December 28: Rachel Refused to Be Comforted
♫ Music:
Day 27 - Friday, December 28
King Herod: The First Persecutor
Scripture: Matthew 2:16-18
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Poetry:
Matins
by Denise Levertov
i
The authentic! Shadows of it
sweep past in dreams, one could say imprecisely,
evoking the almost-silent
ripping apart of giant
sheets of cellophane. No.
It thrusts up close. Exactly in dreams
it has you off-guard, you
recognize it before you have time.
For a second before waking
the alarm bell is a red conical hat, it
takes form.
ii
The authentic! I said
rising from the toilet seat.
The radiator in rhythmic knockings
spoke of the rising steam.
The authentic, I said
breaking the handle of my hairbrush as I
brushed my hair in
rhythmic strokes: That’s it,
that’s joy, it’s always
a recognition, the known
appearing fully itself, and
more itself than one knew.
iii
The new day rises
as heat rises,
knocking in the pipes
with rhythms it seizes for its own
to speak of its invention—
the real, the new-laid
egg whose speckled shell
the poet fondles and must break
if he will be nourished.
iv
A shadow painted where
yes, a shadow must fall.
The cow’s breath
not forgotten in the mist, in the
words. Yes,
verisimilitude draws up
heat in us, zest
to follow through,
follow through,
follow
transformations of day
in its turning, in its becoming.
v
Stir the holy grains, set
the bowls on the table and
call the child to eat.
While we eat we think,
as we think an undercurrent
of dream runs through us
faster than thought
towards recognition.
Call the child to eat,
send him off, his mouth
tasting of toothpaste, to go down
into the ground, into a roaring train
and to school.
His cheeks are pink
his black eyes hold his dreams, he has left
forgetting his glasses.
Follow down the stairs at a clatter
to give them to him and save
his clear sight.
Cold air
comes in at the street door.
vi
The authentic! It rolls
just out of reach, beyond
running feet and
stretching fingers, down
the green slope and into
the black waves of the sea.
Speak to me, little horse, beloved,
tell me
how to follow the iron ball,
how to follow through to the country
beneath the waves
to the place where I must kill you and you step out
of your bones and flystrewn meat
tall, smiling, renewed,
formed in your own likeness.
vii
Marvelous Truth, confront us
at every turn,
in every guise, iron ball,
egg, dark horse, shadow,
cloud
of breath on the air,
dwell
in our crowded hearts
our steaming bathrooms, kitchens full of
things to be done, the
ordinary streets.
Thrust close your smile
that we know you, terrible joy.
RACHEL REFUSED TO BE COMFORTED
Perhaps we can think of the first coming of Christ as a special Sabbath rest; one unlike any other Sabbath, even the eternal rest we are promised at the second coming. It is a holy and distinct moment of celebration, and also, it is (almost painfully) brief. We know that Christ has come and Christ will come again; our Sabbath rest is 'almost, but not yet.' During the season of Lent, hearing that our salvation is not yet perfected in us may comfort our ashamed and weary souls; conversely, during Advent, this incompleteness is a good reason to hold gentle solemnity in the midst of celebration.
Today’s Bible passage is a scripture within a scripture; in the prophecy fulfilled by Herod's slaughter of the innocents, there arises Rachel, a figure of the women of Israel, and the mothers of the innocent, and a counterpoint to Mary. These two figures allow conspicuously painful moments in motherhood to be juxtaposed or layered in different ways. Rachel outlives her children; Mary outlives her child, only to receive Him back again. Rachel's children are innocent; Mary's child is sinless. Mary delivers the child who is the hope of all nations and yet, Rachel refuses to be comforted. Each turn of the counterpoint between these two figures clamors with the overflowing repercussions of violence across generations.
This passage of Scripture and its attending works of music, art, and poetry deliver the impact of considering what it means to refuse to be comforted without giving in to despair. Franz Marc painted The Fate of the Animals and Fighting Forms on the eve of World War I. These two pieces one which abstracts the details of violence and the other which supplicates for the collateral effect of violence against the innocent, by-standing natural world these two pieces are prophetic of the coming century of worldwide wars and their concentric consequences. The overwhelming narrative in Scripture instructs us that violence, grief, and justice have always been the shared and inherited problem of many generations.
Meanwhile, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies composed Symphony No. 10 almost 100 years later, after the arrival of the new millennium; during the time he was undergoing chemotherapy. One might say chemo is the most violent healing process invented to date. Even if we created a world where we eradicated all human-perpetrated violence, the traumas of illness and old age would remain, because they are inherited from generation to generation.
As you move into another new year, I invite you consider the metaphorical image of Rachel refusing to be comforted. In that image, Scripture conveys the wisdom of admitting that some wounds may not be healed in a human lifetime. That is okay. Here, in the days, which follow Christmas, Scripture gives room to long for the presence of recently passed loved ones or for the healing of our addictions and those of our friends or for the resolution of familial strife, however impossible it may seem. It is okay to ache with those longings, because the kingdom of God is 'almost, but not yet.' Our salvation has arrived; our salvation will be made complete. We now know that Christ has come; we know that Christ will come again.
