about its lyrics on any "deep" level. (Not sure if I should be proud of that sentence?) Anyways, what really stood out to me is how God's intervention in human affairs often has a topsy-turvy effect on whatever it touches. The poor sit with princes, the childless become parents, the disgraced become joyful. It is a complete disruption in the expected, conventional social order.

This phenomenon reminded me a lot of one of the major tropes you find in comedies, particularly those of the Renaissance. Upset of the existing order is present in almost any comic plot. The formula of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a perfect example. It moves from order (the city of Athens, rule of law, parental/governmental/patriarchal authority, objectivity) to disorder (the forest, rule of magic, a power struggle between Titania and Oberon, and a dreamlike escape into a world that blurs the participants' grasp of reality), and then quickly restores the old order, but with modifications (restoration, harmony, marriage, benevolent interplay between the two societies). The conclusion features justice and mercy coming together in peace.

Although I used a Renaissance play to illustrate my point, ancient culture is full of the same trope. The Athenian comedies feature women unexpectedly ruling their husbands, while the Roman holiday of Saturnalia included a day in which masters served their slaves. In this light, I think it can be a helpful way to read the psalm as reminiscent of the phenomenon of deep comedy. God's work in our lives often functions as an upset in what we expect, but that is not a bad thing.

Interestingly, the psalmist reinforces this effect of God in human affairs by also meditating on its theological context first. The works of creation, providence, and salvation are all intrinsically acts of condescension on God's part. God's "glory is above the heavens" but He "humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth." In Christ's work of redemption, we witness Him leave the throne room of heaven to become "lower than the angels" (Hebrews 2.9) by living a difficult human life and experiencing a horrific death. But this is followed by His resurrection, ascension, and - everybody leaves this one out - session at the right hand of the Father. The order is restored, but there is now peace between God and man. Righteousness and mercy kiss (Psalm 85.10).

Ironically, in this context, the chaos becomes a comfort. It is a reminder that the children of God receive in their salvation something that fallen creatures would never deserve - twisted criminals are now heirs. It is a meditation on the merciful and humble nature of God, who was willing to exchange glory for shame. It is the reassurance that God is not absent, but rather at work - the presence of chaos (the middle portion of the cycle), necessarily implies the return of order and harmony (the restoration in the conclusion).