Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross, and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.So, in his purple wrapp’d, receive me, Lord;
“Hymn to God, My God, In my Sickness” by John Donne
By these his thorns, give me his other crown;
And as to others’ souls I preach’d thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
“Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.”
I ran across this poem through Biola University’s The Lent Project for April 3rd. What struck me was, “Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s cross, and Adam’s tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me…”
Not sure why this stuck out, but the truth of that does seem to have some echoes in Paul’s words:
I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. But if what I do is against my will, then clearly I agree with the law and hold it to be admirable. This means that it is no longer I who perform the action, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me—my unspiritual self, I mean—for though the will to do good is there, the ability to effect it is not. The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will; and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its dwelling in me.
Romans 7:15-20 REB1
Donne is not the same as Paul, however. I sense a different (still similar) tension. The recognition/realization that we are not fully one (Calvary/Adam versus Paradise/Jesus) clicks for me.
The imagery of a tree will helps to root this as an internal tension that we all struggle with. Both aspects (or four if you want to divide them further), remain true in us until we are in Heaven with Jesus.
- Scripture quotations taken from the Revised English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1989. All rights reserved. ↩︎
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