AAR/SBL in Baltimore: a report in rhyme

Scholars
At SBL and AAR,
Scholars come from near and far
To drink together at the bar.

Papers
At AAR and SBL,
Everyone is smart as hell
(Their papers can be hell as well).

Sightseeing
All the scholars stop and stare
At Oliver Crisp and his facial hair.

Jobs
If you have a PhD
And like to be abused,
You can pay an extra fee
To go to interviews.

Books
Thousands of new books on display,
But which are worth reading? Who can say?

Publishers
They greet you with kind words and friendly looks.
But when your back is turned they pounce –
And force you to write books.

Length
Two things are exceedingly long
(I won't say exceedingly weird):
The first is a book by Nicholas Tom,
The second is Oliver's beard.

Panel
I went to the afternoon panel,
It sounded excellent too;
But I fled for my life when I heard someone mention
The names of Zizek and Badiou.

Friends
My friend had drunk too many drinks
At the Wipf & Stock reception.
He kissed my cheek and said, "I'm straight –
But for you I'd make an exception."

New book
When you see them buying and selling your book,
You suddenly feel exposed:
Like one of those dreams where you're preaching a sermon
But haven't put on any clothes.

Homesick
By Sunday I was feeling blue.
I missed the ones I left at home:
My dog, my cat –
By Tuesday I had missed my family too.

The girl and George Herbert (version 2.0)

Yesterday I related this anecdote about my visit to Bemerton and a cafe in Salisbury. When I wrote the post I found the ending quite lame, but didn't know how to improve it. But thanks to a wonderful comment by Alan Jacobs, I've now been able to rewrite the post, and to give it a proper ending. It is a pleasure – a very great pleasure – to be wrong about something when it means you get to be corrected by a person like Alan Jacobs. So here's the new version.

--

Today I walked to the church in Bemerton where George Herbert had been a priest. I sat for an hour alone in the tiny church, reading from a book of Herbert's poems, kneeling to pray, carrying on a private little conversation with the bones of my poet which lie resting somewhere under the altar. I contemplated his poem "The Call," and for the briefest second his description of Christ as "such a feast as mends in length" lit up my mind like lightning, so that I seemed to have glimpsed the naked essential truth of things (though I could not tell you afterwards exactly what it was).

The walk back to Salisbury takes about an hour, and even though it was quite wet and cold I made my way along the muddy path with a light heart, feeling very glad and free.

At an upstairs cafe in a restored medieval building in Salisbury I was brought coffee by a girl with a face like Helen of Troy. When she put down the coffee on the table beside my hand, I thought: men would launch ships, they would send their sons to war, for a face like this. She was turning to leave so I asked her for a glass of water, not because I needed water but because I needed her to come back and stand a moment longer near me, outlined against the wide window and the grey sky. I watched her turn to walk away and I thought, my God, even her knees are perfect. I wondered what her knees would look like without the black stockings. And such small feet! I imagined her gently kicking off the small black shoes, one by one, and walking barefoot across the floor.

I tasted the coffee and it was very good. She came back and put a glass of water down on the table. Her hair was longer than I had remembered and her eyes were darker than I had remembered. Because the table was so low, she had to bend down to place the glass in front of me. I averted my eyes. I looked at the light that rippled on the surface of the water in the glass.

I wished I were a stage director. I would give her the part of Cleopatra and find an Antony to make speeches to her. I wished I were an artist. I would draw her, every inch of her, in blackest charcoal. I wanted to capture the light in her dark eyes. I wanted to bless her, salute her, memorialise her, build an altar to her. I wanted to do so many things.

The glass of water came to rest on the table in front of me. Her fingers slid away from the wet glass. Her small feet padded away on the wooden floor.

I do not mean to make you blush, reader. I record these details purely for the sake of contrast. For am I not the same identical person who, one hour before, had sat in the church at Bemerton thinking the most pious thoughts I ever had in all my life? That entire hour of prayer and contemplation; my proximity to the bones of a saint whom I have loved my whole life; the feeling of God's will wrapping all around me like a cloak – what happened to all that? An hour ago my heart had gone to Bemerton. Now with all my heart – the same heart! – I was contemplating other things.

