By Louie Alkasmikha and Kelly Plante
Through her poetry, Gertrude More expresses her desire for an eternal union with God through self-abnegation (denial of her own will) and pure love for him above all else. To achieve the eternal union with God that she desired, More attempted to discern between the exterior and interior states of the body and of the soul, privileging the interior and the soul in favor of heaven and above the external concerns of the earthly realm. The major themes within More’s poetry – the desire for divine union and the need for self-abnegation – reflect these priorities, serving as a template for her (and her readers) to achieve contemplative union with God.
In his introduction to the 2009 facsimile edition of More’s 1658 Spiritual Exercises, Arthur Marotti observes that More’s confessions “repeat a limited set of basic themes,” which he identifies as
the value of the method of contemplative prayer, the necessity of humility and obedience, the problem of relating to superiors who abuse the authority in impeding the course of prayer that enriches the contemplative’s relation to God; the liberty to be found in complete self-abnegation and submission to God; the dangers posed by the sin of pride; the benefits of afflictions and tribulations; the importance of rejecting worldly attachments; the need for direction; and the memorial function of writing.
(xv)
This set of basic themes appears not only in More’s prose writings but across her corpus of poetry as well. For More, the “memorial function of writing” assists her, and by extension her readers, in staying on the path toward divine union by communicating the “method of contemplative prayer,” emphasizing “humility and obedience,” overcoming “the dangers posed” by “superiors who abuse their authority,” warning about “the sin of pride,” and rejecting “worldly attachments” while simultaneously recognizing the benefits of these “afflictions and tribulations,” thus resulting in “the liberty to be found” through “complete self-abnegation and submission to God.”
In “Of Suffering and Bearing the Cross,” More encourages herself to deny her self-will and align her soul with the will of God in order to stay on the heavenly path:
Commit thyself and all to God
Who seeks our good in all.
Thyself art blind and cannot judge
What is the best for thee;
But he doth pierce into all things,
How hid soe’er they be.
My heart shall only this desire:
That thou my Lord dispose,
Even as thou pleasest in all things,
Till these mine eyes thou close
By death, which I so much desire.
(ll. 75-85)
As the instruction to “commit thyself and all to God” indicates, one must leave behind all other earthly cares in order to show loyalty to God. Accepting God’s will (“Even as thou pleasest in all things”) meanwhile displays humility, as the soul must recognize that it is “blind and cannot judge.” Such pious self-abnegation will ultimately result in union after death, which is More’s primary “desire.”
More’s poetry also demonstrates her endorsement of “[Augustine] Baker’s teaching, which includes his methods of contemplative prayer and spiritual direction (guidance toward following the ‘inner light’ toward the Holy Spirit)” (Latz, “Mystical Poetry” 67). Her goal of unifying herself with God by following his direct guidance appears, for instance, in her poem, “To our most Holy Father Saint Benedict”: “By Prayer and Patience it’s fulfilled, / Charity, Obedience, / By seeking after God alone,/ And giving none offence” (l. 25-28). Here, More portrays prayer, patience, charity, and obedience as necessary to achieve union with God (to “see[k] God alone, / And giv[e] none offense”). Baker’s method was often called “the way of love,” and More frequently repeats the word “love” throughout another poem entitled “Amor Ordinem Nescit,” which reflects her single-minded focus on seeking the love of God alone. For example, More states that she is “Breathing, sighing after him, till he my life remove” (l. 20), thereby expressing again her desire for eternal union with God in heaven. More continues by noting that only heaven can provide a true fulfillment of this love: “For since I live not where I love, / How can I comfort find” (ll. 21-22). In this way, eternal union is pursued by repetitively praying to and longing for God, the object of her desire.
By denying the self and the exterior world, More writes, she is free: to worship and praise, and become one with God. According to Latz, More “wishes to be delivered from the world for the endless joy and bliss of heaven” (“Mystical Poetry” 70). In the previously cited section of “Amor Ordinem Nescit,” More writes,
And while I live, I’ll never cease
To languish for his love,
Breathing, and sighing after him,
Till he my life remove;
For since I live not where I love,
How can I comfort find,
But only in the song of love,
By love to me assigned?
(ll. 17-24)
To “live” where she “loves” God must either her “life remove” or, alternatively, she can unite with God and “comfort find” “only in the song of love” (our emphasis). This is the power of poetry, for More: only in the “song of love,” or love poem that she writes to God, can she negate her “life” which obstructs her desired union with God. Writing is a respite, where she can find comfort in this world until she is finally “where” she loves. More writes that “if we would dy unto ourselves and all things ells but Thee, speaking of being in the midst of contemplation, the union with the Beloved, for the soul ascends and is united to our centre deare, as fire upward flies” (qtd. in Latz, “Glow-Worm Light” 38). As More explores the themes of divine union and self-abnegation, her poetry illuminates one potential path to God.
Works Cited
More, Gertrude. Gertrude More, ed. Arthur F. Marotti. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Series II. Printed Writings, 1641-1700. Part Four. Vol. 3. Routledge, 2009.
Latz, Dorothy, ed. “Glow-Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts. Universität Salzburg, Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1989.
—. “The Mystical Poetry of Gertrude More.” Mystics Quarterly, vol. 16, 1990, pp. 66-82.