This month three of
the major world religious celebrations of 2020 occur one after another in quick
succession: Passover, Easter and Ramadan. Like the annual renewal of Spring it
is reassuring that these ancient ceremonies repeat with their familiar summons
to repentance and soul-searching. Yet, this year all will be different. Communal
gatherings will be banned - mosques, synagogues and churches will be closed. In
terms of the covid crisis we have reached midnight. Deaths are predicted to
peak this month around the world as families will be shaken by the illness and
death of loved ones.
In reflecting upon
this I have turned once again to the Blake prints I commented on earlier in the
crisis. In the former blog we looked at the arrival of the angel of pestilence
– Satan – with his poetic pose and his halo and we saw then that, like the
Israelites of old, we were being summoned upon the journey of Exodus out of our
familiar world of ‘onions, cucumbers and melons’ to the harsh landscape of the
desert. Yet, as we discussed in the previous blog, in the desert we can see
wonders happen and like the silent bird of the Upanisads we are being called to listen to the silent song within
our hearts.
In the cycle of Blake
prints we also reach midnight. Job, like our modern technocratic world, lies prone
at the bottom of the picture. All is seemingly paralysed, he can neither move
forward nor back. However, in the central panel he has now adopted a different
attitude to the one we saw in the last plate. He is attentive, humble even. He
realises that he has nowhere else to go. Even the three ‘accusers’ are silent,
his wife sits next to him with her head held in despair. Yet in contrast to
these five pitiful figures Blake introduces a new figure – Elihu, the young man
who will lead Job out of this mess. He begins his speech:
‘I am Young and ye
are very Old wherefore I was afraid to declare my opinion before you.’ The
scriptures tell us he ‘was angry at Job because he justified himself rather
than God, he was also angry at Job’s three friends because they had found no
answer though they had declared Job to be in the wrong.’ After the denial and
depression, as Kübler-Ross tells us, anger is the next stage in our mourning
for what has been lost and in these few weeks as people lose their livelihood,
cannot find health services or even simple foodstuff there has been a rising
anger. But Elihu’s anger is different, this is what used to be called in the old
days ‘righteous anger’. It is the anger of youth that has ‘waited for words,
listened for wise sayings’ and found none. Blake makes him a prophetic figure full of
vitality and vigour in contrast to the five ‘oldies’ in front of him – this is
the Parrhesia that authors as diverse
as Michel Foucault and Hans Urs von Balthasar talk about – ‘speaking truth to
power’ as we would call it nowadays, the traditional role of the prophet. Blake makes him a prophetic figure
full of vitality and vigour in contrast to the five ‘oldies’ in front of him.
He stands proud and upright pointing to the heavens while his other hand is a
rebuke and a blessing at the same time. The five listeners look suitably
impressed and hear him out. In contrast to Job and his crew he is half clothed
in shade and he occupies the same space as the twelve stars that Blake has
thoughtfully wrapped around him. It is clear that this is no ordinary young
man.
In psychological terms we talk about two aspects of the psyche/soul; the senex or ‘old man’ and the puer or ‘youngster’. Elihu is clearly a
representative of the puer – to my
eyes Blake also seems to make him sexually ambivalent, he is neither male nor
female with his long hair and his gentle step. This is a figure from the part
of the psyche that has not been operative up to now. Again, as in the previous
plate, Blake gives us more clues as to what is going on in the surrounding to
the panel. Yes, the old figure asleep at the bottom seems unconscious but look
what streams from him: a series of naked free-flowing figures, again sexually
ambiguous, leading us up to the declaration at the top of the plate: ‘In a
Dream, In a Vision of the Night, in deep Slumberings upon the bed. Then he
openeth the ears of Men and sealeth their instruction...’ The unconscious is
now speaking via the puer-figure of Elihu and Job and his tribe are both
entranced and terrified. They know that however unpalatable the message this is
what they must hear...
Which brings us back
to Passover, Easter and Ramadan.
The Passover
celebrations will begin this week with the Seder meal, normally held at home
with the family. Towards the beginning of the meal the youngest child asks the
famous question: ‘How is this night different from all other nights?’ Like
Elihu, wisdom will come from the youngest as all look to them to start the
ceremony. Likewise, in the Christian version of the Seder, Christ’s Last Supper
in Jerusalem, also celebrated this week on Maundy Thursday, at a crucial moment in the meal Jesus ‘got up from the table,
took off his outer robe and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water
into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the
towel that around him’ (John 13: 4 – 5). The disciples were shocked and
scandalised, Peter even refusing to have his Master suffer this indignity to
which Jesus replies ‘unless I wash you , you can have no share with me...’
All this, starting
with Elihu, points the way out of our present crisis – like Job in this picture
we have to accept with humility what is happening to us and our societies and
realise that the Master must now become the Servant. Senex must give way to Puer
if we are to allow the human spirit to emerge from this crisis. One world is dying and a new one is arising. As in Blake’s print
it may seem that we are at midnight, but this is where the seeds for renewal
lie – in our societies, in our homes and in our hearts. Let us continue to pray
for all the human family at this difficult time – especially that we may all experience the renewing humility depicted by Blake, whatever our race, creed or
religion. That we may listen again to the young and those on the margins of society. For the dawn will surely come again and let us be ready for it when it
does.
To close I leave a
link to the astonishingly beautiful depiction of this scene in Ralph
Vaughan-Williams’ ‘Job: A Masque for Dancing’. I hope you enjoy it.
Love
Peter
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