My goal for these weekly posts is to lift your spirits, renew your hope, and (gently) tax your mind.

To that end, below you’ll find 1) a piano piece, 2) a poem, and 3) a probing question.

First, the piano piece I liked this week was Luke Faulkner’s “The Wanderer.”  My best attempt at capturing the feelings the piece induced is the phrase tender melancholy. It brought on feelings of sadness, but it also inspired me to write during my daily reflection time. I hope you enjoy it.

Second, the poem. Yes, it’s from none other than George Herbert. (I’ve been reading this book lately.) The poem is called “The Answer”:

My comforts drop and melt away like snow:
I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandy, fall and flow
Like leaves about me: or like summer friends,
Flies of estates and sun-shine. But to all,
Who think me eager, hot, and undertaking,
But in my prosecutions slack and small;
As a young exhalation, newly waking,
Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky;
But cooling by the way, grows pursy and slow,
And settling to a cloud, doth live and die
In that dark state of tears: to all, that so
Show me, and set me, I have one reply,
Which they that know the rest, know more than I.

After extracting meaning from the archaic language and perusing the works of Herbert scholars, Stephen Witmer sheds light on the meaning of the poem: The plans for our lives don’t always pan out. Our dreams don’t always come true. Friends forsake us. This is what Herbert experienced in his life.

As a graduate of Cambridge University, friends of Herbert (and even Herbert himself), expected a life of social advancement and public admiration—or least the opportunity to serve as parish priest of a historic church, a church frequented by the cultural elite. Instead, after leaving Cambridge and his position as Public Orator behind, Herbert experienced an “unusually precipitous” decline—at least in the eyes of the world. Though he desired to serve in the king’s court, he ended up pastoring a small church in a tiny town called Bemerton. And that’s where he lived out the rest of his days.

Strange as it might sound, Herbert was judged harshly by others because of how his life turned out: “I have heard sober men censure him as a man that did not manage his brave parts to his best advantage and preferment, but lost himself in an humble way,” said Barnabas Oley—a friend of Herbert’s.

Herbert’s reply? Look at the last line of the poem: “Which they that know the rest, know more than I.” This is a non-answer. And that’s the point.

Witmer explains:

The poem’s title [“The Answer”] is ironic. That unfinished last line embodies the wavering state of his uncertain life. The poem dangles because his story does. He doesn’t know the rest of his reply because he doesn’t know the rest of his life. We love Herbert for his honesty and humility. We love him for writing this unfinished poem. He speaks to us by speaking for us. Although it’s scary to admit, we don’t know the rest of our stories any more than he knows the rest of his.

Though we don’t know how the rest of our lives will play out, we do know this: “Often God uses our weaknesses and disappointments to prepare us for a contribution we could never otherwise make.” God wastes nothing.

After all, who would have thought that we would be discussing the poems of a man who died three and a half centuries ago, and who pastored a tiny church in the middle of nowhere?

Finally, before pondering a probing question, I begin with a quote from Eugene Peterson: “Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors.” Let that sit for just a minute.

What is happening beneath the surface when we find ourselves focusing on someone else’s faults, choices, or shortcomings?

I’ve been reflecting on that recently, and it’s led me to a more uncomfortable question—one that I think is worth asking whenever I find myself criticizing another person, and it serves as this week’s probing question: Am I bothered because they made the wrong choice, or because they had the courage to make a choice I was too afraid to make?

Yes, sometimes our criticism is a genuine concern for truth and wisdom. But I’m beginning to wonder if our criticism of others is simply a way to mask our own insecurity, fear, or even envy. I wonder if the very thing that irritates us about another person is the thing that exposes a place where we lack courage ourselves.

I have no answer to provide.

I’m just wondering . . .