Prayer:
Lord, who loves us and delights in us, we pray that your beauty would lead your church to delight in you so that all may receive you again with joy and say with one voice that our eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord.
Amen.
Jessamy Delling
Administrative Assistant to the
Director of Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
About the Art #1:
Fighting Forms, 1914
Franz Marc
Oil on canvas
36 in x 50 ½ in
About the Art #2:
The Fate of the Animals, 1913
Franz Marc
Oil on canvas
77 in x 105 in
Produced at the outbreak of World War I when Franz Marc began to explore the expressive possibilities of full abstraction, Fighting Forms (or Forms in Combat as the German title is sometimes translated) presents a cosmic vision of the conflict between good and evil in a swirling vortex of power, locked in a battle for supremacy. In 1913, the year before producing Fighting Forms, Marc painted The Fate of the Animals, which depicts an unidentified and indiscriminate force shattering the peace of the forest and the lives of its animal inhabitants that he saw as innocent, pure, and spiritual beings. Writing about the painting to his wife from the warfront, "[it] is like a premonition of this war—horrible and shattering. I can hardly conceive that I painted it." Interestingly, the painting was damaged in a warehouse fire in 1916 after Marc's death heightening the poignancy of Marc’s original vision. Paul Klee, a close friend, who added a brownish tint to the reconstructed portion, a visible reminder of the destruction, later restored it. At one point Klee proposed an alternative title, “The trees show their rings, the animals their veins.” On the back of the painting is a handwritten inscription, “and all being is flaming suffering.”
About the Artist:
Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a German painter and printmaker and one of the key figures of German Expressionism. He was a founding member and co-editor with Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky of Der Blaue Reiter Almanac (The Blue Rider), a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists who contributed to it. His father was a professional landscape painter and his mother was a socially liberal Calvinist. As a teenager he wanted to study theology but instead enrolled in art school. Influenced by Van Gogh, Cubism, and Futurism, he developed a highly symbolic style that combined a pantheistic belief in the spirituality of animals with strong symbolic color schemes. He had a major influence on Fauvism and the development of Cubism, and was designated a “degenerate artist” by the Nazis who ordered his paintings removed from German museums, along with the art of many other German modernist artists of the early twentieth century. Franz enlisted in the German military at the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and was killed in action in 1916 at the Battle of Verdun.
About the Music:
“Symphony No. 10 "Alla ricerca di Borromini": III. Presto” from the album Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Symphony No. 10
About the Composer:
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CH CBE (1934 –2016) was an English composer and conductor. In 2004 he was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music, he formed a group dedicated to contemporary music, the New Music Manchester, with fellow students Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth, and John Ogdon. His compositions include eight works for the stage, from the monodrama Eight Songs for a Mad King, which shocked the audience in 1969, to Kommilitonen!, first performed in 2011. As a conductor, he was Artistic Director of the Dartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984. From 1992 to 2002 he was associate conductor/composer with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he also held with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Davies was one of the first classical composers to open a music download website, MaxOpus (in 1996).
About the Performers:
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) with Sir Antonio Pappano conducting
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), founded in 1904, is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. As a self-governing body, the orchestra selects the conductors with whom it works. At some stages in its history, it has dispensed with a principal conductor and worked only with guest conductors. Among its most famous conductors are André Previn, Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, and Valery Gergiev. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in the Barbican Centre in the City of London. One of the most frequently recorded orchestras in the world, the LSO has made recordings since 1912 and has played on more than 200 soundtrack recordings for the cinema. It is probably best known for recording John Williams' score for the Star Wars movies.
Sir Antonio Pappano (b.1959) is Music Director of The Royal Opera in London, a position he has held since 2002. During his tenure he has conducted an extensive repertory, including works by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Ravel, Berg, Shostakovich, and Britten, as well as the world premieres of Birtwistle’s The Minotaur (2008) and Turnage’s Anna Nicole (2011), and works for The Royal Ballet. In the 2018/19 Season, he is conducting Der Ring des Nibelungen, Verdi’s Requiem, The Queen of Spades, and La forza del destino, and an orchestral concert, for the Company. He has received many awards, including in 2015 the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal.
About the Poet:
Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was educated entirely at home and claimed to have decided to become a writer at the age of five. When she was twelve, she sent some of her poetry to T. S. Eliot, who responded by encouraging her to continue writing. At age seventeen, she had her first poem published in Poetry Quarterly. Her poems of the 1950s won her widespread recognition and her book, With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1959), established her as one of the great American poets. Levertov went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry, and was also the author of four books of prose. Levertov’s conversion to Christianity in 1984 was the impetus for her religious poetry. In 1997, she brought together 38 poems from seven of her earlier volumes in The Stream & the Sapphire, a collection intended, as Levertov explains in the foreword to the collection, to "trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith, a movement incorporating much doubt and questioning as well as affirmation."
About the Devotional Writer:
Jessamy Delling
Administrative Assistant to the
Director of the Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University
Jessamy Delling is an alumna of Biola University and the Torrey Honors Institute. While administration is her job, Jessamy considers writing her vocation. She is very involved at Redeemer Church, La Mirada, CA, where she plans and prays for ways to serve in Christ’s kingdom as a writer.