(2.6) “Galahad and the Grail” – The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (this post is in process and incomplete at this time)
(2.6) “Galahad and the Grail” – The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (this post is in process and incomplete at this time).
Book Two: “Adventures of the Quest“ (by “book” is meant a large section in this installment of Guite’s Arthuriad).
Stave Six: “The Adventures of Sir Lancelot” (a “stave” is an old-fashioned term for the stanza of a poem, a verse in a song, or a chapter in a long story).
Why is Malcolm Guite retelling the King Arthur saga, no less in the form of English ballads? He has gone on record as saying… The KA mythical tales echo something real about sin, redemption, and the hope that was broken in us and in the world that can be made whole again… Every generation that asks good questions of King Arthur legends gets good answers… The modern world could use a resurrection of the ideal of chivalry and honor… Ancient myths and stories aren’t just relics of a pre-modern imagination, they are carriers of truth we’ve forgotten how to see with modern eyes… Legends like these don’t distract us from the real world, they reveal it… These stories restore the spiritual elements that have been shorn away, and they renew their deepest meaning. The English ballads were composed in a poetic form that were made to be sung or chanted out loud. They are rhythmic and musical, and one gets the sense that with ballads, “the poem on the page is lying asleep. And the job of the reader is to wake it up and breathe into its being by reciting it out loud, because that physicality of sound and breath and speech is what it’s made for… Above all, enjoy it. Poetry is meant to give pleasure.” It’s clear that composing this first installment of the King Arthur saga was a labor of love for Malcolm Guite, and that, as he put it, “This is the tale that makes my heart rejoice.”
New Characters and Elements Introduced in this Chapter of Dr. Guite’s Retelling of the King Arthur Saga:
A Note of Realism. For a work of the imagination to connect with the reader, to spark and maintain the reader’s interest, there usually needs to be a believable dose of reality in the story. The main characters generally need to have some semblance of real life… a flawed character making less than perfect decisions at weak moments, like all of us humans. The King Arthur legend is a prime example of presenting to the reader a whole slew of what we might call mixed bags, a mixture of hero and villain, good and bad, wise and foolish, courageous and cowardly. Perhaps the first flawed character that comes to mind in the whole Arthuriad is Sir Lancelot. Here was a man who had it all… lovingly raised in the famous lake called Avalon by Viviene the Lady of the Lake; a close friendship with the king who trusted him implicitly; handsome enough to make all the ladies swoon; strong enough to intimidate and defeat every other male in the story; a gifted warrior whose physical skills were unmatched and never beaten; a bravery sufficient to meet any challenge or adventure. But as the Lord warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at your door; its desire is to overpower you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:7). The affair between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere began innocently enough as Lancelot became her loyal subject and champion, her devoted knight who would serve in her best interests. But as they began to spend more and more time together secretly, what was once chaste became illicit. And their blossoming adulterous relationship turned an idyllic fairy tale into a devastating tragedy. Roger Lanceyln Green in his excellent retelling of the King Arthur legend, put it this way… “In this way the first shadow of a great evil crept into Logres (the realm of King Arthur), so silently and so innocent in seeming that no one observed it, nor did Lancelot or Guinevere dream whither it would lead. But the powers of evil, seeking now more and more desperately to find some tiny loophole through which to climb into the stronghold of good, saw it, and set a cunning snare for Lancelot.”
The Process of Temptation. “You can’t keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.” (Martin Luther). Let’s say we have an especially attractive desire that comes to the surface of our mind and heart. We seriously consider this desire, we give it some attention, even if there is a hint of anger, or lust, or revenge. So we decide to flirt with this desire, to entertain these thoughts, to dwell on them. Already we are starting to fail the test. The longer we flirt with this desire, the greater the chance we will want to become intimate with it. When we romance a desire, a wayward thought, we have started developing a relationship and we want to take it deeper than mere flirtation. It’s not that far at this point for those thoughts, those desires, to become mental murder, mental adultery, mental revenge. The seeds of desire has produced a love child with the thoughts of your mind, and the offspring is sin.
“Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28). That first look could be innocent, a passing temptation, an appreciation of someone attractive. The second look, the leering glance, just might be the beginning of a lustful thought or desire. That third look, that lasting leer, means we’re probably flirting with desire. When that desire is welcomed and given a home in the heart, the temptation could easily become overpowering. Since sex is our strongest urge and has been the downfall of human beings since the dawn of time, it pays to underestimate our moral strength when it comes to sexual activity. We need not give it that second look. We need not give lust a second thought. “Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body.” (Eugene Peterson).
