Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 57 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 6 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 57 – The offspring of the adulterer and the whore jeer at the devout. They offer child sacrifice. “You have struck a pact with those whose bed you love, whoring with them often” (57:8). You put on oil for Molech.

Why have you disowned Yahweh? “When you cry, let your hateful idols save you! The wind will carry them all away, a breath will take them off. But whoever trusts in me shall inherit the land and own my holy mountain” (57:13). The Lord lives in a high and holy place but he lives close to the contrite and revived the hearts of those who are sorry. The Lord will comfort the contrite and will heal him.

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

6. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention

Who weeps for Babylon, who mourns for Tyre,

Who worships proud imperious Caesar now?

The wreath, woven to fit a tyrant’s brow

So soon is trampled in oblivion’s mire.

Buried the ash of Moloch’s dreadful fire,

Withered and lost Astarte’s golden bough,

And turned beneath the lonely peasant’s plough

Lie splintered shards of heathen altars dire.

Victorious lava sears the mountain side,

And leaves a cicatrice among the green,

But sun and frost and rain, and roots unseen

Advance the slow, resistless verdant tide.

Through all events runs one repeating rule,

That life may grow, but wrath and hatred cool.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 56 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 5 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 56 – “Be just and fair to all. Do what is right and good, for I am coming soon to rescue you and to display my righteousness among you” (56:1).

The Lord will not reject foreigners or others rejected by you like Eunuchs. Those who will commit their lives to me will prosper. “I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices, because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (56:7).

The “leaders of my people—the Lord’s watchmen, his shepherds—are blind and ignorant. They are like silent watchdogs that give no warning when danger comes” (56:10). They are just watching after themselves.

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

5. In hope to enjoy its own in the end

Small flowers there are beside the stoniest way,

And on the seeming-endless journeying

Some breaths of air are sweet, and some birds sing,

And some new goal is reached in every day;

Yet for the unknown end we wait and pray,

When the last knot of this world’s tangled string

Is straightened out, and every evil thing

Redeemed in heaven’s undisputed sway.

We know not how the day is to be born,

Whether in clouds of glory, tongues of flame,

As once at Pentecost the Spirit came,

Or whether imperceptibly as dawn;

But as the seed must grow into the tree,

So life is love, and love the end must be.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 55 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 4 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 55 – If you are thirsty, “Come and drink” (55:1). If you have nothing, come and “take your choice of wine or milk: (55:1). “Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good . . . Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life” (55:2-3).

I will give you the same undying love I gave to my servant David. “I made him a leader among the nations. You also will command nations you do not know, and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey” (55:4-5).

“See the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near” (55:6). His ways are not your ways, his thoughts beyond anything you can imagine. “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (55:9).

Like the rain that falls and nourishes the soil, the word of the Lord will always produce fruit. “You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands!” (55:12).

The government will be fair and stable. Enemies will not come near; if anyone does attack you, it will not be because the Lord sent them. “[I]n that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. Your will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (54:17).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

4. But delights to endure all things

How to endure, when all around us die

Nations and gracious cities, homes and men,

And the sweet earth is made a filthy den

Beneath whose roof black, belching vultures fly:

How to endure the darkness, when the sky

Is totally eclipsed by evil, when

Foul grinning Chaos spreads its reign again

And all good things in senseless ruin lie.

Must we be hard as stone? It wears to dust.

As stiff as oaks? But they untimely break.

As pitiless as still? It turns to rust,

And Time from Pyramids will ruins make.

In violence, decay, starvation need,

What can endure? Only the living Seed.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 54 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 3 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 54 – A time of growth and prosperity is coming, “Enlarge your house; build an addition. Spread out your home, and spare no expense! For you will soon be bursting at the seams. Your descendants will occupy other nations and resettle the ruined cities” (54:2-3).

You will no longer live in shame or dwell on the “sorrows of widowhood. For your Creator will be your husband” (54:4-5). “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will take you back. In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while. But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you” (54:7-8).

As the Lord promised with Noah, He will no longer be angry with you, “For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken” (54:10).

 The Lord will rebuild Jerusalem and decorate the “storm-battered city” with jewels and sparkling gems. He will “teach all your children, and they will enjoy great peace” (54:13).

The government will be fair and stable. Enemies will not come near; if anyone does attack you, it will not be because the Lord sent them. “[I]n that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. Your will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (54:17).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

3. Nor to revenge any wrong

Now am I veined by an eroding doubt,

Insidious as decay, with poison rife.

Is love indeed the end and law of life,

When lush, grimacing hates so quickly sprout?

I thought in ignorance I had cast out

The sneaking devils of continuing strife,

But as the cancer thwarts the surgeon’s knife,

So does revenge my sword of reason flout.

But though hate rises in enfolding flame

At each renewed oppression, soon it dies;

It sinks as quickly as we saw it rise,

While love’s small constant light burns still the same.

Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong,

Yet hate is short, and love is very long.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 53 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 2 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 53 – Continuing the prophecy begun in the previous chapter, again in the past tense, but “past” in God’s eyes only.

“My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was noting beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (53:2-3).

We despised him and did not care about his sufferings. “Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down” (53:4). We thought he was being punished by God for his wrong-doing, but NO, “he was pierced for OUR rebellion, crushed for OUR sins. He was beaten so we could be whole” (53:5).

WE are the sheep who have strayed, not HIM. “We have left God’s paths to follow our own” (53:6).

Like a lamb, he “was led to the slaughter . . . Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants” (53:8).

