REMEMBRANCE

                                                                     REMEMBRANCE

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

Introduction

In the army, every couple of years or more, each unit does a handover takeover, a.k.a. a HOTO. Sometimes there’s a parade-ground ceremony, with everyone dressed in their finest formal uniform, witnessing the outgoing Commanding Officer handover authority to the incoming Commanding Officer or CO.

I was involved in one of these regarding a large infantry regiment. I was the drummer in an ad hoc bagpipe band. I got to do some solo rhythmic rat-a-tat drumbeats, keeping in time with a high-ranking individual as he marched across the parade ground to face another high-ranker, stop, and then salute. I was supposed to keep in perfect time with all their actions. I drummed in time with his footfalls and hit my last beat when he saluted!

We have a handover takeover, a HOTO, going on in our Scripture passage. In fact, there are a few handovers taking place. In 1 Corinthians 11:23, Paul received something. The Lord Jesus had handed over to him, what Paul in turn was handing over to the Corinthians. And Paul reminds the Corinthians that what was handed over to him, and that he is now handing over to them, took place on the night that Jesus was handed over to the authorities.

And what is the Lord’s Supper if it is not Jesus handing over Himself to all who partake? That’s why we need to be careful with the Lord’s Supper. Partakers need to know what they are doing. We need to march to the rhythm of the Scriptures. Otherwise, like the Corinthians, we will make a mess of it. That is why the Apostle Paul was handing over clear instructions.

Remembering the Christ

The instructions come from Jesus, via His Apostle Paul. Twice Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Once with the bread. Then with the cup. Why are Christians on earth to do this? Remembrance! But notice who and what it is in remembrance of. “In remembrance of Me.”

So, the Lord’s Supper is a memorial service, to remember Jesus. And, to jog our memory, we are to eat the bread and drink of the cup. Therefore, the bread and the cup are prompts, memory prompts to remember Jesus. Who is Jesus and what is He famous for? Ah, see the bread and the cup. His body was broken for us. And His blood was shed to bring in the new covenant.

The NIV omits the word broken in the following, “This is My body which is broken for you.” It renders it, “This is my body, which is for you.” Whether the word broken should be in the verse, or omitted, we’ll let the Bible scholars argue about. However, it seems to me that the word broken is at least implied. Surely Jesus breaking bread in front of His Disciples, which bread represents His flesh, suggests that Jesus’s body was broken.

Sure, not one of His bones was broken. That’s what Scripture says. However, His flesh was torn beyond recognition through the beatings, the crown of thorns, the nail prints in His hands and His feet, and the spear thrust that cut open His side. Christ on the cross in Psalm 22 says, “All My bones are out of joint … They pierced My hands and My feet.”

And Isaiah 52:14 says of Him, “His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” And Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

That all sounds like a broken body to me, even though none of His bones were broken. Therefore, the breaking of the bread in the Lord’s Supper illustrates who Christ is. He is the Man whose flesh was torn open, just like the bread He lifted from His Table and shared with His Disciples.

Also, apparently, the unleavened bread used at the Passover had scorch-marks on it and holes in it from baking, perhaps resembling stripes, you know, whip-lashes and pierce marks. Be that as it may, we do know that Jesus knew exactly what lay ahead of Him.

Remembering the Covenant

  The Lord’s Supper is the New Covenant Meal. The Old Covenant Meal was the Passover Meal, which consisted of roast lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs, all washed down with wine. In short, this meal and everything in it, all pointed to the Promised Messiah.

The Old Covenant Meal remembered the past. However, there was also a present and future aspects. It’s just as you would expect from the eternal God, who always was, always is, and always will be. The Old Testament Meal pointed to God, the God who set Israel free from captivity, who provides for His people’s present needs, and who will provide in the future.

The Old Covenant promises were to do with an uncountable number of God’s people living in their own land, the Promised Land. This people and the land were brought about by the sovereign guiding hand of God, who promised Abraham, a people and a land. But first, the people went into captivity. God set them free at the first Passover.

God killed the firstborn of the Egyptians in the first Passover. But keep in mind that Jesus is the firstborn of God. More on this later. However, here’s a little of what the Old Testament has to say about the Old Covenant Meal, the Passover Feast. Exodus 12:24-29:

“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony.

And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians’ … At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well” Exodus 12:24-29. The firstborn son ordinarily inherited his father’s estate.

The Israelites were to put the sacrificed lamb’s blood on the sides and crossbeam of the doorframes wherever they were to eat the Passover Meal. For their own safety, they had been given the following command, “Not one of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning” Exodus 12:22b.

But what happened the night when Jesus was transitioning the Old Covenant Meal into the New Covenant Meal? “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night” John 13:30. We don’t know if Judas Iscariot was a firstborn. We are only told that he was the son of Simon Iscariot, John 6:71 and John 13:26.

However, we do know the Judas Iscariot was what Jesus called “the son of perdition”, “the son of destruction”, “the one doomed to destruction” in John 17:12. Therefore, Judas was not covered by the blood sprinkled on the posts of the door or by the blood that was sprinkled on the posts of the cross.

To be without the blood of the Covenant is to be open to the LORD’s destruction. For, “By faith he [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, lest He who destroyed the firstborn should touch them” Hebrews 11:28. As Jesus says, “If you do not remain in Me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned” John 15:6.

