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| Sir Thomas Browne |
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Browne was a noted polymath
and churchman and in his Religio
Medici (1643), wrote a meditation on sleep that
has an autobiographical and confessional sense to it.[i] The
fact that Browne reflects on sleep in prayer illustrates the point that sleep
is well articulated in Christian understanding in prayer, liturgy and hymnody
which, along with the Bible, are the source material for a systematic theology
of sleep.
Browne’s prayer (see
below) is an example of a non-systematic theology of sleep that is expressed
doxologically: doctrinal and Biblical references woven into prayer. It entrusts
him to sleep, mindful of its pitfalls and dangers. Throughout it he references
scripture and his human experience and says of sleep that it is, ‘the dormative I take to
bedward’ and continues, ‘I need no other laudnam than [prayer] to make me
sleep’. Browne, who we can now call a theosomniac, writes that on going to bed,
‘truly ‘tis a fit time for devotion; and therefore I cannot lay my head without
an orison, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God’.
That captures the impulse to see the
boundary between being awake and being asleep as a hallowed time and a time, as
Browne puts it, ‘after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my
leave of the sun and sleep unto the Resurrection’. Praying before sleep, in the
expectation of waking in the morning, is what Browne calls, ‘an half adieu unto
the world’. Sleep is the, ‘moderating point between life and death’, yet in
life and in death, the Christian conviction is whilst we sleep, in life or
death, the believer’s heart wakes to God.
Browne references many
of the themes that will be explored in greater depth in subsequent chapters. His
meditation maps out the terrain
of a Christian theology of sleep and the doctrinal markers with which we will
engage. A brief analysis of the prayer will serve as an introduction to our
exploration in two ways. First, there are Biblical references to which he is
directly alluding. This is not an exhaustive list of Biblical references to
sleep, but is a good starter. Secondly, Browne
raises some fundamental theological themes: sin, seeing sleep as possibly a
consequence of humanity’s fallen state; watchfulness; the abandon and
vulnerability of the sleeping individual; sleep as a regenerative state, both
physically and spiritually; sleep and mortality; and the sense that this
worldly human condition exists in ‘drowsy days’.
In a rich set of images Browne’s prayer
exposes contradictions and paradoxes in how sleep is treated in the Bible.
Importantly though he sets sleep within a doctrine of creation. The opening
lines locate sleep in the creative act of God who calls light into being ‘Let
there be light’ (Genesis 1.3) and frames it by day and night ‘The night is
come, like to the day, / depart not Thou, great GOD, away’. There is an
allusion to Christ, the Light of the World, the one who shines in the darkness,
and that the darkness has not overcome (John 1.5). Given that sleep is
predominantly a darkness-based activity it could be an opportunity to collude
with the darkness, and recognising this Browne asks that his own sinfulness
does not ‘Eclipse the lustre of Thy light’.
Darkness alludes to
sinfulness in Scripture. It contrasts the children of the darkness with the
children of the day. A more lasting
concern of traditional Christian approaches to the night and sleep are less
about sins of commission and rather more sins of omission. Sleep represents a
time of loss of control represented in the possibility that ‘dreams my head
infest’. Loss of personal control raises the question of who is in
control of the sleeper. Traditionally the most likely suspect is Satan: prayers
that ask for protection from ‘nightly fears and fantasies’ usually have Satan
in mind, or, as Browne puts it, ‘guard me ‘gainst those watchful foes, whose
eyes are open while mine close’. The sense of menace is clear.
It is not that sleep
is sinful per se, rather that the opportunity for sin comes through, for
example, erotic dreams or sloth in the form of a surfeit of sleep. This is
mitigated by the way in which sleep is prepared for. Compline opens with
confession as the fall of darkness heightens the acute awareness of sin and
failings throughout the past day that can be carried into the long, dark night.
As Browne prays that the lustrous light of God is not eclipsed by ‘my sins,
black as the night’.
Compline prepares
the Christian for the profound vulnerability and abandon of sleep (the state
that the evolutionary biologists cannot comprehend). Weaving together both the
sense of vulnerability and God’s watchfulness, Browne pleads, ‘Thou whose
nature cannot sleep, / on my temples sentry keep’. In that Browne is
clearly alluding to the death of Sisera at the hands of Jael who took a hammer
and drove a tent peg through his temple because, ‘he was lying fast asleep from
weariness’ (Judges 4.21).
The theological assertion of the
watchfulness of God - ‘Thou whose nature cannot sleep’ – derives from
Psalm 127, ‘The Lord who watches over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep’,
yet equally Psalm 44 implies that God really can sleep, ‘Up, Lord, why sleepest
thou, wilt thou be absent from us forever’ (Psalm 44.23). Elsewhere God is described
as being aroused from sleep (78.65). Nevertheless, the conviction that God
watches over the sleeper is enduringly significant. It assumes a relationship
between the Creator and the creature: ‘keep still in my horizon; for to me
the sun makes not the day, but Thee’. There is a sense that the watcher and
the watched over have a mutual eye on each other.