It makes you realise that pious thoughts and religious feelings are a fine thing as far as they go – but they don't go very far. Less than an hour, as it turns out.

Or was the girl's effect on me more closely related to the effect that Bemerton had had on me an hour before? Did my soul wake up too much at Bemerton, so that instead of stumbling drowsily through life as usual I was, in that cafe, staring reality in the face? Is that why the first human being who crossed my path seemed so unbearably bright and piercing? Was I tempted to worship her for the simple reason that I saw her for what she really is: the image of God in black stockings? Was it merely – merely! – the radiance of a real human being that pierced my heart and knocked my soul off balance?

Was all this, in short, a spiritual side-effect of praying in the little church in Bemerton?

Perhaps it is a mercy that we normally perceive each other so dimly, like shadows gliding by in a dream. Perhaps God dulls our senses out of kindness, knowing that if we saw each other for what we really are, we would spend every day half-blinded by the light reflected in every face. We would be paralysed by glory. We would never get anything done. Our hearts would be so ravished by the sight of even the most unexceptional human beings that we would be constantly struggling against (or yielding to) the temptation to fall at their feet and worship them.

We see one another through a glass darkly: thank God for that! But after going to Bemerton and kneeling in a place where prayer has been valid, I came back out into the light of day and accidentally saw another human being face to face. And now I will have to live somehow with the consequences.

On the limits of thinking pious thoughts

Today I walked to the church in Bemerton where George Herbert had been a priest. I sat for an hour alone in the tiny church, reading from a book of Herbert's poems, kneeling to pray, carrying on a private little conversation with the bones of my poet which lie resting somewhere under the altar. I contemplated his poem "The Call," and for the briefest second his description of Christ as "such a feast as mends in length" lit up my mind like lightning, so that all at once I seemed to have glimpsed the bare essential truth of things (though I could not tell you afterwards exactly what it was).

The walk back to Salisbury takes about an hour, and even though it was quite wet and cold I made my way along the muddy path with a light heart, feeling very glad and free.

At an upstairs cafe in a restored medieval building in Salisbury I was brought coffee by a girl with a face like Helen of Troy. When she put down the coffee on the table beside my hand, I thought: men would launch ships, they would send their sons to war, for a face like this. She was turning to leave so I asked her for a glass of water, not because I needed water but because I needed her to come back and stand a moment longer near me, outlined against the wide window and the grey sky. I watched her turn to walk away and I thought, my God, even her knees are perfect. I wondered what her knees would look like without the black stockings. And such small feet! I imagined her gently kicking off the small black shoes, one by one, and walking barefoot across the floor.

I tasted the coffee and it was very good. She came back and put a glass of water down on the table. Her hair was longer than I had remembered and her eyes were darker than I had remembered. Because the table was so low, she had to bend down to place the glass in front of me. I averted my eyes. I looked at the light that rippled on the surface of the water in the glass.

I wished I were a stage director. I would give her the part of Cleopatra and find an Antony to make long speeches to her. I wished I were an artist. I would draw her, every inch of her, in blackest charcoal. I wanted to capture the light in her dark eyes. I wanted to bless her, salute her, memorialise her, build an altar to her. I wanted to do so many things.

The glass of water came to rest on the table in front of me. Her fingers slid away from the wet glass. Her small feet padded away on the wooden floor.

I do not mean to make you blush, reader. I record these details purely for the sake of contrast. For am I not the same identical person who, one hour before, had sat in the church at Bemerton thinking the most pious thoughts I have ever had in all my life? That entire hour of prayer and contemplation; my proximity to the bones of a saint whom I have loved my whole life; the feeling of God's will encompassing me like a cloak – what happened to all that? An hour ago my heart had gone to Bemerton. Now with all my heart – the same heart! – I was contemplating other things.

It makes you realise that pious thoughts and religious feelings are a fine thing as far as they go – but they don't go very far. Less than an hour, as it turns out.