Judas trampled the blood of the covenant by handing over the Christ, the Lord of Glory, to the powers of darkness. Then Judas went to his own place. He “left to go where he belongs” Acts 1:25, which means being thrown into the fire and burned! Yes, Judas went out, and it was night indeed! But so did Jesus!

Jesus, God’s Son, is “the firstborn over all creation” Colossians 1:13. After celebrating the Last Passover, which became the First Lord’s Supper, He then went out of the house. He took His Apostles to the Mount of Olives, to the place where Judas was going to hand Him over. 

Remembering the Cross

God killed the firstborn at the first Passover. And it was God who killed His own firstborn at the last Passover. God the Father, not Satan, poured out His wrath on Jesus as He hung on that cross.

What happened when Christ was hanging on the cross? Amos 8:9, “And it shall come to pass in that day,’ says the LORD God, ‘That I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight … I will make it like mourning for an only son.’” And Zechariah 12:10b, “They will look at Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.” Yes, the death of God’s firstborn Son echoes very loudly the first Passover night!

God’s justice was propitiated, His righteous anger at our sin was assuaged, as our sin was expiated. All our transgressions of God’s Law were blotted out by the shed blood of Jesus, the blood represented by the cup, i.e., the new covenant in His blood.

We must march only to the clear drumbeat of Scripture. Keep in step only with God speaking in His Word.

If the unleavened bread represented bread without the leaven of sin, then Christ was without any sin. He died for our sins, which sins God imputed (handed over) to Him before He holocausted His Son on the cross. Yes, He was THE “Branch” that was thrown into the fire and burned!

And it was the righteousness of Christ’s perfect Commandment keeping that the Father imputed (handed over) to us. Therefore, the bread represents the Lamb of God’s roasted and now broken body. And the cup represents His shed blood, the blood sprinkled on the doorposts that became the blood sprinkled on the cross posts.

The “Last Supper” is a bit of a misnomer, because the last official Passover became the first Supper. And the Old Covenant became the New Covenant with the death and resurrection of Christ.

Notice that Jesus says, “This cup is the new covenant”. It’s a new covenant. But notice that He doesn’t leave it at that, but adds “in my blood.” The Old Covenant was in the blood of bulls and goats etc., but the New Covenant is in Christ’s blood. That’s what’s new about it! Moses, as it were, held the fort until One greater than him arrived.

Here at the first Lord’s Supper is the great handover takeover, the HOTO, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. (More on the word Testament in a moment), but Hebrews 8:13 says, “By calling this covenant ‘new’, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear” Hebrews 8:13.

Right, to translate the Old Testament Hebrew word for covenant, i.e., berith, the writers in the New Testament opted for the Koine Greek word, diatheke, over suntheke.

You’ve heard of a “last will and testament”? It means that a person has to die before his or her estate is divided, handed over, to those who were listed in the will. Well that’s what diatheke has to do with. Whereas the word suntheke speaks more of a bilateral agreement, the word diatheke is more unilateral.

It’s kind of like the covenant God cut with Abraham. Only God marched through the valley of the shadow of death, i.e., between the divided pieces of animals and birds. It all makes better sense to you if you keep in mind that all earthly administrations of God’s covenant have their source in the heavenly administration of the eternal covenant, i.e., the covenant between the Father and the Son.

The eternal or everlasting Covenant is that the Son take on flesh and lay down His perfect life as our representative. Thus, the Son is referred to as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” Revelation 13:8b. And the blood of that slain Lamb is “the blood of the everlasting covenant” Hebrews 13:20. “For the joy set before Him He endured the cross” Hebrews 12:2. What joy is that? The joy is His Father’s promised reward for His perfectly keeping the Covenant unto death, death by hanging on a cross!  

When kids play the blindfold game of piñata at a birthday party, the piñata needs to be whacked and broken open by a stick before its contents will pour out. God whacked His Son on the cross and all the covenant blessings came pouring out along with His blood. I merely seek to illustrate, not mutilate, a point, but Jesus said, “This is My body which is broken for you.” All the benefits contained in the everlasting covenant could not be handed over until Christ had shed His blood. But moreover, not until He had been raised again.

As we march across the Lord’s parade ground, and approach that final salute where the handover takeover, the HOTO, will be complete, let’s recap and apply what we’ve learned. What are we doing when we partake of the Lord’s Supper? “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” 1 Corinthians 11:26.

Now, what about this wonderful piece of Scripture? Hebrews 9:16-18, “In the case of a will [will here is the same Greek word for covenant], it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will [same word] is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood” Hebrews 9:16-18.

Whether made with the pre-Fall Adam, or Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, all God’s covenants throughout the Bible from beginning to end are ultimately made with Christ! How so? 2 Corinthians 1:20a, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.”

Let me beat the drum to drive home the point! The Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge says, “A covenant is a promise suspended upon a condition.” Thus “a covenant is a conditional promise.” The words covenant and testament, as in last will and testament in Hebrews 9:16-17 are interchangeable. How so? Well, again, “A will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.”

Everything the Father bequeathed His firstborn is now ours! How so? Well, it’s because He died, that’s how! But, I hear you say, He is risen! He’s alive! Yes, but He definitely died, didn’t He? But because He was crucified, died, and was buried, but rose again from the dead, does this mean that we have to hand back whatever was handed over to us? God forbid!

