Five Mystical Songs by George Herbert: In memory of Wilbur Knorr, 1945-1997

Theology Today, Jan 1999 by Duckworth, Penelope

"there are two ways to live your life: one is asthough nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."

Albert einstein

I

"... his stretched sinews taught all strings."

These words troubled him, they seemed too graphic, strange. Yet what was to be the last day he would walk, he searched shops to find the recording gift; Ralph Vaughn Williams' music set to five poems by the poet divine. The last day his muscles, tendons stretched before cancer entwined his spine, he, too, in sharing what he loved, stretched chords, approached, taught the sublime.

II.

"I got me flowers to strew thy way.... Can there be any day but this ... "

The day before the pain began, I brought camellias from my garden, red and pink on short, twig stems, falling from the paper cup, bound it seemed to strew the way to picnic table on the green where we approached the heavenly banquet with family, friends, concluding sunlight, his face childlike with happiness to hear again the age-old story of body for bread, blood for wine.

III.

"But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack."

I thought of the first meeting in the church, the first Communion after years of reservation. Love spoke around and through us all, not least in him. He found no barriers to this welcome, found instead new avenues of inquiry; his love of thought (and how thought came, tracing mathematics through medieval minds.) He found Love undergirded it all, would carry him through final days.

IV

"Such a Life, as killeth death."

There are accounts of miraculous healings, of disease running in reverse. These were our prayers, and still the cancer grew, setting up new seats of power; spine and bladder, lung and brain. I thought we failed. And yet I'm led to know by some who can discern truth in events: He was not cured but he was healed. His peace was proof. I say Amen.

V.

". . . the heart must bear the longest part."

Here the task pushes beyond heights and depths, seeks a quotidian means of praise. His heart stopped on a spring morning in his fifty-second year. Drum beats that quietly rose to accompany harp, woodwinds, baritone, ceased, and now he is that other music; circumference of union and reunion, adding his own measureless song.

Penelope Duckworth is the Episcopal Chaplain to Stanford University. Her poetry has appeared in The American Scholar, Yankee, The Christian Century, Poetry Northwest, and other journals. Her book, IAm: Sermons on the Incarnation, has recently been published by Abingdon Press.