Somewhere Oxen Are Kneeling
Chesterton once described poet Thomas Hardy as a “sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot.” Without diminishing such a description, I’d like to think that Chesterton would have felt a certain sympathy for Hardy. The scientific developments of Hardy’s era left many crediting existence not to God but to chance. This influenced Hardy: His beliefs were seemingly rendered untrue, and yet his reasons for wishing such beliefs to be true only intensified.
In Hardy’s poem “Hap,” a voice expresses the wish that some vengeful god existed who delighted in the suffering and misery of the human person. If such a god existed, it is reasoned, then the speaker could at least bear his own sufferings “half-eased” because someone more powerful than he had “willed and meted” the tears he shed. Instead, the explanation for suffering is found in the meaning of that archaic word “hap” (luck, fortune or chance). The world is bleaker as a result.
As for the traditional concept of God, the past usefulness of this “man-projected figure” is noticed by those attending God’s funeral procession. In “God’s Funeral,” although God’s existence is no longer seen as a necessary belief, Hardy sees some bystanders who refuse to acknowledge the demise of God, and while Hardy’s speaker cannot “prop their faith,” he recognizes that he too “once had prized” their hope.
“The Oxen” combines these themes of sadness and demise. It is Christmas Eve and near midnight. Our speaker sits in conversation with another. The other notes that “now they are all on their knees,” and worshiping Christians are not on his mind. He is familiar with that old English legend which has animals descended from those who witnessed the birth of Christ, kneeling in commemoration every Christmas Eve. The speaker suggests that were someone to invite him to a stable to see such oxen kneeling in remembrance of the birth of Jesus, he would indeed go, and though doubtful, he would be “hoping it might be so.”
Although Hardy cannot believe (Hardy’s speakers, in my view, are representative of his own experience of religion), it seems to me that he would like to. In “The Impercipient” his speaker bluntly asks: “Why always must I feel as blind to the sights my brethren see?”
Hardy is the sort one hopes can find peace, but he never seems to. In “The Darkling Thrush,” he looks back and sees “the Century’s corpse outleant,” and although he previously wished he could be like others and believe, now, for the first time, all “seemed as fervourless” as he. To those entering the new era, Hardy cannot communicate a vision of optimism. Is his pessimism a consequence of God’s funeral?
A glimmer of hope remains, though. As Hardy’s speaker stands viewing the countryside, the voice “of joy unlimited” penetrates the silence. A songbird — frail, gaunt, and small — sings. However, this must only intensify the speaker’s own degree of pessimism, for as the poem concludes, the speaker attributes to the bird “some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.” The consequences of the recession of faith, so apparent as the Victorian age draws to a close, are left to those of a new era.
Hardy lived until 1928. His assessment of the First World War, and the role of religion, solidified his pessimism: ” ‘Peace on earth’ was said, we sing it, and pay a million priests to bring it. After two thousand years of Mass, we’ve got as far as poison gas.”
I find Hardy’s 19th century voice to be a sad one. Turning to a voice of the next century, Graham Greene’s 10 February 1959 journal from the Congo reads:
“How often people speak of the absurdity of believing that life should exist by God’s will on one minute part of the immense universe. There is a parallel absurdity we are asked to believe, that God chose a tiny colony of a Roman empire in which to be born. Strangely enough two absurdities are easier to believe than one.”
Christianity presents an eternal God as having appeared in time. Perhaps this is absurd. Christianity may indeed be the craziest of religious movements, but does that make its claim of Jesus untrue? In the film Bruce Almighty, Bruce Nolan is given the powers of God for a certain length of time, and he uses these powers to make his girlfriend’s breasts larger, slur the speech of an anchorman he is in competition with, cause a monkey to come from the rear (and then re-enter that rear) of a thug who had beaten him up, fix the dents on his own car, and so on. Bruce, in possession of the powers of God, betters only himself.
In contrast, the language of “emptying” is used by Paul of the New Testament to describe a Jesus who, in possession of the powers of God, instead chooses to empty himself of them, and share in the humanity of those he loves. The Incarnation, as the theologian Balthasar notes, is Jesus’ “condescension, abasement, and because we are sinners, humiliation.” Many, no doubt, would rather model themselves after Jesus than Bruce, and yet in the struggle between power and love, power has an immediate allure, and not a few would find themselves following Bruce. Jesus chooses what he does because he loves us. Faith, I think, leads a person towards experiencing this. For all his faults, Graham Greene had faith. To Greene, though the Incarnation of Christ was an act of grace which no amount of explaining could justify, it still was believable.
May we too recognize that somewhere, perhaps, oxen are kneeling.
K.
Kelly Wilson is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. Besides Vox Nova he writes at his blog Musings.
Comments are closed.
Those little oxen carvings are sooooo cute, especially the one on the left. It looks like our doggie.
There are all sorts of ways — many more in turns out than orthodoxy typically allows — to understand the birth of Jesus of Nazareth as the birth of God as man. There is no doubt that Christianity has long had, since the birth of a critical approach to religion itself anyways, quite impressive ways for distinguishing the striking similarity between its God-as-man tenets and those of countless other faiths that exist or have existed. Often less meditated upon is the rather ho-hum insight you could draw from it all that we people on the planet simply like to believe in God becoming like us. We just really like it. And to me Christianity is proof to me that some evocations of this deep and profound yearning are more satisfying than others. I have no problem with aligning with Jesus as God born as man, simply because if you need a guy for the job, boy by human standards alone, you could do infinitely worse. The gospels make him seem like a real mensch in a lot of ways. If you know the guy is a mensch, who care what is ultimately true about him. Like all commonsense realities like that, you can take it on a cosmic level. Ergo, the cosmic Christ. The Alpha and the Omega. Merry Christmas!
Peter, you might enjoy the poem “Was He Married?” by, probably, my favourite poet: Ms. Stevie Smith.
I have always liked Stevie Smith to, but keep forgetting about her. I don’t think I ever read that poem, and I loved it!!! I especially like the line about how all human beings should get a medal! I agree. That is, if you can get through life and not be a complete asshole and have some love for your fellow man, you deserve a medal. “Cause it ain’t easy, given the rest of the world!
That’s interesting, Peter. The only people I’ve met familiar with her, are those familiar with her because I’ve given them something of hers to read…
I ran across “Away, Melancholy” a while back, and really liked that.
Kelly,
You have stimulated a memory for me that I had long forgotten. In about 1983 or 4 I went with the rector of my college seminary to a sort of art-house re-run movie theater in Coral Gable, and the movie was “Stevie” ….about Stevie Smith. I don’t think I knew her much at all then, but the rector was very fond of her! Them were different days, kelly!
Kelly,
Just a correction for the recondite fan of Florida history. The art house was in Coconut Grove, where they always — very annoyingly!– served popcorn with curry powder on it. The Grove was definitely the place for Stevie Smith fans.
Glad to see you mention two of my favorite poems: “The Oxen” and “The Darkling Thrush” by Hardy. Chesterton apparently met Hardy once in a publishers office, and he described Hardy as man full of humility
Interesting. I did not know that.