As the firstborn Son, Jesus has received the Father’s promised inheritance. Jesus perfectly kept the conditions of the Old Covenant by His works, and we perfectly keep the conditions of the New Covenant by God’s gift of faith. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant by keeping all of its conditions, which was to live a perfect life as our Husband or Representative, and then to die as the Testator, i.e., the One who had signed the will, the One who had covenanted with God on our behalf.

Reading Hebrews 9:16-18 once more, this time from the New King James Version, will drive home what we’re on about: “For where there is a testament [same word as covenant], there must also of necessity be the death of the testator [or covenanter]. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives” Hebrews 9:16-17.

Would it surprise you to know that a lot of theologians get themselves into a flap over whether the word diatheke in Hebrews 9:16-17 should be translated as covenant or will or testament? However, you won’t get into a flap if you remember the three Cs whenever you see a Biblical covenant, i.e., Christ, Covenant, and Cross. If people would just look at Christ who is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (see Revelation 13:8), then they would realise that every Biblical covenant, all the way from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David, were simply administrations of the everlasting covenant which is another name for Christ’s last will and testament!

The Rainbow Covenant? A last will and testament! The Circumcision Covenant? A last will and testament! The Passover Covenant? A last will and testament! How so? Because every Biblical covenant points to Christ, that’s how! 

And all Christians, including those Apostles who left the house with Him on the night He was betrayed, are crucified with Him, just as we are raised with Him. Therefore, all the contents, i.e., all the promises of the covenant, will, or testament are ours in Him and with Him.  

Christ now has a people (His Church), and a place for them to live in, (the new heavens and new earth), just as His Father promised Him. 

Conclusion

The HOTO has been completed. The broken bread represents His torn and pierced flesh, and the cup His shed blood, i.e., His death. God struck down His firstborn on the cross. Christ is our Passover. The cup represents the shed blood of the Lamb who takes away our sins. We eat and drink at His Table in remembrance of Him, proclaiming His death till He comes.

We are so quick to forget. Remembrance Day is when we remember the death and mayhem of WWII and its toll on humanity. Like ANZAC Day, it’s “Lest we forget.”

The Lord’s Supper is the remembrance of the One who died to save us from death and hellfire.

UFOs

                                                                            UFOs

UFOs is one of those subjects that conjures up images of little green men from Mars and such like. However, especially on account of the USA military recently releasing video footage of unidentified flying objects that seemingly defy the laws of physics, it has become a lot more respectable of late to discuss these things. Of course, just because a flying object cannot be identified, does not necessarily mean that it has come from outer space. The objects could belong to any nation, group of individuals, or individual on earth, that has developed secret technology. And there’s the rub! From spy-planes to stealth-bombers to strange flying-saucers, all speak of technological advancement.

However, Christians ought to approach the subject of UFOs with a healthy Biblical caution. All human thought first begins with certain presuppositions. If it is presupposed that intelligent life on earth is a result of a ‘molecules to man’ evolution, then pond scum on other planets might have developed into beings with an advanced technology able to visit the planet earth. Erich von Däniken, e.g., capitalised on this presupposition big time with his Chariots of the Gods and other books.

Image from Internet

Viewed through the prism of neo-Darwinian Evolutionary theory, von Däniken saw aliens hiding behind every tree, from Stonehenge to the Pyramids of Giza to cave paintings to ancient statues. To be sure, e.g., lions and tigers did develop from earlier feline creatures, and horses and zebras from earlier equine animals, i.e., micro-evolution, but nowhere does Scripture speak of a ‘goo to you’ macro-evolution. Therefore, according to Biblical presupposition, any alien life form is either originally from earth, or is angelic and/or demonic.

NASA employee Josef F. Blumrich, sought to quash von Däniken’s version of Ezekiel’s vision (see Ezekiel 1), but instead ended up agreeing with him that Ezekiel didn’t actually see ‘visions of God’ as he had claimed, but rather an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Blumrich even went on to publish a book titled The Spaceships of Ezekiel. Again, this is what happens when you have faulty presuppositions. Faulty worldviews result from refusing to view the world through the spectacles of Scripture. Scripture must be allowed to interpret Scripture, not vain presupposition.

Image from Internet

UFOs? Is it either angels or aliens? Well, whether you see chariots of fire or Chariots of the Gods, depends on whether the Lord has opened your eyes or not. ‘And Elisha prayed, and said, “Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.’ 2 Kings 6:17.

Occum’s Razor suggests that verifiable UFO sightings are either advanced human technology or spirits, i.e., angels or perhaps fallen angels and their demonic activity. A physics-denying flying object may lend itself to Satan as ‘the prince of the power of the air’ Ephesians 2:2, and the idea that ‘we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ Ephesians 6:12. But then again, perhaps UFOs have to do with the more benign, ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels’ Hebrews 13:2. We continue to watch…  

 \                                                            FARWELL TO ETTA 

Etta Shade Powell Hunter

Born 13 March 1941 (in the Kingdom of Fife) Scotland

Passed 08 May 2021 in Redcliffe, Queensland 

Neil, Jock & Etta

My name is Neil McKinlay. I retired from full time army chaplaincy January, 2020, and will retire from part time army chaplaincy at the end of June 2021. I think it was in 2012 that I became chaplain, or padre, as we’re better known, to the Rats of Tobruk[1] here in Brisbane. It was then that I met Etta and Jock for the first time. All of us being Scottish, we had an immediate common bond. We became friends.

