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On my 57th Birthday, August 21st 2008 Jeremy Taylor is best known as a prose stylist; his chief fame is the result of his twin devotional manual, Holy Living and Holy Dying. (The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, 1650 and The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying, 1651). These books were favorites of John Wesley, and admired for their prose style by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Thomas de Quincey. They are marked by solemn but vivid rhetoric, elaborate periodic sentences, and careful attention to the music and rhythms of words: "As our life is very short, so it is very miserable; and therefore it is well that it is short. God, in pity to mankind, lest his burden should be insupportable and his nature an intolerable load, hath reduced our state of misery to an abbreviature; and the greater our misery is, the less while it is like to last; the sorrows of a man's spirit being like ponderous weights, which by the greatness of their burden make a swifter motion, and descend into the grave to rest and ease our wearied limbs; for then only we shall sleep quietly, when those fetters are knocked off, which not only bound our souls in prison, but also ate the flesh till the very bones opened the secret garments of their cartilages, discovering their nakedness and sorrow." From Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying I preached on the life of Jeremy Taylor about ten day’s ago at our Wednesday morning Eucharist and I have discovered that his ‘haunting’ words about life and death still challenge my everyday thoughts. It just may be the times in which we live seem to be so oppressive. Which one of us has not let our eyes linger at the cost of fuel at the pump? It really isn’t all that much… just another dime or a quarter… that should not seem to make a large difference in our income should it? There is just an overwhelming feeling of disgust and despair about the world situation. I really try to overcome these feelings of being so powerless.
The only way I feel as though I can overcome the world’s conditions is to think in faith about what God has in store for us when we journey into His everlasting kingdom. Deep in my heart I know that His kingdom will be the gift of His eternal love for us. Isaiah spoke with clarity when he stated that God will have heard our plea before we have spoken and that there will be no more death or hurt on God’s holy mountain. Life is at times abusive with its twenty five cent weights that are placed upon us but it need not be overwhelming once we realize that we are only on a journey here in this world. A gallon of gas will not ever get you where it use to go! Right now it is more important to trust that God’s grace will transport you and me to a new place that has not been made with human hands or ruled over by greed and avarice. Maybe Jeremy’s choice of words is more liberating than I thought. “To live is to go on a journey...to die is to go home.” From The Soldiers Quote Book Peace Love, Fr Jeff |
