Ravishing!

Lent Book Club: 7th March 2022

It was one of those professional training sessions where attendance was entirely voluntary but you were definitely expected to go. At the front stood one of the “facilitators”, let’s call them Brains, next to a flip chart (do people still use those?). On it was a large sheet of paper which was completely blank except for a dark dot in the middle – about the size of a coin, I guess.

Brains then asked us what we saw. Reluctantly some of us volunteered that we saw a dot. What else? There was a pause until the penny dropped: there was also the rest of the sheet. In fact about 99% of what we could see on the chart was blank. Only 1% was the dark dot. The point was that it is a human tendancy to focus on the small exception, the error, and to miss the bigger picture. (Like I have difficulty in remembering my exam grades except the ones I failed which I can recall in precise detail).

So when it comes to today’s suggested poem, one word stood out for me: ravish. I guessed John Donne means it in the sense of “fill with intense delight” (Oxford English Dictionary) but it can mean rape. My eye was instinctively drawn to it and it made me feel more than a little uncomfortable to the extent that the rest of the poem was in danger of fading into the background like the blank paper around a dot.

John Donne is one of my favourite poets and Holy Sonnet 14 is one of my favourite poems of his. It describes his experience like a princess who is imprisoned by an arch enemy who wants to force her to be his bride. He cries out to God to be the night in shining armour to rescue him. And then ravish him: “take me, take me!”. Perhaps like a mediaeval romantic thriller.

Rather than delighting in the passionate love of God, I think that it seems rather violent. My instinctive disquiet about the word ravish is quite justified I now think. I get that Donne is describing his inner conflict and that the thoughts and feelings involved can be powerful and disturbing. Richard Harries’s allusion to Romans chapter 7, where Paul is at war with himself, is fair. He also goes on to suggest that the thing to do is that “we bring this conflict before God himself and have it out with him” (p21).

Nonetheless, a brief look at the news gives me pause about using such analogies too lightly or too readily. There more than enough battles, sieges and ravages to be going on with.

Almighty God, you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Common Worship Post Communion Prayer for the second Sunday of Lent)

This year #LentBookClub are reading “Hearing God in Poetry. Fifty poems for Lent and Easter” by Richard Harries published by SPCK. In this book Bishop Harries introduces us to a number of poets and poems. Some may be familiar, some are old and some are new. You may follow the # on Twitter or find us on Facebook.