We’re here to remember Etta who has departed from us, as well to seek comfort from God’s Word for us who remain behind. We’re here to celebrate Etta’s life and share fond memories of her.

There’s a verse of Scripture that says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” If you know Jock and Etta, you’ll know of the love they had one for the other. And who here thinks that Jock would not have given his life to save Etta? Jock loved Etta. And Etta loved Jock.

Jock showed me a box full of airmail letters from way back around 1962 when he and Etta were just courting, I think. He showed me one letter in particular, written in his own handsome handwriting to his beautiful bride. I blushed when I read some of it, and just skimmed over the rest, because I felt as if I was intruding, eavesdropping on Jock and Etta’s private intimacy.

Rats of Tobruk Memorial Service

Jock loved Etta as a husband ought to love his wife, just as the Scripture says we’re to, “Husbands, love your wives.” We saw this love, this powerful bond, this active love that Jock had for Etta right up to the very end. Endless love!

In the wedding vows we may hear these words, “I, Jock Hunter, take thee, Etta Powell, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge myself to you.”

I’m sure Jock and Etta had times of being richer and poorer as they travelled around with Jock in his role as part of the RAF, and then migrating to, and establishing themselves with a family in, Australia. However, it was in sickness that their marriage really flourished. Sacrificial love!

Neil, Dot, & Etta

The Scripture says that marriage is a picture of the Husband, Jesus Christ, and His bride, the church. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” Jesus gave His physical life for His bride, i.e., all who believe in Him as their Saviour. That is what the church is. It is not so much the brick building, but those who meet in the brick building to honour the Man who lived and died for them, and was raised again on the third day.

All believers have the hope of the future resurrection. That’s the time when we get our bodies back, just like Jesus did after three days in the grave. Unlike our present bodies, which are subject to sickness and death, our Resurrection bodies will be healthy and will last forever.

Jock cared for Etta in her sickness, which began around 2010 when Etta started to show early signs of her dementia. Jock would selflessly take his bride with him everywhere, even as she grew progressively worse. He fed her. He bathed her. He clothed her. He carried her. Yes, he loved her, truly loved her.

Dot, Neil, Jock & Etta

I asked Jock what was one of Etta’s favourite things to say to him. “Stop yer tickling, Jock!” was what he said she’d always say to him. “Stop yer tickling, Jock!” is a line from an old Harry Lauder[2] song from 1908 or something. It is a song that is full of laughter and joy, full of fond memories about the time when a young couple was courting.

It reminded me of a verse of Scripture that says, “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth” Proverbs 5:18. Yes, “rejoice with the wife of your youth.” I’d like to finish my wee part in this celebration of Etta’s life by reading the first verse and chorus of “Stop yer tickling, Jock!” Let us rejoice by imagining that it’s Jock and Etta in their youth, back when they were first courting:

Oh! I’m courting a farmer’s dochter,

She’s one of the nicest ever seen.

Her cheeks they are a rosy red,

And her age is just sweet seventeen.

When I throw my arms around her neck

And try to steal a kiss,

Oh, she’ll wriggle and giggle

And twist and twiggle,

And then you’ll hear her shouting this –

“Will ye stop yer tickling, Jock!

Oh, stop yer tickling, Jock!

Dinna mak’ me laugh so hearty,

Or you’ll make me choke.

Oh! I wish you’d stop yer nonsense,

Just look at all the folk.

Will ye stop yer tickling,

Tickle-ickle-ickling,

Stop yer tickling, Jock!”

 

---

[1] The Rats of Tobruk were soldiers of the Australian-led Allied garrison that held the Libyan port of Tobruk against the Afrika Corps, during the Siege of Tobruk in World War II. The siege started on 11 April 1941 and was relieved on 10 December. The port continued to be held by the Allies until its surrender on 21 June 1942. Wikipedia

[2] Harry Lauder (1870-1950) was a Scottish singer and comedian popular in both music hall and vaudeville theatre traditions.

TIME: RHYME & REASON

Neil, Stuart, & Fearghas, Eden Court, Inverness

 Time: Rhyme & Reason

Part One: The Poem

From: Stuart McKinlay

To: Neil McKinlay

Fri, 21 May 2021

A Royal Mail package containing Holding Fast and three copies of Layman (as requested) has been making its passage to you for the past week and must have Madagascar abaft the port beam by now. Included are three or four exquisitely illustrated greetings cards bearing muted pastel scenes of The Trossachs, purchased whimsically at the Café Circa and Scottish Antiques & Arts Centre in Doune. It’s the kind of place that mellows one towards almost buying an ancient edition of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám... The moving finger writes, and, having writ moves on... etc, an irresistible echo of grief and loss, and obeisance to the hand of fate, whether an invention or a mellifluous embellishment of a persuasive legend. The stanzas carry in the mind so easily almost everyone can recite a few: your father’s favourite was: A Book of Verses beneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness - / And Wilderness is Paradise enow!

* * *

From: Neil McKinlay

To: Stuart McKinlay, 

cc: F. MacFhionnlaigh

Fri, 21 May 2021

Was the Rubáiyat not at one time your most favourite pub restaurant in Glasgow, Stuart? Whereas dad quoted from it, you ate and drank in it!

