The Brewing of Soma
Or
Intoxicated Anglicans.
I was delighted to discover that the verses of the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’[i] are taken from a poem about brewing up and getting drunk on Soma, a poem that also includes references to taking hashish, self-flagellation and bacchanals. Although perhaps in truth it is misleading to say the poem is about Soma, it is probably truer to say that the poem ‘The Brewing of Soma’, by John Greenleaf Whittier’[ii], is about how religious ritual can distract us from the worship of God.
John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker, his poem presents the Quaker belief that the best way to enter the presence of God is to be quiet and still. The poem commences by describing the ancient cultic practice in India of preparing and drinking Soma as part of worship. It is believed by some, possibly mistakenly, that Soma was an intoxicating drug, the historians of religion are divided on the veracity of this. In any case, the intoxication described in the poem is induced by religious ritual rather than necessarily by drugs and alcohol, as becomes clear when Whittier moves on to more recent religious rituals such as whirling Dervishes and the “madness” of the cloistered monk. Contemporary Christians, he suggests, can be as guilty of getting caught up in the sensuality of religious practice rather than caught up in the presence of God.
The church I was born into, the Brethren, had a similar ethos, they held that musical instruments used in worship could distract from genuine worship as people ended up focusing on the sound of the instruments rather than on God, so all the hymn singing was unaccompanied. I recall as a small child my Grandma telling me in solemn voice that many in churches just went to hear the organ and were no more Christian than the Savages.
It did seem to me a pity that to make worship genuine it had to be dull. It is said that ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’, but given my early experience of church I could have as easily have concluded that boredom was next to Godliness. I was mightily relieved when my parents started attending a church with lively songs and a worship band even if it did put me in danger of becoming a savage.
In any church tradition or religion, Quakerism and the Brethren included, there is a danger of focusing on the sign that points to God rather than on God. John Greenleaf Whittier would perhaps have done better to look to his own worshiping life rather than cast a critical eye at others, as would all Christians down the centuries who have been keen to point out the specks in the eyes of those who worship differently to themselves. Not to take care on this point often results in finding you have a log in your face.
A woman once asked Jesus which was the correct mountain to worship on, the one Samaritans worshiped on or the one the Jews worshiped on?
Jesus tells her, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
So should the worship be quiet or loud? Should the worship be with an organ or a band of instruments? Should the worship be rich in symbol and ritual or should it be plain and simple?
Worship should be held in spirit and in truth, and must produce in the worshipers the fruits of the Spirit, that is ‘love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ If worship isn’t held in the Spirit and doesn’t produce the fruits of the Spirit, then you are doing it wrong – whatever mountain you are standing on.
As William Temple wrote,
“So far as worship is genuine and complete, pride is eliminated; for He whom we worship is humility itself incarnate.”
But that’s not really what delighted me about finding out the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ was taken from a Quaker poem, what made me smile was the thought of congregations singing the hymn unaware of the criticism it’s poem of origin implied of them. I’m sure John Greenleaf Whittier would have had in mind the ritual of such traditions as the Anglicanism when he wrote his poem. We may not sup Soma but our liturgy is noisily distracting compared to the quiet simplicity of Quaker services, although I can’t think of many occasions when I could have described my congregations as intoxicated – perhaps only after Midnight Mass celebrations.
The hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ sounds as Anglican as moderation passing for enthusiasm and wordiness passing for profundity, perhaps even as Anglican as a rueful capacity for self-satire. The quietness, orderliness and beauty referenced in ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ sounds unintentionally Anglican in aspiration.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
That could so easily be the calming worship of an Evensong at a country church.
I am glad the Anglican tradition can accept and make use of devotional material from other Christian traditions, after all we are based on the Roman Catholic division of Ministry into Bishops, Priests and Deacons, and without Wesley’s contribution our hymn books would be unserviceably thin. We are a broad church with porous boundaries, with all the consequences that brings for maintaining unity and a clear message.
May God forgive our foolish ways and reclothe us in our rightful minds.
Amen.
[i] Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard Beside the Syrian sea The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity Interpreted by love!
With that deep hush subduing all Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall As fell Thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm.
[ii] The Brewing of Soma; John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer Soma to the drinker of Soma.”—Vashista, translated by MAX MÜLLER.
THE FAGOTS blazed, the caldron’s smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
“Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap,” the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
“Behold the drink of gods!”
They drank, and lo! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
The gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.
“Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget your long annoy.”
So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma’s sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.
Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna’s gate,
And, sobered, sank to earth.
The land with Soma’s praises rang;
On Gihon’s banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All men to Soma prayed.
The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms;
And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma’s grace,
That Vedic verse embalms.
As in that child-world’s early year,
Each after age has striven
By music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near,
Or lift men up to heaven!
Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger’s keen delight of pain,
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant’s yell,—
The desert’s hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below;
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir’s torture-show!
And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfil;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still!
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
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