He had done nothing wrong, yet “he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave” (53:9). Yet ALL of this was part of a larger plan the Lord had. “When he [the suffering servant] sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied . . . my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins” (53:11).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

2. That delights to do no evil

Shall I be good because of some reward,

Because the virtuous act pays dividends

In candy bars, the approving nods of friends,

In many tongues to praise, and hands to applaud,

In riches, honors, lavishly outpoured?

Or, since to ruin all things earthly tend,

Shall I be good to gain the greatest end,

The crown of bliss that Heaven may afford?

Ask the sweet spring upon the mountain top

What makes his sinless water flow so free:

Is it the call of some far-distant sea,

Or the deep pressure that no crust can stop?

No conscious end can drag us out of sin,

Unless clear goodness wells up from within.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 52:13-15 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 1

Isaiah 52:13-15 – He who will be sent, God’s servant “will prosper, he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights” (52:13).

The people looked on him and were appalled. Written in the past tense, it passes into the ears of Christians as a prophecy of what WILL come:

“[S]o will the crowds be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before” (52:15).

New Testament Inspired:

I want to continue having some New Testament-inspired part of my daily blog through the last days of it. While I was a Friend for about ten years before returning to the Catholic Church, and knew the story of James Nayler’s entry into Bristol, England in 1656, I never had run across the famous “deathbed words” he spoke in 1660, some two hours before he passed away. And, I had never any knowledge of the absolutely amazing sonnets that Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993) wrote using these words as his foundation. They blew me away when I first read them in 2012. I think everyone in the world should read them, so I will include one each day. But first the words themselves:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

And now the amazing Sonnets by Kenneth Boulding, a very illustrious Friend himself, sonnets that were inspired by Nayler’s words:

1. There is a spirit which I feel

Can I, imprisoned, body-bounded, touch

The starry robe of God, and from my soul,

My tiny Part, reach forth to his great Whole,

And spread my Little to the infinite Much,

When Truth forever slips from out my clutch,

And what I take indeed, I do but dole

In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl

That holds a million million million such?

And yet, some Thing that moves among the stars,

And holds the cosmos in a web of law,

Moves too in me: a hunger, a quick thaw

Of soul that liquefies the ancient bars,

As I, a member of creation, sing

The burning oneness binding everything.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 21 and Augustine's Confessions 9

Judges 21 – The Israelites had also agreed at Mizpah that none of them present would give a daughter in marriage to the tribe of Benjamin. After the battle, they go to Bethel and bewail the loss of the tribe. They also swore at Mizpah to cut off any clan that did not come to the assembly at Mizpah—they carry out this threat now. 

They realize that not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead had come, so they are put to the sword (everyone, that is, except virgin girls).  These virgins (of a clan who had not sworn to not intermarry with Benjamin) are then given to the men remaining to the tribe of Benjamin (the 600 who had escaped to the rock of Rimmon in the wilderness—20:47), so that the tribe will not be lost forever. As for the remaining 200, they are told they may go up and carry off women who “dance in the dances” at the sanctuary at Shiloh.  These women may marry the Benjaminite men remaining. 

After these sad chapters the author repeats the obvious: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Amen--as we do now, sometimes with as much wisdom as these people showed.

It is clear that the book of Judges brings together stories and perhaps writings from a host of different sources, times and points of view.  The variety is simply part of the reality they must deal with in their sad state, but it is also the chaos man just naturally sinks into when there is no centralized ethos or law. That it is incorporated into the “story” again speaks volumes for the people of Israel, who more than any other people I know, have looked at the darkness in man with a clearer and more uncompromising eye than anyone else I know of.  The “fall” pursues us even on the road to redemption.

Augustine (354-430 AD)

Confessions

9 - And, behold, my infancy died long ago, and I live. But You, O Lord, who ever livest, and in whom nothing dies (since before the world was, and indeed before all that can be called "before," you exist, and are the God and Lord of all Your creatures; and with you fixedly abide the causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all things changeable, and the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal), tell me, Your suppliant, O God; tell, O merciful One, Your miserable servant — tell me whether my infancy succeeded another age of mine which had at that time perished. Was it that which I passed in my mother's womb? For of that something has been made known to me, and I have myself seen women with child. And what, O God, my joy, preceded that life? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? For no one can tell me these things, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Do you laugh at me for asking such things, and command me to praise and confess you for what I know?

Let us praise and confess the Lord for what we experience of Him, not speculate about a million things our minds are capable of conceiving because we are rooted in Him more than any other living creature. It is hard to avoid the ideas that people have made into simplistic creeds. It isn’t necessarily the words of the creeds that I dispute. It is how simply the words are interpreted. This poem, the last of Kenneth Boulding’s, Naylor Sonnets captures what I am getting at.

We Christians do believe that life in God, in Christ, is “eternal.” And Augustine wonders if that means he has existed in time before this present life and will be forever since nothing “in [God] dies”. Boulding sees the words as too narrow. We cannot KNOW a lot about spiritual truth:

While yet we see with eyes, must we be blind?

Is lonely mortal death the only gate

To holy life eternal—must we wait

Until the dark portcullis clangs behind

Our hesitating steps, before we find

Abiding good? Ah, no, not that our fate;

Our time-bound cry “too early” or “too late”

Can have no meaning in the Eternal Mind.

The door is open, and the Kingdom here—

Yet Death indeed upon the threshold stands

To bar our way—unless into his hands

We give our self, our will, our heart, our fear.

And then—strange resurrection!—from above

Is poured upon us life, will, heart, and love.