I have been reading a lot recently about a man called Rabindranath Tagore, who lived in India at the turn of last century. The thing that really intrigues me about him is the incredible diversity of his gifts, and even more, that he developed these talents and interests, leaving behind a body of amazing works for others to be inspired by. He has been described as the greatest writer in modern Indian literature as a poet, novelist and playwright, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. But as well as this, he was also a visual artist, composer, philosopher and educator. His writing is so beautiful. Here is part of one poem he wrote called The First Jasmines that I love. It’s so romantic, and the images create such beauty:

AH, these jasmines, these white jasmines!

I seem to remember the first day I filled my hands

with these jasmines, these white jasmines.

I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;

I have heard the liquid murmur of the river

through the darkness of midnight;

autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of the road

in the lonely waste, like a bride raising her veil

to accept her lover.

Yet my memory is still sweet with the first white jasmines

that I held in my hands when I was a child …

 

There, just inside the door, stood a wide, shallow tray full of pots of pink lilies. No other kind. Nothing but lilies – canna lilies, big pink flowers, wide open, radiant, almost frighteningly alive on bright crimson stems … She crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her breast …

You may have come across The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The story is made up of a collection of tales from travellers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. These pilgrims are on the way to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at the Cathedral. It was written in the 1300’s and is in Middle English and really hard to understand, but I found a kind of reader-friendly translation :) of The Prologue which is lovely and describes the revival of spring off the back of brutal winter, and the awakening of the blossoms and the soft wind …

When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathes every rootlet in the liquid by which the flower is engendered; when the west wind also, with its sweet breath has brought forth shoots in every grove and field …

*Modern Translation by M Murphy

It was a beautiful experience. The evening, the story, and the setting all made an impression. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is set on Bankside by the River Thames. It is a round in shape with oak beams and seating which circles around the stage and a central “yard” where the audience stands for the whole length of the play. If you are seated, you are protected by thatched roof, if you stand in the central yard, you stand under the stars and are at the mercy of the elements – the play goes on regardless. It is such a lovely atmospheric kind of setting.

And so the play began. It is based on love letters that have survived from the 12^th century of two medieval intellectuals who were deeply in love, but could never be together. Peter Abelard was a controversial and brilliant philosopher and theologian. He was a skilled debater and notorious for questioning philosophical assumptions of his day, as well as the authority of figures within the church. Around 1115 he came to know the niece of the canon of the cathedral in Paris called Fulbert. Her name was Heloise. She was a literary genius and beautiful; Abelard became her tutor and the two fell deeply in love. One of Abelard’s letters evidently reads, “Books were open before us, but we spoke oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more readily from our lips than words.”

Their relationship was scandalous in that era. The two eventually married “secretly” in an attempt to appease Heloise’s uncle, Fulbert, but they refused to publicly acknowledge it though, because marriage would prevent Abelard from advancing in the church at that time. Fulbert was furious and took revenge on Abelard by having him castrated. Filled with shame, and then genuine remorse and repentance, Abelard became a monk and filled his life with study. In the same way, Heloise took her vows and became a nun, devoting herself to the study of literature and poetry. She was approximately twenty-two, and he, forty. In the years that follow letters would pass between them, but they would never be together again. In one of her letters, Heloise is believed to have written, “While I am denied your presence, give me at least through your words – of which you have enough and to spare – some sweet sem­blance of yourself.”

One other thing I loved about this story was the debating between Abelard, and a contemporary of his, an abbot called Bernard of Clairvaux. Their different revelation of God, and thinking about how to know Him, was so interesting. Bernard believed that faith is a gift from God, and Abelard believed that people come to faith through an understanding of God’s creation. Bernard believed in Divine revelation, whereas Abelard believed that we come to know God fully through the minds that He has given us – through thought and reason. The dialogue in the play between these two, was amazing to listen to, and really interesting.

The Selfish Giant begins by describing the most idyllic garden … “Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit.” The children would play in the garden each day on their way home from school and it made them happy.

The Selfish Giant returns from visiting his friend the Cornish ogre and banishes the children from his garden, building a high wall all around it, “my own garden is my own garden … anyone can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.”

The story goes that without the children, Spring did not visit the garden anymore and the Giant lived in perpetual Winter. The fable ends happily when the heart of the Giant is captured by a particular child (who turns out to be Jesus) and he realises his selfishness. He takes a great axe and knocks down the wall he had put up to keep the children away, saying “it is your garden now, little children.”

What I love most about this story is what it says about the way we choose to live our lives, and the blessings we have been entrusted with. Sometimes pain and fear can paralyse a person from living openly, but I guess this tale was more about the giant experiencing the blessing that comes with blessing other people. Wilde conveys so beautifully the idea that the antidote to bleakness in our world is opening it to others, if we can through God’s grace, and sharing what He has given us.

A verse in The Message version of the Bible along these lines is “keep open house; be generous with your lives” in Matthew 5:14. And this verse too, “I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life .… Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” 2 Corinthians 6:11.

The pink blossoms are from the walk last weekend.

The thing I loved about it as I read it today was what the story said about compassion. The heart of the prince is so tender and he truly sees the pain and hardship that people of his village endured. And he responds.

If you have not come across the story, the prince is a statue set on a column high above the city. He is gilded all over with golden leaves and has eyes of sapphire and a ruby on his sword hilt. When the prince lived, he was surrounded only by beauty and happy things. A wall stretched right around his garden, and so he was only ever aware of this beauty around him.

When he died, his statue was set above his city so that day by day he sees the ugliness and misery that there is.

In the story he befriends a funny little swallow. The swallow becomes the means by which the prince is able to respond to the needs of the destitute and hurting in his city. And the way that Wilde describes all of this is so exquisite. It is so beautiful.

Even though the prince’s heart was lead, he was so affected by the pain he witnessed that he wept. He was moved with compassion.

The story spoke to me so much of loving God. That as our love grows for Him, His priorities become ours. And His priority is for the hurting. Is my heart soft like His to the needs of others? Am I a needs-meeter?

When the prince had given all of himself away, and there were no more jewels or golden leaves upon him, the mayor and the councilors eventually had him pulled down. With his outside beauty stripped, he was no longer useful in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, as the story goes, the prince’s broken heart and his little friend the swallow, were eternally precious.

The writing in itself is exquisite. I hope this small excerpt blesses you as it did me,

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

‘Shall I love you?’ said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.