Logicians Go Mad Before Poets Do

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do… Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine… He was damned by John Calvin… Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion… The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits… The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason… Materialists and madmen never have doubts… Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy

This is a fascinating quote on so many levels. Eat around the bones when it comes to the anti-Calvin bit. The overall point holds true. And agreeing with that point, I wouldn’t say it was Calvin that damned Cowper, but that there is danger in approaching a revealed mystery such as predestination too much like a logician and not enough like a poet. Perhaps this is why so much of scripture is poetry. We are given truths about God that are too great to be fully understood by the human mind. But they can be truly understood in part, as through a mirror dimly. And metaphor, simile, analogy, poetry – these are wonderful tools we have been given by which to better understand God and his creation… without going insane in the process.

A Hundred-Fold Homes

We have lived with rich and poor

In places some will not or can’t.

And found there joy, and doors

To life, and friends, and won’t

Forget the promise, one hundred-fold.

We need it dearly every time

We move again and say goodbye

And home becomes a house – again.

We do it all for Him.

And yet we know the cost is real,

That mingled joy of rootlessness.

But I have heard the king has rooms

And rooms and rooms and worlds.

Perhaps a place where mountains meet

The sea, a house with orchards on a hill.

Where there’s porch and pen and table

And paper and books, maybe some tea.

A pipe! And fire.

Yes, room to host and reminisce

(With friends and of course the King himself)

The glory that we saw

In our hundred fleeting homes.

Children born and born again,

The needy fed, the lost redeemed,

The straying won, the faithful trained.

A hundred tents of light

Soon dismantled yet again.

For the world was ours, but not quite yet.

We don’t yet know the fullness of

The joy, although we know the taste.

For each new place a portion sings

And each new move the old refrain:

The promises are coming true

Before our eyes – a hundred-fold!

And new creation, forever home.

Is coming, coming, like the dawn.

So let us drink and to the full

The joy of each new set of walls.

For it is fleeting like the fall

And shines unique, eternal.

Remember the talk of camels and tents?

And Shelby Park, and Kingston’s rooms

And Sarkenar or St James Court?

Yes, more to come, if grace allows

And we shall thank the king for each,

With faith and joy await to see

The next of our one hundred homes

That really are not ours at all.

The glory – they are forever ours,

Yet really are not ours at all.