Hi and welcome to my blog. My name is Don. You can see more about my life with God right here - www.google.com/+donwesley
Part Two - THE FOLLOWING TEXT IS FROM "A Treasury of Anglo-Saxon England – Faith and Wisdom in the Lives Men and Women, Saints and Kings." Paul Cavill .. The variety and multiplicity of human gifts amazed the Anglo-Saxons.
Life itself is a gift from God, to be sure, but the wealth of skills and abilities that human beings have was a source of wonderment.
There are several poems in Old English that simply recount the peoples and places where they live, the gifts people have, the pleasures of life - and, because not all of human life is happy, some of the sad ends people come to.
The very uncertainty of life in Anglo-Saxon England seems to have given the people a keener sense of the blessings of the moment, and a more resigned and dignified attitude towards inevitable suffering, something we have perhaps lost in our more comfortable society.
HOME AND HOMELESSNESS The wisdom poems like The Fortunes and the Gifts of Men and the Maxims tend to be fairly detached about what happens in the world. They can talk about good and bad things in much the same way because their role is to observe, not usually to express deep feelings. One of the things several poems comment on is the miseries of the exile, the person who has no friends, home, or social identity, for whatever reason. The Fortunes poet puts it like this: One man is forced to walk distant roads travel on foot carrying his provisions, tramping the wet tracks and the dangerous land of foreign people. He has no one alive to care for him; a friendless man, he is hated everywhere because of his bad luck.
The poet of the Maxims notes, The man who has to live alone is wretched; it has been determined that he must remain friendless. It would be better for him if he had a brother... The homeless wanderer was practically an outlaw in Anglo-Saxon times; his legal status was uncertain, and without a family or lord to back him up, he was at the mercy of anyone who wanted to take advantage of him. Because he did not fit into the categories and definitions of normal social life, he was thought to be a threat to others. The similarities between the Anglo-Saxon exile and the modem homeless person are immediately apparent.
But there are several poems in Old English which explore the spirituality of the exile. The speaker in The Wanderer seems to be an exile because his lord and his companions are dead. He laments the fact that he has no one to whom he can confide his thoughts. He dreams in the cold misery of half-sleep that he is again enjoying the ordered ritual of loyalty and gift-giving in the hall. But he awakens to find himself in the company only of sea-birds.
He sees devastation and loss around him, the snow falling, the night closing in, the winter cold bringing misery. All is fraught with hardship in the kingdom of earth; change transforms the world under the heavens for worse: here wealth is temporary, here friends are temporary, here people are temporary, here kinsmen are temporary; the very foundation of this earth becomes useless. What possible consolation can there be?
Two things give the Wanderer solace. One of these is that he learns wisdom: he sees, with clear sight unblurred by pleasures, the way things are. He yearns for the things he has lost, the horses, the companionship, the feasting and drinking, the rituals of the heroic life; but he sees as never before that they are merely temporary, and a distraction from deeper considerations all too easily forgotten. The other consolation is that he learns to desire what he has experienced almost incidentally in his suffering.
He begins with this: Often the solitary man experiences grace, the mercy of the Lord, though he has long had to wander the paths of exile, stir the ice-cold sea through the watery ways with his hands, anxious in mind.
And he ends with this: Well it is for the one who seeks grace, comfort from the Father in the heavens - where for us all security remains. Deprived of bodily comforts, he learns to seek the grace and comfort of God.
Life itself is a gift from God, to be sure, but the wealth of skills and abilities that human beings have was a source of wonderment.
There are several poems in Old English that simply recount the peoples and places where they live, the gifts people have, the pleasures of life - and, because not all of human life is happy, some of the sad ends people come to.
The very uncertainty of life in Anglo-Saxon England seems to have given the people a keener sense of the blessings of the moment, and a more resigned and dignified attitude towards inevitable suffering, something we have perhaps lost in our more comfortable society.
HOME AND HOMELESSNESS The wisdom poems like The Fortunes and the Gifts of Men and the Maxims tend to be fairly detached about what happens in the world. They can talk about good and bad things in much the same way because their role is to observe, not usually to express deep feelings. One of the things several poems comment on is the miseries of the exile, the person who has no friends, home, or social identity, for whatever reason. The Fortunes poet puts it like this: One man is forced to walk distant roads travel on foot carrying his provisions, tramping the wet tracks and the dangerous land of foreign people. He has no one alive to care for him; a friendless man, he is hated everywhere because of his bad luck.
The poet of the Maxims notes, The man who has to live alone is wretched; it has been determined that he must remain friendless. It would be better for him if he had a brother... The homeless wanderer was practically an outlaw in Anglo-Saxon times; his legal status was uncertain, and without a family or lord to back him up, he was at the mercy of anyone who wanted to take advantage of him. Because he did not fit into the categories and definitions of normal social life, he was thought to be a threat to others. The similarities between the Anglo-Saxon exile and the modem homeless person are immediately apparent.
But there are several poems in Old English which explore the spirituality of the exile. The speaker in The Wanderer seems to be an exile because his lord and his companions are dead. He laments the fact that he has no one to whom he can confide his thoughts. He dreams in the cold misery of half-sleep that he is again enjoying the ordered ritual of loyalty and gift-giving in the hall. But he awakens to find himself in the company only of sea-birds.
He sees devastation and loss around him, the snow falling, the night closing in, the winter cold bringing misery. All is fraught with hardship in the kingdom of earth; change transforms the world under the heavens for worse: here wealth is temporary, here friends are temporary, here people are temporary, here kinsmen are temporary; the very foundation of this earth becomes useless. What possible consolation can there be?
Two things give the Wanderer solace. One of these is that he learns wisdom: he sees, with clear sight unblurred by pleasures, the way things are. He yearns for the things he has lost, the horses, the companionship, the feasting and drinking, the rituals of the heroic life; but he sees as never before that they are merely temporary, and a distraction from deeper considerations all too easily forgotten. The other consolation is that he learns to desire what he has experienced almost incidentally in his suffering.
He begins with this: Often the solitary man experiences grace, the mercy of the Lord, though he has long had to wander the paths of exile, stir the ice-cold sea through the watery ways with his hands, anxious in mind.
And he ends with this: Well it is for the one who seeks grace, comfort from the Father in the heavens - where for us all security remains. Deprived of bodily comforts, he learns to seek the grace and comfort of God.