***

21 Apr 2021 at 17:24, Donald Black wrote

To: Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh

Hi Fearghas,

Cowane Street Writers tonight on the theme "Time" Attached my contributions. -- Donald

From: Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh To: Neil McKinlay, Stuart McKinlay

Recent exchange with Donald Black re a poem he wrote with theme (“Time”) set by the Stirling poetry writing group (Cowane Street Writers) he is part of. He sent his resultant poem (‘Past Perfect’) to me for feedback. I am sure he won’t mind you two reading it, under the circumstances. He quotes the Rubaiyat in it -- F

Past Imperfect

The past is gone.

Recalled or not, it shapes. 

Yet, once recalled

into the now, it darts

instantly into the past again

and lurks and works

its dark and magic arts.

“The Moving Finger writes and, 

having writ, moves on;

nor all thy Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” *

Still, fickle memory may take her pen

and subtly over-write, or sign

a different course. 

Time’s arrow, speeding towards its mark

bows to that external force

as Newton’s law of motion

says it must. 

Rewritten, the past rewrites

the future. The thrust

of throbbing fate is thwarted

And the hope of glory crumbles 

into dust.

* Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam tr. Edward FitzGerald

DB 21/4/2021

Time: Rhyme & Reason

Part Two: The Reaction

Apr 25, 2021 at 2:59 PM Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh wrote:

 Donald,

 Thanks for this. A good “poem”. I appreciate the overall form and the pacing footfall rhythm of the rhymes. 

I have been reading it daily since it arrived. I flatter myself that I “follow” it. Until, that is, the final words:

“And the hope of glory crumbles

into dust.”

I have been chewing at that on each reading, determined to unlock it, but fear I am still failing.

One train of thought I had was to associate it with the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast, “MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN”, which (appropriately enough given my own perplexity) no-one could understand but the eventual divinely inspired Daniel. Essentially, my surmised connection here was that at that moment any “hope of glory” harboured by Belshazzar (whose knees knocked together) “crumbles to dust”.

A second attempt to fathom your sentence was based on a poetic misappropriation in my own mind. I confused FitzGerald’s translation of the ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ with Coleridge’s fragmentary ‘Kubla Khan’ poem:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

     Down to a sunless sea.

My drift of thought in this case being that at the fatal moment a knock on the door put paid to Coleridge’s fully conceived but only partially written masterpiece, his “hope of (poetic) glory crumbled into dust”. But then I realised of course my literary history was seriously deficient....

 Coming back again to your enigmatic words, I began in a third trajectory to wonder if there was a subvertion of high doctrinaire Calvinism going on here. The latter system’s dogma of “double predestination” of course giving rise to a helpless fatalism — an existential beartrap able to be wondrously escaped from if the time-traveller can go back and un-set the trap. OK, so any predetermined “damnation” is thus eluded, but also any predetermined “glory” —

“Rewritten, the past rewrites

the future. The thrust

of throbbing fate is thwarted

And the hope of glory crumbles

into dust.”

All three of my musings are no doubt well missing the “mark” (of “Time’s speeding arrow”), so please forgive my mental torpor, but I will send off these half-baked thoughts now lest you begin wondering whether I even received, let alone read, your fine poem.

Fearghas

From: Donald

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 at 17:21

Subject: Re: CSW

To: Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh

Hi Fearghas,

I'm chuckling at your musings on the final line. I'll come back later but you know how some people talk about a poem "writing itself"? Well that's what happened here. That line came to me intact, as if from somewhere else, so I wrote it down without knowing what I meant by it. It wasn't the last line I wrote, but the line I had to get the poem to arrive at. I think it's deeper than a train of thought although it doesn't feel like a non-sequitur, so I'm as puzzled as you are. I'm familiar with your 3 references, so they're probably in there somewhere. I don't think my CSW companions had any more of a clue that I had.

Donald

Time: Rhyme & Reason

Part Three: Walter Scott joins the cut & thrust

22 Apr 2021 at 19:37, Stuart McKinlay wrote:

To: Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh

If I can comment, ‘umbly, I see the poem visually as a twirling candelabrum with a flickering flame: It seems time is a spiral entwined with a vortex, spinning to the sound of a fairground ride - with a dramatic denouement in the historic present.

This made me wonder why I can’t “do” poetry. I started by consulting my pal Walter Scott and ended up in a lockdown-funk cul-de-sac, which doesn’t really explain anything: the premise “I’m no good at poetry” isn’t answered as I swan around in circles about a couple of books I’m reading just now and any analysis or hope of glory crumbles into dust. I chucked my haverings in the bin as it were, as another example of the meanderings of a listless mind.

But then, I thought perhaps there is some relevance in its very irrelevance. Keats and Yeats are in this mess with me, tho’ I don’t get as far as Keats’ Romantic relevance or his “negative capability”, which is completely relevant here. 

“…& once again it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare posessed [sic] so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

He mentioned this in a letter to his brothers in 1817 and never repeated it (according to a book I’ll mention), “although it has since become a watchword in Romantic literary studies”. Well, this is the first I’d heard of it, or of Yeats’ occultist shenanigans with the Golden Dawn; the very deficiency of knowledge I cite for my uselessness with poetry. Like me, edit it by wastepaper basket.

When Keats and Yeats don’t rhyme

I’m no good at poetry and I can prove it. The crux of the thing is you have to think two streams of thought simultaneously, the way forward mapped by knowledge, the delivery couched with exquisite insight.

