Auld Lang Syne: The Language of Sorrow and Healing

It’s Christmastime again and I’ve been listening to James Taylor crooning “Auld Lang Syne” again on my daily commute.  Growing up in Louisiana and living in Texas in the early days, I thought this song was for old fogies, even though I had never really listened to it.  Funny how things change as you grow up.  Since the song wasn’t part of my culture—or so I thought at the time—I paid little attention to it. A few years ago, however, I saw the final night of the Proms in London on British television, a finale of the traditional old tune, where the audience stood up and turned the song into an emotional takeover, momentarily captivating every heart present.  Today that memory turns me into a watery-eyed mute every time I hear it.  What was it that seized my own heart with a force that I hadn’t been aware of before?  Was it experience?  Newfound wisdom?  A clearer understanding of my transitory place in the world?  The song begins, “Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” and it ends with the chorus, “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”  The Greeks of ancient times believed poets to be the wisest of us all.  Robert Burns was no exception when he wrote this poem.

On December 14, 2012, a young man who had suffered mental illness for too long entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and fired rounds from automatic weapons at several teachers and the principal before massacring a classroom full of six year olds.  Twenty-six people lost their lives—twenty of them children—before the gunman turned his weapon on himself.  The savagery stunned the world and even now continues to bring us to our knees, not only in prayer for the precious loss of lives cut short but also for the incomprehensible decisions, past and future, for which the living must bear responsibility. 

This Christmas many of us in the English speaking world will sing the traditional song of sad farewell and remembrance, not to say goodbye to the old year but to former lives, our own--so difficult to let go of--as well as the dear ones we’ve lost.  Somehow singing this song eases the pain of parting with those we love.

Yes, our hearts are broken, but, to paraphrase Faulkner, our spirits will endure with the grace of God.  For unspeakable acts, God gives us the courage to become better people, the people we were meant to be.  For unspeakable acts, God gives us the redemptive power of love and kindness for one another.

                                    And here is my hand, my trusty friend,

                                    And give me a hand of thine.

                                    We’ll take a cup of kindness up

                                    For auld lang syne.

                                   

I have invited my guest and friend Ian Turnbull to share his thoughts about language.

 

Beyond Language?

It is obvious that language is an ancient thing; it is how we communicate, not only with our contemporaries but across the ages. We can understand our antecedents through what we have received: we can pass on knowledge and culture to our descendants. Indeed, language itself tells a story of where we have come from.

Can the written word in poetry and plays be more powerful than written history? If Churchill was right and history is written by the victors, what of truth then? Where do we seek enlightenment about the great questions that our existence poses? Where do we examine truth or ideas, pose questions, expand our comprehension of what is and is not possible? Go beyond the bounds of our own experience?

For even when our fellow man is imprisoned, starved of the freedom to roam, cut off from all that is inspirational, great works are created. When Bunyan, our local author, was gaoled for "pertinaciously abstaining" (not attending an Anglican church), he wrote his best known work, Pilgrim's Progress.


Recently I was prompted by a learned friend to look at some Victorian poetry. I decided to reread a work I was familiar with, Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which laments the felling of trees. Here a picture is portrayed, not just of the trees, but of what the trees offered to the Binsey, and of what man could enjoy. And of what he knew was taken from him, as the trees were taken. What progress did we enjoy for the loss of these trees?  Who knows if any? It is lost in the midst of time. Yet we have a man's lament for the lost environment which will stay with us longer than the trees would have survived.

If English is our native tongue we are sure to have come across the works of Shakespeare. Though much of his humour and guile may be lost without further guidance, we know he examined human truths in his works. In Hamlet's soliloquy “To be or not to be?” he was examining whether a man should continue with his very existence. Most of us, no matter what life throws at us, answer the question, even if passively by just continuing to exist. We choose “to be.” Yet for some, to choose to be is a struggle, an epic feat of defiance against the circumstances in which they find themselves. Tragically for some, without even considering the alternative in the reasoned manner of Shakespeare, or maybe without counsel, they choose “not to be”. Shakespeare wrote Lear's great speech in the storm, where a king who had once sat in his court now battles against the elements, exposed, without sanctuary.  At the height of the drama, Lear declares: "I am a man more sinned against than sinning!"  There the author is asking another great question; he invites us to judge a king. Where could a mere commoner in those days have done this? There it is, the very lynch pin of the downfall of Lear, the tragedy unfolding due to his egotism. How many other men of power have succumbed to this worthless inner desire and made such poor judgement? Do we see echoes of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass? Poetry and plays can explore a simple or complex truth so much more easily than history books, for who knows the real truth in history? In a simple phrase, we can understand a strength or failing, a loss or gain, the deep despair caused by the darkness in humanity or the almost indescribable joy of love, that wonderful gift that humanity can share.

What though of things that we communicate beyond our comprehension? What then? How do we express ourselves? Sometimes we hear a hymn or read a passage and know it has conveyed more to us then the words would be expected to present through critical examination.

I find inspiration in many hymns; one in particular portrays to me what it is to have Christian faith: Wesley's ‘And Can It Be’. It is a portrayal of salvation. The very opening line is written so you know there is more, more in abundance. Wesley starts with a conjunction, something which in my school generation would not have been tolerated, yet there it is. Is it just poetic use of language for dramatic effect? Is it that Wesley had little time for the rules of English grammar? I believe the author uses it as a conjunction joining two phrases, the first of which is unwritten. I believe Wesley experienced something beyond his use of the English language, a relationship with the true and living God, an aspect of his existence beyond even his words, his conveyance of praise in which we can share. It is there, centuries later, implicit, to help us consider our relationship with our Saviour.


So what about when your experience is beyond your command of language or even language itself; and yet you know you have an irresistible urge to utter it?

Recently I was invited by a pastor to attend a service at his church, which I did. Something happened that day; I knew it was where I should be. I knew what the sermon was to be on, as he and I had enjoyed a great time of fellowship earlier in the week, when he told me of the passage he was to preach on and the message he wanted to convey. It was Acts 2, a passage of empowerment, of receiving the supernatural, of being commissioned by God, and the signs that it has happened.

When I was baptised a great friend of mine, baptised on the same day, gave his testimony. Part of it was a story of a man who falls from a path to certain death, but grabs hold of a tree branch and hangs on. He shouts for help, for someone to save him. He hears an answer: I can save you, but you have to let go of the tree.

What do we have to let go of, for us to walk with God?  Do we even sometimes have to let go of our speech, casting aside the control we have, the constructs, that which we were learning even in the womb, the rhythm and intonations of our parents’ voices?  For us to experience communication with our Lord and Saviour in its fullest, should our words come from us, or should we experience something that surpasses our own language?

If we are not cessationists, then our belief as Christians is that when our words fail, we can be empowered to communicate in language which is not learnt, but is a gift from God, without constraint, but with His limitless wisdom.

Maybe when we let go, we receive far more than we could ever contemplate or reason. Maybe we can speak a language that once was spoken when man's nations were not yet formed, and God and man conversed freely.

Ian Turnbull

Brighton, East Sussex

UK

December 14, 2012

Written with some help from across the Atlantic, from a nation sharing a common language - well almost.