Spiritual Sunday
I’m intrigued by the insights into praying provided by Robert Pinsky’s “The Knight’s Prayer.” In the poem, we see a knight—perhaps a stand-in for the poet?—going through a series of stages before coming to understand prayer in a broader and more life-affirming way.
For much of the poem, the knight defines prayer as something against rather than something for. He “prayed in silence,” we are told, because “he found all vocal terms of sanctity impertinent.” On top of that, in praying he takes care not to adopt “the stagey pose of the figure in armor on one knee.” Praying aloud and in such a conventional pose would show that he was still too attached to worldly things.
Furthermore, he goes out of his way not to ask for anything in his praying—or as the poem puts it, he strove for “a near-absence of petition.” This even extends to not praying for the strength to not to ask for anything:
In his pride he began to abjure even
The request for the strength to ask nothing.
Instead, he prays for steadfastness as he strives to be like the heroes “he most envied,” who “endured hardship and ordeals.” Their burden, as he sees it, was “worldly attachment,” while “bearing it was their mission.” He prays that God will help him fight against his own attachment to the world.
Note how his prayer continues to be phrased in the form of negatives: he doesn’t want to yield to what he sees as a weakness. The problem reveals itself in the next stanza. He’s so worried that “these prayers be for weariness of life, not love of Thee,” that he focuses on the stringency of the discipline, not on love. To this point in the poem, he’s focused on logic (“severely logical as a clever adolescent”), on discipline, on not doing it wrong. Righteousness clothes him like chainmail and he brandishes it.
Then something breaks. We don’t know what it is, only that a “personal extreme of woe and dread, neither heroic nor intolerable”—something that he thought he could find ways to silently pray about earlier in the poem—has somehow suddenly (he uses the word “abrupt”) become too much. Suddenly he fears silence and his soul, formerly so disciplined and focused, stammers to itself.
Previously he thought that “In fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” with fear being the operative word. Now he discovers “a new model for worldly attachment.” Now he finds himself not praying against but praying for.
Again, we are not told what this new attachment is, but we are given an analogy. The poet tells us that such praying is like loving and caring for a new-born child:
It was like the birth
Of an infant: the father, in sudden
Overthrow, turning from indifference
To absolute care, a ferocity
Of petition dwarfing desire…
It’s as though, prior to this moment, the knight thought he could control the prayer, and early in the poem we even encounter the words “vanity” and “pride.” When your heart is fully engaged, however, the prayer can become bigger than you ever thought possible, and your dreams of perfect competence vanish. It’s the moment when you feel “all of life flowing at once/Toward the new, incompetent soul.” Here’s the poem:
The Knight’s Prayer
By Robert Pinsky
He prayed in silence.
Even in his personal extreme
Of woe and dread, which was neither
Heroic nor intolerable but sufficiently
Woeful and dreadful, he would not waver
From that discipline.
In his vanity as severely
Logical as a clever adolescent, he found
All vocal terms of sanctity impertinent.
He also rejected gestures: the stagey pose
Of the figure in armor on one knee,
Hands and brow resting on the cruciform hilt
Of a still-scabbarded weapon.
The words and the pose contradicted
themselves, their conventionality made them
Symbols of worldly attachment.
Therefore in his own prayers he strove
For intimacy, a near-absence of petition.
In his pride he began to abjure even
The request for the strength to ask nothing.
He prayed for steadfastness. In the exploits
he most envied, heroes of old
Endured hardship and ordeals. Worldly
Attachment was their assigned
Burden of imperfection:
Bearing it was their mission.
Lest these prayers be
For weariness of life, not love of Thee,
He had read: a standard he admired
Not in the name of love
But for its stringency: the gauntlet
Of chainmail not folded
On the breviary, but brandished,
Able for the task.
Then, that abrupt personal extreme
Of woe and dread, neither
Heroic nor intolerable: a cause
To fear the silence. The soul
Stammering to itself.
It was not “In fear of the Lord
Is the beginning of wisdom.”
But in fear a new
Model for worldly attachment:
It was like the birth
Of an infant: the father, in sudden
Overthrow, turning from indifference
To absolute care, a ferocity
Of petition dwarfing desire,
All of life flowing at once
Toward the new, incompetent soul.
Feigning indifference to worldly attachment reminds me of Sir Gawain when facing the Green Knight in the 14th century romance. Gawain thinks he can shrug off his love of life, only for the Green Man to show him that he cares for it more than he thinks. His pride is stung but he has been given a gift: you think you are in control until suddenly you’re not.
Prayer as “a ferocity of petition dwarfing desire.” Wow!