My invisible friend Walter Scott, with whom I discuss this and that on a bench by the Tweed, shows how to do it and how not to do it. He is probably one of the worst popular writers in English, and he knows it. When he was praised for his novels, he was embarrassed and recommended admirers read instead “Mrs Shelley”, this when Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus was rising to the top of the best-sellers chart in 1818; but Walter was still writing furiously, dragging histories from memory and warping them into the weft of adventure. His is a mind of creative conflict, scrawling without punctuation, leaving the dots and commas to his printer.

“The misfortune of writing fast is that one cannot at the same time write concisely,” he says, perhaps an excuse for careless prolificacy. He can make the facts ding to suit, confiding in his journal: “Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.” He’s always in a fine taking of doublethink, or internal ambiguity (auld Scotch Tory, champion of Scottish causes, reeking of sentimental regret in Old Mortality, you can hear in him the same lame claim so often heard today: “I’m a proud Scot, but…”)

Even Robert Louis Stevenson is brusque on Walter’s work, saying he lacks the application needed for seamless continuity: “He conjured up the magic with delight, but had hardly patience to describe it.” Exactly, but it is possible to love him as a novelist for all his faults, in fact, because of his failings he is personable, friendly and accessible as a flawed friend who knows his limitations and is relieved when he manages to get something profitable, to the point, and that pleases him, down on paper ( “I think there is a demon who seats himself on the feather of my quill when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose” - The Fortunes of Nigel) –and at least he is pleased with his poetry.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel was published in 1805 to prolific praise and Walter, now in his mid-thirties is an international celebrity, with the public clamouring for more of the same. He has a notion to write Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, with Constable, his publisher, offering 1000 guineas for the copyright of the work unseen. He writes a galloping poetic narrative of duplicity and disaster and loves it: “Oh man, I had many a grand gallop among these bracs when I was thinking of Marmion.” Henry Morley in his introduction to A Public Domain edition writes: He is riding his charger at full speed up and down the sands of Portobello within spray of the wave, while his mind was at work on such lines as - 

   They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,

With sword-sway and lance’s thrust;

    And such a yell was there,

Of sudden and portentous birth,

As if men fought in upper earth,

    And fiends in upper air.

Simply typing that stanza sends a frisson through me, and immediately calls to mind: “Oh, life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair…”

I can see and feel there the hoofbeat of the couplets, the same thunderous, ground-shaking battle of life and death Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh captures with taut suspense in The Axe:

he came at you

poised in your saddle

like an eagle on a crag

like a crouching lion

he came at you

with lance and shield and helmet and plume

and horse and armour and thunder and sweat

and impetus and dust and invective and death

he came at you

but instantly

with an agile movement

with a neat sudden movement

with a precisely executed movement

with an elegant energetic movement

on which our entire history hinged

the steel of your axe

blazed in the sun

and like a blur the blow fell

splitting helmet

and skull

displaying an errant Goliath

red on green field

but your axe was broken, O King

And another we have yet to find.

The beauty of this is not only in the taut construction and emotional tension, in breathless expectation, but in the subject of de Bohun and Bruce, a matter of recognisable history. It conjures an age of chivalry Walter understood all too well with Ivanhoe; but I wrestle with this demesne when I try to enter the world of John Keats: La Belle Dame sans Merci is beguiling and mystifying. Of course, everyone uses the phrase “palely loitering” as casual coinage now, but in its place in a ballad it becomes up-close and personal:

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

    Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

    And no birds sing.

This is the sort of thing I think I understand, but then find I don’t, and set about repairing the miscomprehension only to find I don’t understand the thing at all. I was reading what I wanted to read, superficially reconstructing it according to inadequate knowledge, rather than seeing what is there. Why “palely”?, what does it matter if sedge has withered? Or if no birds sing. Yet it is putting a chill in the air, the draining face, a tragic story in the making.

Lucasta Miller in Keats – A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph acknowledges the popular interpretation with a literary shrug of inevitability: “Its protagonist is a medieval ‘knight-at-arms’ who has loved and lost a supernatural femme fatale; she feeds him, tells him she loves him, and lulls him maternally to sleep, only to abandon him to an eternity of loneliness on a cold hillside.” It is possibly allegorical biography: Keats was abandoned by his mother as a child of eight: she disappeared with her lover, and the poem has been unravelled, according to passing fashion, she says, in strands of Freudian psychobiography, a mode of interpretation particularly popular the 1920s. She doesn’t endorse it.

She says: “An over-exited critic could go looking for Freudian subtexts in La Belle Dame sans Merci, and soon descend into parody by finding submerged erotica all over it.”

She focuses on the functioning of Keats’ vocabulary, particularly on this “adverbial colour-word”, “palely”. You can see the cold fate in his face: “palely”, rather than “paly”, she says, and the extra syllable in the centre is vital: “The doubling of the l literally makes you linger over ‘palely’ if you read it out loud, drawing out the sense of languor and postponement.” This is a nicety of poetry I can sense but can’t initiate.

Coleridge has a hand in this imbroglio, too: “The knight-at-arms, like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, is magnetically drawn into a situation he cannot control, in which his will or volition is unseated.” In short, “He goes on to dream a dream that becomes a nightmare, in which the belle dame’s former conquests line up to tell him he is doomed.”

