Monday Nov 08, 2021

Anne Bradstreet, ”The Flesh and the Spirit”

In this season of Thanksgiving, we remember those famous Pilgrims who dared to leave comfort, home, family and the safe structures of society to establish a new life in a new world. This month we celebrate and remember the courage, love and devotion, the strength and sacrifice that founded our country. The Poetry of Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) serves as the voice of our founding.

In "The Flesh and the Spirit" two sisters reason together "close by the banks of lacrim flood," that is, here in this veil of tears where our lives unfold, about the values that inform life. Flesh complains that Spirit's otherworldly concerns leave her bereft of the pleasures all about her on earth. Why give up the sure, real and immediate gratifications here given us for a future good based on faith alone?

Spirit's answer is that all she seeks, including the provisional pleasures available here on earth, is met in pursuit of what is highest. The struggle here presented is both that between the World and the Christian, and that within the Christian herself. To triumph over our lower desires may require both discipline and denial, but it also finds the rewards, even here on earth, to be real and satisfying.

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