Elsewhere Bryant depicts himself as toiling "shoulder to shoulder" with Harrison Hayford, equals in scholarly achievement. In what I quote in the next paragraph, I want to point out the significance of his describing a blessing from Hayford. "God's Nods" are a part of Christian lore, as the quotation at the end from Jill Duffield makes clear.
John Bryant in the June 2006 LEVIATHAN on Harrison Hayford: “When I first met him, we both happened to live in the same metropolitan area: I was a graduate student on Chicago’s South Side; he, a world renowned Melville scholar and editor up north in Evanston. We agreed to meet half way, in 1973 at The Newberry Library, where he showed me the Library’s famous (now dispersed) Melville Room with its remarkable collection of materials including an equally famous (among Melvilleans) file cabinet of articles on all things Melville. He asked me questions about my dissertation and made me feel real, and his presence and nod gave me a crucial boost during a period of academic depression that drove many away from the profession.”
I am looking at this passages and others in which Bryant claims not only intimacy with Hayford but actual equality, a "shoulder to shoulder" partnership. Here I just want to emphasize the mystical significance in the last sentence I quoted. Hayford's questions made Bryant feel real, and Hayford's mere presence and his "nod" gave Bryant a boost, exalted him, you might say. What is going on here is religious--a blessing. The "nod" is not integral to ongoing labor. It is bestowed freely.
Here in a publication of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators is the opening of a 20 July 2017 article by Jill Duffield entitled "GOD NODS." This is not a "Homer nods" situation at all. It is the bestowal of blessing just as Bryant implies in what I quoted.
Early into my tenure as the pastor of a small church in rural North Carolina, when I was anxious about preaching every week and unsure God would indeed supply the words through the Word from Sunday to Sunday, I received a gift. I received a divine gift, what a friend of mine calls a “God nod.” A God nod is a small, but unmistakable affirmation of God’s presence. As I drove to worship on this particular Sunday, my anxiety level rising as I turned on the final stretch of road to the church, I saw Queen Anne’s lace dotting the side of the highway. The wild flowers had not been there just days before when I’d been on this same stretch headed to Wednesday evening Bible study. Now the lovely, delicate, white weeds were everywhere.
John Bryant in the June 2006 LEVIATHAN on Harrison Hayford: “When I first met him, we both happened to live in the same metropolitan area: I was a graduate student on Chicago’s South Side; he, a world renowned Melville scholar and editor up north in Evanston. We agreed to meet half way, in 1973 at The Newberry Library, where he showed me the Library’s famous (now dispersed) Melville Room with its remarkable collection of materials including an equally famous (among Melvilleans) file cabinet of articles on all things Melville. He asked me questions about my dissertation and made me feel real, and his presence and nod gave me a crucial boost during a period of academic depression that drove many away from the profession.”
I am looking at this passages and others in which Bryant claims not only intimacy with Hayford but actual equality, a "shoulder to shoulder" partnership. Here I just want to emphasize the mystical significance in the last sentence I quoted. Hayford's questions made Bryant feel real, and Hayford's mere presence and his "nod" gave Bryant a boost, exalted him, you might say. What is going on here is religious--a blessing. The "nod" is not integral to ongoing labor. It is bestowed freely.
Here in a publication of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators is the opening of a 20 July 2017 article by Jill Duffield entitled "GOD NODS." This is not a "Homer nods" situation at all. It is the bestowal of blessing just as Bryant implies in what I quoted.
Early into my tenure as the pastor of a small church in rural North Carolina, when I was anxious about preaching every week and unsure God would indeed supply the words through the Word from Sunday to Sunday, I received a gift. I received a divine gift, what a friend of mine calls a “God nod.” A God nod is a small, but unmistakable affirmation of God’s presence. As I drove to worship on this particular Sunday, my anxiety level rising as I turned on the final stretch of road to the church, I saw Queen Anne’s lace dotting the side of the highway. The wild flowers had not been there just days before when I’d been on this same stretch headed to Wednesday evening Bible study. Now the lovely, delicate, white weeds were everywhere.
I arrived
at the church, parked my car, and walked into the sanctuary. In the two vases
of flowers on the stands that flanked the pulpit Queen Anne’s Lace overflowed.
Another God nod.
A God nod, a clear, simple, ordinary
and unmistakable assurance of God’s presence and power made known through the
weeds of the field along the roadside and arranged in the house of the Lord.
You see, the text for the day was one of those seedy parables from Matthew and
the sermon was woven together with the image of Queen Anne’s Lace. Queen Anne’s
Lace, like the word of God, beautiful, resilient, ubiquitous, not planted nor
cultivated by human hands, but undeniably present, abundant, alive and
spreading. On that summer morning they were a God nod, assurance that the
Spirit was working independent of me, my abilities or my limitations. Each tuft
of white blowing in the breeze said, “Trust.” They reminded me that God does
provide the words through the Word, made flesh and made known through the
lilies of the field, too.
I have come to take God nods seriously.
I used to brush them off as coincidence or self-fulfilling prophecy or just
happenstance. But now, I pay attention. I say, “Thanks for the sign, God.”
Instead of what I used to often plead, “God, give me a sign.” I am not as
inclined to beg for burning bushes, or voices from the cloud, or talking
donkeys, or detailed visions, or explicit instructions in my dreams. Not that
such communications from God would be unwelcomed. (Well, actually, given what
those communications convey – go to Pharaoh, speak a word of judgment to your
own people, take Mary as your wife, I am sending you to Saul now Paul, go eat
with Gentiles – maybe they would not be as welcomed as I imagine them to be.)
Now I seek to hear and heed the words and Word of God spoken in nods and nudges,
simple conversations and chance encounters. I try to remain awake to notes that
come at just the right moment, words that keep coming up in various readings,
butterflies that suddenly land in my path, and unexpected people who speak
wisdom or grace or admonishment.
When Bryant says Hayford gave him a nod, he is conveying that the nod exalted him--to intellectual grandeur and perhaps scholarly immortality, later comments make clear. I will print some more in this series in which Bryant establishes his equality with Hayford. There is genuine subtlety in Bryant's way of ingratiating himself into high intimacy and even equality with a great man. A reader can overlook what a "nod" signifies even while responding to its mention.
No comments:
Post a Comment