This has the making of a tabloid sensation as he reworks an old ballad into a lustrous tale, but Keats, was always in a hurry, “restless and rootless” – he wrote Ode to a Nightingale in one spring morning – making up memorable phrases as he rushed along, delivering quotable lines in his outpourings: “tender is the night” (Ode to a Nightingale), “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” (Endymion), and neologisms, “surgy”, “palely”, “soother”.

But, I’m losing myself in raptures and straying from my first point: of knowledge mapping the way forward. It seems a common matter that poets often find themselves in a spell and must not stop while the Muse has them in transports: It is an in-the-moment energy that drives the composition as the writer hangs on grimly hoping not to be thrown before the end is achieved. If it isn’t at that moment, it is gone. All that’s left is the hard work of repair. Even Walter Scott says Marmion’s reception gave him “such a heeze he almost lost his footing”. Keats was influenced by Virgil and Shakespeare (it says here) and like Walter his head was replete with knowledge that poured out, his style unfettered by blank spots or dizziness and unhindered by halts and hesitations: the mind was fully armed.

It is as well, too, to have regard for the warning against extravagant poetic temptations satirised by E T A Hoffmann in The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1821) – my edition is translated from German by Anthea Bell. It has the familiar construction of the unknowing bungler:

Ah, rustling forests, whispering rivers

In whose deep waters sweet feeling yet quivers,

Share the Lament!

Say where she went!

Lovely sweet Kitty, Kitty so cheerful! [etc, etc]

 “As you see, gentle reader, a good poet doesn’t actually have to be in a rustling forest, or beside a whispering river: deep water quivering with sweet feeling will still flow his way, and he will see what he likes and he can sing about it as he likes. Should anyone be lost in wonder and admiration at the sublime merit of the above lines, let me modestly point out that I was in a state of ecstasy, in amorous frenzy, and everyone knows that a person in a feverish grip of passion, even if he could scarcely rhyme moon with June and dove with love in the usual way, if, as I say, he normally couldn’t just hit upon these not entirely uncommon rhymes however hard he tried, yet in the grip of passion poetry will suddenly come over him and he is bound to spout the most excellent of lines. We owe much great poetry to this onset of ecstasy in prosaic natures.”

But, I don’t really know all of this, not really, any more than I understand in less elevated prose form the joke of Ulysses with Dedalus and Bloom strolling around Dublin “in reasonable command of themselves” (Terry Eagleton: How to Read Literature) , and while it seems to me very little is happening, others know there “is a deep Homeric sub-plot at play”. Thus, I am nervous of not having the “whole picture” of relevant obscurities in mind, and can never be at ease with perhaps uninformed perceptions when the motion is transmuted into poetry.

The poets have got it up top all right before they start, of course, which probably explains why some of us can only admire On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer from afar. For example, I know his “peak in Darien” reference only because the phrase “wild surmise” is often quoted by Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster; but here is the original:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Stout stuff, but Lucasta Miller (again) underlines the perils of an uneven education: “Since Tennyson pickily pointed it out in the nineteenth century, it’s been a crux of Keats criticism that it was not in fact Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, but his contemporary Balboa who, in 1513, led the first party across Panama, where Darien is situated, to cast the first European eyes on the Pacific.” Academic debate rumbles about the source of this misapprehension, and even Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer is libelled. But there is something else going on:

“Just as interesting,” she says, and this is the stuff of heroes, “is what Keats does here with the sonnet’s iambic pentameters. He flexes the rhythm to represent a moment of astonished acceleration in the syncopated, hypermetric line ‘He stared at the Pacific – and all his men…‘ which contains a break and a hurried beat too many. The final line, ‘Silent upon the peak of Darien,’ has the right number of syllables, but works against the metrical rhythm as the English word ‘silent’ is naturally emphasised on the first not on the second syllable. The upshot is the sonnet does not feel ‘finished’. It is as if we’re brought up short to contemplate an endlessly unfolding expanse that is continuing to unfurl beyond the poem’s end.”

Fearghas, Stuart, & Neil, Inverness, Scotland

The nuts and bolts, the engine within. I feel that if you don’t know this, then you don’t know nothin’, even if, I believe, one could be in worse company than the supposedly benighted Bertie’s, but one throws in the t.

I have even sometimes confused the name Keats with Yeats, a scandalous admission. I’m soundly corrected by W B Yeats – Poems selected by Seamus Heaney, given to me by Catriona McKinlay. Heaney says: “Yeats’ radical devotion to the potential and otherness of a specific Irish reality should never be underestimated.” He delves deeply into a man of “fantasies” and “convictions”, his desire “to sweeten Ireland’s wrong”. I feel sure, but I must check with Fearghas, that Yeats never wanted to write in English at all, but in the vocabulary of his soul, Irish Gaelic. Heaney writes: “In fact, his imagined Ireland represented not only a regenerative breakaway from the imperium of Britain but also from the magisterium of orthodox Christianity.”:

Nor may I less be counted one

With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,

because, to him who ponders well,

My rhymes more than their rhyming tell

Of things discovered in the deep,

Where only body’s laid asleep.

For the elemental creatures go

About my table to and fro,

That hurry from unmeasured mind

To rant and rage in flood and wind;

Yet he who treds in measured ways

May surely barter gaze for gaze.

