"I Took My Lamp" is not the title of a long-lost book by twentieth-century missionary E. Stanley Jones, but the title of a poem found in one of his books, Christ of the Indian Road. As I have been preparing the high school English courses I teach for the start of the coming school year, I came across this poem in my files. It never ceases to affect me. I've taken the liberty of titling it according to its opening line.
I took my lamp and went and sat
Where men of another creed and custom
Dwelt together in bonds of common search.
I pressed my lamp close to my bosom,
Lest adverse winds of thought and criticism,
And the damp of unsympathy should snuff it out.
And many a trembling prayer hung upon my lips.
But I determined that I would love – just love.
I loved and listened and learned, and now and then
Threw in a thought or word or observation.
I heard their gentle speech, saw their mild ways;
Felt the Hand of Peace rest gently on my soul.
Here was not the tearing of the flesh,
Nor the fierce agony of the spirit, in its quest for God.
They gently searched and, through the crevices of their thought,
The light of the Father’s Face streamed in.
They caught the footfalls of the Mighty Spirit,
As he moved each moment through palpitating Nature.
And I heard them tune their heart-strings to catch the music
Of God, as he hummed and sang through things.
But when, in sympathetic talk and mutual quest,
I asked the learned pundit whether he had found
A “jiwan mukta,” one who knew deliverance here and now;
He sadly shook his head and said, “I have not seen.”
In his voice spoke an aching world: “I have not seen.”
Then there stole within my heart a quiet joy;
For I saw, amid the search of peoples and race,
One standing, who, with Chalice in hand, offered here and now
To thirsty souls a crystal draught of life eternal,
Which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst again.
Had I not drunk? Had he not put the Chalice
To my parched lips and, with thirst assuaged,
Had not my happy soul gone singing down the years?
A child had thus revealed to him, through prayer and
Surrender of the mind and will, that for which
The wise and prudent had vainly searched
And caught but glimpses; while I, unworthy,
Stood face to Face.
As I pondered thus, I glanced, with trembling, at my lamp –
And lo, it burned up brighter than before!
Many elements of this poem reveal a master wordsmith. The two that stick out to me the most are 1) the use of 'and' in this line: I loved and listened and learned, and now and then, and 2) the capitalization of the word face when referring to the Father. I could go on - Jones' poem recalls Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven", but that's a topic for another poetry post...