Sir Lancelot of the Lake. As the chapter begins, we find him troubled and distracted in his Quest for the Holy Grail. He misses his love, Queen Guinevere, and he remembers his earlier time when he was tricked into fathering a child with lady Elaine at Carbonek, the Castle of the Grail. At that time he was put under a spell by a spiritual enemy which caused him to see Guinevere before him when she was actually Elaine. They lay together and conceived a child that fateful night, and when Lancelot woke up and saw Elaine next to him in bed, he lost his mind and jumped through the window, wandering in the countryside for months and months. The madness finally left him, but his heart still has shadows of guilt even after fully recovering his right mind. As Lancelot continued in his Quest, he met up happily with his old friend from the Round Table, Sir Percivale. They joyfully reunited and joined together on the path toward the Grail. As they travelled, they soon came upon an old stone chapel with a lovely maiden greeting them at the chapel’s door. But jus then a mighty knight thunders into the scene and handily defeated both Lancelot and Percivale, which had never been done. The brash young knight carried into battle a shield with a red cross emblazoned on it. The victorious knight quickly turned his steed and rode away without identifying himself. The chapel maiden told those two crestfallen knights that if they knew who that brash knight was, they wouldn’t have challenged him.
A Further Adventure of Lancelot. After this, his first defeat, Lancelot hurriedly rode away in search of this noble knight. He soon came to a half-ruined marble cross near the road, and could then spy out that there was a “kindly light” shining through the window of the old chapel nearby. Lancelot could clearly see through a chapel window an altar covered in gold and white silk, and gracing the altar was a seven-branched silver candlestick, all candles aglow showing “an unearthly light.” Once he realized he could not enter the chapel, Lancelot slept beneath the marble cross, discouraged and less than hopeful. At some point soon he envisioned a wounded and sickly knight being brought to the cross on a stretcher carried by two servants. This ailing knight cried out, “Heal me for the sake of Christ!” This broken knight begged for the mercy of the Lord and yearned to touch the Holy Grail. The chapel suddenly filled with light and a monk stepped through an unseen door, carrying the seven-branched candlestick, each candle being highly incensed and deliciously fragrant. At this point the Grail did appear, the radiance within it brighter than the sun.
** The Candlestick with Seven Branches. This Scriptural symbol of the lampstand is significant, of course. The biblical word for this is menorah or lampstand. “Menorah” is a Hebrew word that simply means light-bearer, or the place that shines and gives light. Menorah and lampstand are treated as synonyms throughout the Bible, even with its variations down through biblical history. The first official menorah was made according to very precise spec’s from Lord Yahweh Himself given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. As with every other piece of furniture in the wilderness Tabernacle, every piece meant something profound, and was a shadow of a heavenly thing to help us understand God better (Hebrew 8:5). In Scripture, the number seven represents the completion of something, the fulfillment of something, the perfection of something, the finished product or event. A case can be made that seven (7) is God’s favorite number. Because of what it represents, the number seven seems woven into the very fabric of Holy Scripture. Between the Hebrew Bible (OT), and the Gospels (NT), the number seven is mentioned in well over 700 passages. The biblical symbol of light, of course, begins with creation itself, light being the first creature in the universe. By imaginatively proclaiming this thought, the poets make profound sense, since we know that God consists of light, He is made of light. As 1 John 1:15 declares, “God is light.” When God’s glory, the weighty splendor of His presence in our world, is revealed on earth, it is manifested as light, supernatural light. Scripture is clear about this… God is the “Father of lights” (James 1:17); God “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16); God “wraps Himself in light as with a robe” (Psalm 104:1); “Yahweh God is the sun” (Psalm 84:11). “God is my light” (Psalm 27:1). And when Job asked his wonderful question, “What is the way to the dwelling place of light?” (Job 38:19), it was the mystic Daniel who answered, “Light dwells with Him.” (Daniel 2:22). John’s vision in Revelation reveals that God’s glory will be the source of light in the new heaven and the new earth. Once we reach the end of this age and the beginning of the new one, God’s glory will fully and finally be unveiled and will illuminate the entire universe. There will be no need for sun in the transformed world, because it will be “lit by the radiant glory of God.” (Rev. 21:23). There is no question about this… Inherent in God’s nature is a furiously dazzling light that is well beyond anything we can fathom or experience, until the end of days.
The Adventure in the Chapel Continues. When the Holy Grail appeared, the wounded knight crawled out of his stretcher to touch the Grail, and “a high bell pealed, and Heaven itself was half revealed.” The knight stood up, completely healed. All this time, Lancelot was unable to even move a muscle. The holy monk then declared that Lancelot could not touch the Grail because he is “held fast by guilt and shame and by his sins is tied… In his heart the trouble lies of double-life and compromise that keeps him from his path.” Lancelot fell into a swoon and dreamt he heard a mysterious song with powerful words about the “heart as hard as a stone, sealed against the Lord and who only serves himself.” The song also mentioned that the one who betrays as being like a rotten tree, and like the fig tree that is meant for good but cursed if it only bears inedible fruit. And then, the words pointed right at Lancelot, whose heart is harder than a stone, is like rotting wood, whose “prideful heart has taken something good and brought out evil.” But the monk continued, saying “God, who has made the precious stone and a blessed wood, will like the righteous vine make it all good once again.”