As my mind clears from the haze of this weekend, which ended with a blast of an evensong and a choir party, there are two literary questions that I need answers to. Both of these arose at the party.
Firstly, I was asked about the second verse of the last hymn we sang on the radio yesterday:
For healing of the nations, for peace that will not end.
For love that makes us lovers, God grant us grace to mend.
Weave our varied gifts together: knit our lives as they are spun.
On your loom of life enrol us till the thread of life is run.
O great Weaver of our fabric, bind church and world in one.
Dye our texture with your radiance, light our colours with your sun.
My interlocutor asked me how I could have allowed those first two lines because the phrase God grant us grace to mend seems to suggest that there is something wrong with all the things that come before it. What is wrong with the love that makes us lovers, that needs to be mended?
Now, looking at this today, I find myself wondering whether the grace to mend refers to us, rather than the love of lovers. I’m wondering whether this is using the word mend in a similar way to the way Benedick says, “serve God, love me and mend” in Much ado about Nothing.
In a different conversation, I was asked whether I had read The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. My answer was in the affirmative. Indeed, I said, it was all the fault of the woodworm.
So far so good, it was without doubt all the fault of the woodworm. However, I then went on to say assertively that part of the book was about the Achilli Lauro tragedy. My second interlocutor could not remember that bit at all and I found myself wondering whether:
a) I was making this up entirely
b) there is a section in the novel about the Achilli Lauro or
c) there is a section in the novel about a similar kind of raid on a cruise ship.
Come the dawning light of day, I cannot find the novel in question to check.
Any of you literary types (perhaps those who read HD or live in Scotland’s literary hub Dunoon or what have you) help me out with either of these questions?
Bet you all wish you went to parties like this. (And pass the paracetamol, whilst you are at it).
Thus, an ambiguous apophatic dash perhaps.
Or is the word questioning merely an attempt to take us marching proudly into the queer studies department?
On second thoughts, I think that perhaps one can only march proudly Out of the queer studies department.
I’ve learned something.
The apophatic dash seems to be the move out of feminism into queer studies.
Daphne Hampson always used to get at me for what she called ‘that dreadful American habit’ (usually, but not necessarily, referring to my punctuation). But today, the dash has been beautifully redeemed.
The questioning, queering, questing apophatic dash – deconstructing the inside/outside binary as we march into and out of queer studies.
Yes indeed the dash is a beautiful thing (or rather, a beautiful movement, not being an object but an event)!
If it’s good enough for Emily and Hilda – it’s good enough for me.
By the way, back to Victorian hymnody, it was pointed out to me that Miss Dickinson’s poems were often written in the same meter as hymns. My Bible and Literature class sang ‘A Fly Buzzed’ to the tune of Amazing Grace and were greatly amused.
I’m inclined to the view that the apophatic dash between feminism and queer studies works both ways.
Thus, for me – that dash is bi.
Can I just say that this debate has been great to watch develop…I have been in Aberdeen for 48 hours and only just had a chance to catch up. I wondered, whilst sitting on the train, how the approaches to hymns argued here might fit with how the various writers would interpret Galatians (the ‘neither jew nor gentile’ passage). Martin Dale in the USA has recently written on this text and raises similar thoughts as represented here. (Book is called Sex and the Single Savior). Thanks anyway folks.
ps do you think rain is good for theology? 🙂
jus’ planted a seed and see what growed, eh !
jus’ planted a seed – and see what growed, eh !