Twenty-Third Day of Lent: Engraving Names

For a summary of Passus III, see Fourth Day of Lent.

As Lady Meed enters Westminster, even though she is a prisoner, her wealth enables her to make many friends.  In particular she ingratiates herself to an order of friars, who promise to pray for her as one of their own after she grants them a hefty donation.  As part of the arrangement, Meed asks to have her name and her gift remembered on one of the windows of their church.  Meed’s embrace of this practice, hardly unfamiliar to us still today, rouses a warning from the poet to his readers:

           “But God forbids to all good folk such engraving of names,

            To write in windows of any good deeds,

            Lest pride be painted there and the pomp of the world.

            For God knows your conscience and your true wish,

            Their greed, your expense, and who really needs the money.

            Therefore, dear sirs, abandon such writing:

            God in the gospel allows such engraving not at all.

            Nesciat dextra quid faciat sinistra:

            Let not your left hand, as our Lord teaches,

            Know ever what your right hand gives and gifts.”

(Nesciat dextra quid faciat sinistra is a Latin version of Matthew 6:3, “Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” paraphrased in the following lines).  Having your name engraved into the stone or the glass of a church, Langland warns us, is a dangerous thing for your soul.  It is an act that invites pride and a pleasure in worldly prestige and it feeds the appetites of ambition and vanity, not the hunger of the poor and needy.  And most of all, it contradicts Jesus’ teaching:  “Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

Well, that’s a little harsh, we might say.  If a little commemoration of important donors raises some more funds for an important project, where’s the harm in that?  If people want to put their names on something, doesn’t that simply represent to them how much they value what it stands for?  And anyway, do you have a better incentive to offer us when it comes to building projects and capital campaigns?

Like everything that Meed tempts people with in this poem, and like all the arguments Meed offers in defense of herself, there is no lack of practical wisdom in all these questions.  But one does not need to peek very much beneath the surface to see why someone like our poet rejects them.  So, supposing we agreed that something like putting the names of prominent donors on windows or plaques is a good incentive for raising more money for a noble project, what if we ask why it is an incentive?  And what incentive is there besides being seen and being recognized for doing something good?  That is, offering to have your name put on something is an invitation, like Langland says, to do something Jesus explicitly told you not to.  And any project ceases to be good if it’s built on encouraging people to sin.

So why do we do things like this?  Why do we invent ways of getting our projects up and running that cut moral corners?  Langland highlights greed in particular.  Not necessarily greed in the sense of wanting more money (though with Langland’s friars this is certainly part of it).  No, we are greedy to have facilities and programs to be proud of.  And strangely enough, we don’t usually justify this by saying we want to glorify God with impressive and beautiful spaces of worship—rather, we talk about how high-quality facilities can draw people into the church.  That is, we’re more excited about how we can please human beings than glorify God, and we often admit it like it’s something good.

When it comes to worship, we often vehemently insist that God only truly looks upon the heart and in fact we often grow suspicious of outward shows of honor:  so we wear jeans to worship and a suit to work, lest we (perish the thought!) honor God in our outward appearance.  But when it comes to other people, we must make the outward things as bright, shining, impressive, and new as possible.    God wants the truth of our heart, but for our neighbors, the lie of splendid appearances will suffice.  And the best part of this arrangement is, we don’t have to do the hard work of giving our heart to our neighbors.  Just the easy work of thinking we’re giving it to God.

“The word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying:  “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in paneled houses, while the house of the Lord lies in ruins?  Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:  Consider how you have fared.  You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.”  (Haggai 1:3-6)