The words are those of Caroline Moore, in debate with her journalist husband Charles Moore (now Baron Moore of Etchingham), when the latter crossed the Tiber following the Church of England's ordination of women to the priesthood in 1992. Caroline Moore's words capture the significance of George Herbert for many of us. Herbert exemplifies something that is to be particularly cherished in the Anglican way.
Ronald Blythe hints at what might lie at the heart of this in his perceptive comment: 'Lent was Herbert's season. He was born in Lent, married in Lent, and died in Lent'.
Lent is the season when grandiose, exalted claims are to wither. When penitential reality is to take root. When we recognize 'that all our doings without charity are nothing worth' (Collect for Quinquagesima). When dependence on grace alone is learnt afresh, for 'we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves' (Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent). In addition to shaping the life of the individual Christian, Lent should also shape the life of the Church as - to use the term employed by Herbert in his poem 'Lent' - a 'Corporation'.
One way in which Herbert points to this is indicated by Rowan Williams' suggestion that 'the poetry of Herbert is very deeply linked … to the theology of Hooker'. Herbert gives poetic expression to the 'contemplative pragmatism' which Hooker articulated, 'that in all things God waits, and if we wait, then somehow the two waitings become tuned':
Something of this contemplative pragmatism is seen in Herbert's advice to the Country Parson when engaging with Recusants and Puritans. The parson is to demonstrate 'an humble, and ingenuous search of truth; being unmoved in arguing, and voyd of all contentiousnesse'; this is to bring those with whom the parson is engaging to consider 'that God cannot be wanting to them in Doctrine, to whom he is so gracious in Life'.
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