So I suppose like everybody else I will have to go on living the Christian life the slow way. I will have to remember that it is more important to be faithful than to be pious. I will have to go on saying my prayers and taking communion and giving alms and wetting my fingers in the baptismal font, day after day and year after year.

I am still glad for one calm clear hour in the church at Bemerton, for the chance to pray with the bones of George Herbert sleeping under my feet. I am glad, too, to have been lucky enough to see a face like the face of the girl at the cafe. For all I know she might have been an angel. For all I know, underneath her clothes there are wings. But angels' wings are no concern of mine. For God made me to walk, not fly.

Audio: Reading George Herbert

Drawing of Herbert's church by Guy Ottewell

I'm writing on George Herbert at the moment, and I've spent this week near Herbert's former church in Bemerton. If you've ever tried getting through life without reading George Herbert, I don't know how you do it. Anyway, after breakfast this morning I made some audio recordings for you of a few Herbert poems:

Holy Scriptures I (text)

The Call (text)

Heaven (text)

Phone call from uncle (overheard in a London cafe)

In a crowded cafe near Trafalgar Square, a crumpled old donnish-looking gentleman put down the book he had been reading and made a phone call. Though I was sitting at the other side of the room, I had the benefit of hearing the conversation quite distinctly since the gentleman bellowed every syllable at the top of his lungs, holding the phone at a distance from his face like a singer with a microphone. I have thus recorded his words for posterity, as a distillation of general sound advice for young people everywhere.

Hullo! Now I wanted to say I'm frightfully sorry I've not come to see you. I know we talked about it, and I haven't forgot to come, but I'm afraid it's been quite impossible because, as it were, of the weather. It's been awfully cold and wet in the city – sunny from time to time, you understand, but very cold as a rule – and I can't get out much in weather of that sort. But I hear you've settled in, and I wanted, as it were, to say hello and find out how you're doing. So then: how are you finding things in Sussex? And where are you staying? Do you have, as it were, a flat? And are you sharing it with three or four other characters, or do you have your own little place all to yourself? Ah, I see, and these other characters, what are they like? That is to say, do you get along with them? And do you all, as it were, eat together? And how often do you take these meals together? Excellent. I suppose it's one of those little flats with a shared bathroom and loo somewhere in the building? No? Your own loo? Splendid, splendid, excellent. And how are you finding university? I'm sorry we didn't to get to talk about your Johnson paper, we could certainly have had a little talk about that, but I'm sure the paper went splendidly all the same. And what is the teaching like, how do you find it? I suppose by now you've found the good men who are worth hearing? I suppose you're rushing back and forth taking in lectures by all the best people? And have you been all right, because last year you were really quite depressed. How is all that business now? Do you get out and do things? I mean, apart from study and socialising, do you go out, as it were, to discos? What do you do then? Are you involved in any clubs, that is to say, university clubs apart from study? I see. Are there any hobbies, pastimes, that sort of thing? You do what? Now the trouble with poker is that in the end one always ends up losing one's money, so stay away from poker from now on. And what about girls, do you see any girls? Have you managed to find, as it were, a girlfriend? And where does one go to meet girls in Sussex? I see, I see. It was rather different in my day, quite a different thing. Girls today are concerned about hygiene and cleanliness and that sort of business. It really makes it a lot harder for a chap. But you mustn't let it get you down. I'm not talking specifically about sex, if you catch my drift, but you must try to find a girlfriend if you can, just do your best, but above all, don't get too concerned about it. But you must certainly try to get out more often to places with girls. Get out, as it were, in the evenings. Good man, good man. Now then, here is what we shall do. When the weather improves I shall come to see you in Sussex, and we shall have, as it were, a drink together. It'll be soon, soon. But until then: goodbye!

Tweeting the books of the Bible

Over the past couple of days I've been having a lot of fun writing a tweet for every book of the Bible. Here's where it's up to so far – and thanks to @KristaNDalton for showing me how to storify these tweets. If you'd like to contribute your own versions, we're using the tag #CanonFodder.