Alexander

Behind The Art

"What intrigues me about this Psalm is the idea that God knows us, not only before our birth, but even before our conception. “And in Thy book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them...”

There is an old photograph of Bettie and me shortly after our wedding. We are with her sister and a few other friends. I look at these people casually gathered in a living room somewhere, and for the sake of chronology I may comment, “That was before Alex”. And yet, even as I am saying this, a part of my mind disagrees, insists to the contrary, that he really was there, that his presence was in some way sensed, immanent. I have shared this impression with others. It does not seem to be especially unusual.

These verses from the 139th Psalm are a helpful way of understanding this matter. Another, a similar one, comes by imagining an author who, while planning a book, thinks; I will set the scene, then introduce the woman and the man in – say - the second or third chapter. I will have them meet by probably the seventh. The plot will certainly involve a child. The point is that all the characters in this story - the children as yet unborn and ancestors long dead - are real. They are real because they have always existed in the mind of God, their author and creator. There is a beautiful verse from a Kathleen Raine poem that starts “When your hand touches mine, it is the earth That takes me — the deep grass, And rocks and rivers; the green graves, And children still unborn, and ancestors, In love passed down from hand to hand from God.” —Michael