Amazement at a rescue action

Here is the reflection that I shared during yesterday's Evensong at St Catherine's Wickford:

'Eleven Addresses to the Lord: I' by John Berryman.

This is the first of ’Eleven Addresses to the Lord’ written by the US poet John Berryman and published in 1970 in Love & Fame. Berryman was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and morbid. In 1970 he published the drastically different Love & Fame which, in its final section ‘Eleven Addresses to the Lord’, reflected his return to the Catholicism of his youth. Despite its negative reception, its colloquial style and forthrightness have influenced many younger poets.

I share this poem because of the difficulties posed for us by the stories of miracles in the New Testament (Acts 12.1-19). In this evening’s reading from Acts, Peter is miraculously rescued from prison by an angel, while James, the brother of John, another of the apostles is killed by King Herod. Why is one apostle saved from death and another allowed to die? We don’t know and we aren’t told. We face the same issue today, when miracles are claimed for some but many others for whom prayers are said do not survive.

At the centre of Berryman’s poem are these lines:

You have come to my rescue again & again
in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.
You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves
and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.

He said that his conversion came about because ‘of a rescue action – into the notion of a God who, at certain moments, definitely and personally intervenes in individual lives, one of which is mine.’ But why had God saved him and not his brilliant friends who had destroyed themselves?

Berryman can’t deny the help he has received from God and even feels sure God will assist him again but is unable to go any further than that. He says that all things are possible for God but that some miracles may have been a special case to establish the initiatory faith of the apostles.

This seems a reasonable stance for us to take; we know that we have been helped but we can’t pretend to know how and why God acts as he does. Whatever may come, Berryman says he stands in awe and wonder of God – ‘accept my amazement’ – and asks to:

stand until death forever at attention
for any your least instruction or enlightenment.

May we also do the same. Amen.

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Nick Battle - The Finish Line.