Keeping watchful is not simply what God
‘does’ when a person sleeps. The believer is called to keep watch too. Sleep,
as already noted, is represented both as a time of inattention and deep
attention to God. Attentive sleep is primarily shown by Browne in sleep open to
the possibility of dreams, ‘make my sleep a holy trance, that I may, my rest
being wrought, awake into some holy thought’. Some of the literature about
dreams is highly speculative and perhaps over imaginative - and it is not the
purpose of this book to analyse dreams - nevertheless it would be counter to Biblical
witness and human experience to dismiss the impact and power of dreams.
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| Icon of Jacob sleeping and dreaming |
It is not unknown that dreams, or at
the very least the act of ‘sleeping on it’ can influence a decision or course
of action, not unlike Joseph who woke and arose from sleep and led Mary and
Jesus to safety in Egypt, having been warned in a dream of Herod’s intentions
(Mathew 2.13). In that regard sleep can be the arena for theophany, a
manifestation of the divine presence. Sleep is integral to the relationship
between mortals and God in God’s self-communication in dreams and nocturnal
revelation. That in itself is an ambiguous experience, such as Jacob
experienced at Bethel (Genesis 28.10-22) ‘Let no dreams my head infest, but
such as Jacob’s temples blest’. We can note that not all dreams are benign
or decisive in the Bible. For example, the dreams of Saul are very unsettling
and his sleep disturbed as a consequence.
Sleep can be a
fearful time, especially when elusive or disturbed. There is a deeper, perhaps
connected fear, which is often articulated with regard to the relationship
between sleep and mortality. The notion of loss of control connects sleep with
death, when all is relinquished in a time when not even dreams will happen,
because sleep anticipates death, ‘sleep is a death; O make me try, / by
sleeping, what it is to die; / and as gently lay my head / on my grave, as now
my bed’. What if, like Sisera, I never wake again: am I prepared? Sleep
also relates to the fear of a ‘sudden death’ because it means dying unprepared.
Alongside the
positive imagery of light, these fears of darkness, night, sleep and associations
with death gives the context to liturgical practices such as the Lucinarium
and traditional prayers before bed, both for children and adults. The
anticipation of death is also, for the Christian disciple, the anticipation of
resurrection, ‘however I rest, great GOD, let me / awake again at last with
Thee; / and thus assur'd, behold I lie / securely, or to awake or die’. In
the reference to waking again Browne refers directly to sleep and the
resurrection and the Christian hope that the believer will be awakened on the
Last Day.
Browne speaks of a time when he will ‘never
/ Sleep again but wake for ever’. That reference alerts us to the
eschatological dimension of sleep and the nature of time. The eschatological
parables of the Kingdom often have the refrain ‘stay awake’, as does the
account of Gethsemane, and sleep is an integral feature. For example, both the attentive and
inattentive character of sleep is deployed as a motif in the case of the
sleeping bridesmaids who miss the arrival of the bridegroom, with all its
messianic overtones (Matthew 25.1-13).
When exploring sleep
it is easy to focus upon the physical act of falling asleep, the phases of
sleep and what it signifies and represents. However a theology of sleep is
incomplete without the flipside of the wakeful life of the day or at the very
least how one wakes, and how sleep has prepared for that. For Christian
theology if sleeping speaks of death and mortality, then waking says
resurrection. Again Browne captures this,
‘These are my drowsie days; in vain / I do not wake to sleep again: /
O come that hour, when I shall never / sleep again, but wake for ever’. The
theosomniac has to be mindful of waking as well as sleeping since sleep
delivers waking, and vice versa, a virtuous circle. In other words the
theosomniac does not simply focus on sleep, but rejoices in the day as a gift
which then makes sense of the entrusting of the self to sleep.
The
night is come, like to the day,
Depart
not Thou, great GOD, away.
Let
not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse
the lustre of Thy light:
Keep
still in my Horizon; for to me
The
Sun makes not the day, but Thee.
Thou,
Whose nature cannot sleep,
On my
temples Centry keep;
Guard
me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose
eyes are open while mine close.
Let no
dreams my head infest,
But
such as Jacob's temples blest.
While
I do rest, my Soul advance;
Make
my sleep a holy trance;
That I
may, my rest being wrought,
Awake
into some holy thought;
And
with as active vigour run
My
course, as doth the nimble Sun.
Sleep
is a death; O make me try,
By
sleeping, what it is to die;
And as
gently lay my head
On my
grave, as now my bed.
However
I rest, great GOD, let me
Awake
again at last with Thee;
And
thus assur'd, behold I lie
Securely,
or to awake or die.
These
are my drowsie days; in vain
I do
not wake to sleep again:
O come
that hour, when I shall never
Sleep
again, but wake for ever.
Thomas Browne. Religio Medici.
© Andrew Bishop, 2018
[i]
Thomas Browne. Religio Medici. Edited
by John Winney. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