(“To Ireland in the Coming Times”)

I’m not sure I truly understand that, but I feel its force deeply. It leaves you gazing around in wild surmise. Before this, I had known only the line quoted by my father from The Lake Isle of Innesfree: “I will arise now, and go to Innesfree.” Not because he was going there, but as an earnest of going anywhere; and who does not know something, at least the third line, of his The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

And there it is again, a trick of the eye, the thing you see but don’t see. Visual rhyme. Or not? We have imagery here and hyperbole there, but what exactly is assonance? You can see “mind” and “wind” up there, and I’m not sure, but “falconer” and “everywhere” and others if you peer keenly, “cannot hold” has the cadence of “is drowned”, but not quite in syllabic sympathy, perhaps for abrupt emphasis. Tch, y’see, I’m shooting at shadows.

But…  even so, The Wild Swans At Coole, perhaps the least pugnacious of his musings, shot from dusty page to cinematic stardom. Just a couple of words from the first stanza are often reprised to magnificent effect on a telly near you:

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine and fifty swans.

Willie Russell uses this to munificent purpose in his 1983 screenplay of Educating Rita, starring Michael Caine as Professor Frank Bryant, and Julie Walters as Rita:

Rita: What does assonance mean?

Prof: What?

R: Don’t laugh at me.

P: Er, no. Erm, assonance, it’s a form of rhyme.

R: Erm, what’s an example?

P: Do you know Yeats?

R: The wine lodge?

P: No, WB Yeats, the poet.

R: No.

P: Well, in his poem The Wild Swans At Coole, Yeats rhymes the word “swan” with the word “stone”. You see? That’s an example of assonance.

R: Ooh, yeah, means getting the rhyme wrong.

P: I’ve never thought of it like that.

                Stuart McKinlay (May 2021)

THE BREATH OF GOD

Remembering that we are dust, when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son (Gen. 2:7; 3:19; Psa. 103:14; Gal. 4:4). Thus eternity entered the hourglass to be united with the dust of time. Then the Living Stone, the foundation and cornerstone of the new and everlasting world order, was laid on earth: Jesus was born (Pas. 118:22; Isa. 28:16; 1 Pet. 2:6-8). The hands of time clapped with grateful applause as the earth welcomed its Maker while heaven’s heart beat in time to the angel song, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’ (Luke 2:14). Pre-briefed by the angel Gabriel, the virgin was subsequently overcome by the Holy Spirit, and overshadowed by the power of the Highest. Thus the Son of Man was conceived in her womb (Luke 1:35).

As oil floats on water, so the Son of God as God remains above and distinct from His humanity. Yet humanity and deity are one in Christ, the Holy One. Divine. All creation marches to the beat of His drum, the sound of which keeps on echoing out into infinity! Tick-tock, rat-a-tat, time goes marching on till He orders it to pause for the grand transformation of the heavens and the earth.

‘Made of a woman, made under the Law;’ from the day He opened the womb, from the first moment the Royal lungs sucked in air, He breathed the same air His mother breathed – as you and I breathe. Eve, at the birth of her first son, said, ‘I have acquired a man from the LORD.’ Genesis 4:1. Her son turned out to be a destroyer of men. Mary’s Son is completely different. He is our Saviour.

Knowing the promises of the older covenant, before His birth Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour’ Luke 1:46-47. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth said upon Mary’s visit, ‘Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Luke 1:43. Mary is the mother of the Lord! God is His Father. There is only one Lord, the Godman, the Divine Jesus Christ.

The eternal Father breathed out at the beginning and creation came into being by the power of the eternal Holy Spirit with the eternal Word (Psa. 33:6). Creation is held together by and in and for the eternal Word (Col. 1:16-17). The eternal Word breathed in when He entered creation as a human being by the power of the eternal Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35; John 1:1-3,14). Thus the Father and the Son share the same breath; that breath is the Holy Spirit – who eternally spirates from both the Father and the Son. Since the beginning of time the Holy Spirit has been creation’s ‘iron lung,’ as it were working the bellows: inhalation, exhalation, inspiration, expiration. Without the Spirit’s regeneration there is only expiration.

Like one struggling to recover from a punch to the solar plexus, mankind has been unable to catch its collective breath. We became spiritually dead when our covenant or federal head, Adam, struck our first blow against God in whose image we are made. Ricochet. In the Garden and in the sweat of his face Adam beat his ploughshare into a sword and his pruning hook into a spear. We physically perspire and subsequently expire because, like our father Adam, we are sinners. We are conceived and born into the rebellious mass of humanity. We are dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). Thus we will remain in the torments of corruption and subsequent everlasting death – if we are not regenerated by the Holy Spirit before we die physically.

The Lord drew His first breath as a human being (probably) in a stable. He grew in wisdom and stature. As an adult He marched up Calvary’s hill. Nailed to a tree He breathed His last – until He rose again on the third day. After He was raised from the dead He breathed on His disciples, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ John 20:22. “When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting’ Acts 2:1-2.

The Lord holds our breath in His hand, and, as the Psalmist says of God regarding animals, ‘What You give them they gather in; You open Your hand, they are filled with good. You hide Your face, they are troubled; You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the earth.’ Psalm 104:28-30. As Elihu says of God, ‘If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to the dust.’ Job 34:14-15. As the Psalmist says to God, ‘Do not take Your Spirit from me.’ Psalm 51:11b.

You may hold your breath until you are blue in the face, but dear reader, you and I are dust falling through the hourglass. Breathe in the breath of God while there is still time. Repent and believe in the Gospel.