Learning to Admire
By Hannah Wakefield
“Batter my heart!” my professor exclaimed as she pounded her fist on the whiteboard. It was the first day of our poetry unit in my college Introduction to Literary Analysis class, and my professor was beating a lesson into the brains of twenty brand new English majors using the opening lines of a sonnet by early modern poet John Donne:
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”
With her beats on the board she was helping us to see how the rhythm of those first four syllables, along with the repetition of the violent ‘b,’ ‘d,’ ‘t,’ and ‘k’ (the consonance and alliteration) actually created the battering effect the lines described. Poetry, I learned that day, does what it says. And with that lesson, I finally began to understand and admire poetry.
Admiring poetry often requires training. These days, when I project a sonnet onto a screen for my own Introduction to Literature students, the anxiety in the room is palpable. But, with instruction, students grow into understanding— and even appreciation and admiration— of poetry. They learn about basic organization and mechanics, they use the Oxford English Dictionary to look up archaic words, they label the rhyme scheme, and they scan the poem for its meter. My heart glows when students concede, “I guess I kind of like poetry now.”
In the same way, obeying Paul’s Philippians 4:8 injunction to reflect on what is “admirable” doesn’t necessarily come naturally to us. We may not know exactly what is admirable until we are trained to see it. In fact, in Philippians 1:9-10, Paul writes,
“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ…”
To approve the excellent (or admire the admirable) requires love, knowledge, and discernment. My admiration of poetry grew by leaps and bounds once I learned a little bit about meter and consonance. Likewise, an appropriate estimation of the good, the praiseworthy, and the excellent comes as we discover what to look for and how to look for it.
In Philippians, Paul becomes an astute instructor, filling his letter with examples of the admirable so that his past and present readers may discern what “such things” are. There is Timothy, a servant among the self-interested:
“For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.” (2:21-22)
There is Epaphroditus, willing to sacrifice his life for the gospel:
“So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.” (2:29-30)
And there is Paul himself, persevering in chains:
“Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” (3:17)
But, over and above all these examples, Paul points readers toward the ultimate object of admiration in the form of a poem: a single meditation to train our hearts and shape our minds to approve what is admirable—even against our initial inclination. “Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus,” Paul instructs in Philippians 2,
6 who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be used for His own advantage.
7 Instead He emptied Himself
by assuming the form of a slave,
taking on the likeness of men.
And when He had come as a man
in His external form,
8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
9 For this reason God highly exalted Him
and gave Him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
of those who are in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
The first three verses of this poem are decidedly not admirable. In fact, they depict a hero’s tragic downfall, as Christ descends lower and lower to meet a despicable end. Verse by verse, he strips off his privilege, lays aside his equality with God, becomes a man, becomes a slave, becomes a criminal who dies a criminal’s death.
But then comes the poem’s “volta”—its abrupt turn in idea—at verse nine, when this un-admirable life is revealed to be the most admirable of all. Suddenly Jesus is raised up, renamed, highly exalted, adored by the entire cosmos— revealed to be supremely admirable indeed.
Philippians shows us where to rest our regard. From prison, Paul shows us what is commendable for our meditation. He tells us, in chains, what we should hope to imitate. And he reveals through his own life and the examples of countless others that what we ought to admire may often look like the lowliest of the low. The admirable is not necessarily obvious. Paul is pounding that point into us, again and again and again, because it requires training, it requires guidance, it requires teaching to turn our eyes. The humility of Christ is where true glory lies. It just takes some instruction to see it.
Hannah Wakefield is Assistant Professor of African American Literature at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and a Carver Project alumna.