The Elixir of the Ordinary

I want to begin a series of reflections on Christian poetry by sharing a stanza I love—one that has quietly accompanied me for many years. There are seasons when it rises within me almost unbidden, becoming the way a day opens rather than something deliberately chosen. I do not make this a routine or a discipline in any formal sense, yet it has a way of returning at just the right moments, unfolding within me across all seasons of the year. It feels less like repetition and more like recognition, a simple acknowledgment that gently reorients my inner posture before the day fully begins.

The stanza comes from a poem by George Herbert, an Anglican priest and one of the great devotional poets of the seventeenth century, whose brief life yielded an enduring spiritual clarity. The poem itself is titled The Elixir, a name that evokes the image of a hidden potion—something quietly transformative rather than outwardly dramatic. To my mind, that title is perfectly chosen, for what this poem offers is not instruction or exhortation, but a kind of inward alchemy. There is something genuinely magical about this stanza, not in the sense of escape from the ordinary, but in its power to reveal the ordinary as already infused with God. It is this subtle, luminous transformation that makes the words worth returning to, again and again, as a way of beginning.

Here is the stanza that I love so much:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee.

Before I share what this stanza unfolds within me, I want to linger for a moment with the invitation carried in the title of the poem itself: The Elixir. In many mythic stories, the elixir is the boon brought back from the other world—the gift the hero or heroine does not keep, but returns with for the healing of the community and the renewal of life. When I hold Herbert’s title in this way, it feels as though he is pointing to something very similar, though rendered in the quiet language of Christian faith. The elixir he gestures toward is the lived experience of the Christ within—a way of Being that moves through ordinary life without being claimed by it. One remains fully present in the world, engaged in its tasks and responsibilities, yet inwardly rooted elsewhere, seeing and acting from a deeper center. This, to my mind, is the true boon Herbert offers: not a teaching to be mastered, but a transformed way of inhabiting life itself, given back for the highest good of all.

To my mind, if one simply recited this stanza and committed to embodying it rather than letting it remain mere words, that would be enough. Let me return to the first two lines:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see.

When Herbert asks to see the Divine in all things, he is pointing to a different way of Seeing. This is not simply learning to appreciate beauty, but learning to see in the way the Divine sees the world. It is the way mystics of all traditions describe their vision—seeing from the dynamic of non-separation. With this way of Seeing, there is no duality. To use another poetic image, the dewdrop merges with the ocean.

In reality, this way of seeing cannot be learned through intellectual study. It comes by way of revelation. This is why the poet begins with the humble request, “Teach me, my God and King.” What is being asked for here is not additional knowledge, but a surrender of the separate sense of the personal self. As this surrender begins to unfold, the seer and the seen are no longer experienced as divided. There is no loss in this movement. What is exchanged is the limited capacity to see from the finite for the freedom of seeing from the Infinite.

One of the key ways in which one learns to see the Divine in everything is by committing to the strange and demanding instruction given by the Master Jesus when he says, “Take no thought for your life.” This is not a poetic exaggeration, but a precise invitation into a different mode of perception. Yet the Christian Church, by and large, has not taken this instruction seriously, and as a consequence this kind of Seeing rarely unfolds. What remains instead is an unending focus on thought itself, which becomes a veil. We then see, as the apostle Paul describes it, through a glass, darkly—perceiving life through the obscured lens of the separate personal self rather than from the clarity of the Divine.

The poet then moves on to the final request:

And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee.

Here we encounter the invitation to an experience that might be described as doing through non-doing. Most of us live our lives immersed in doing and more doing, yet we are rarely taught the quiet mystery of non-doing. The Master Jesus invites us into this way of living when he says, “He who would save his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake shall find it.” Most of us are deeply engaged in trying to save our everyday sense of the separate personal self. We assume that if we do not act, nothing will get done—and we fear what might then happen to us. And so we spend our days rehearsing what must be done, even though the Master clearly counsels us to give no thought.

This doing by way of non-doing unfolds to the degree that one is willing to trust how the Divine lives and moves through us, and even how the Divine thinks through us. As Scripture reminds us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” The way of the Divine is not forced effort, but unfoldment. It moves by flow rather than control. To borrow a poetic image, one is left asking, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (W. B. Yeats) The experiencer disappears into the experience. One lives fully in the world of action, yet is moved from the deeper dimension of non-action. This is not something the personal mind can comprehend. It is something we allow our God and King to teach us—or more precisely, to have unfolded through us. This is not intellectual learning, but embodied spirituality.

This is why poetry continues to matter within the Christian tradition. It does not press for agreement or ask to be mastered, but offers itself as a doorway into Seeing and living from a deeper center. Herbert’s stanza is one such doorway, but it is not alone. Other poems and stanzas, drawn from across the tradition which over the sharing of this series I hope will invite you into exploring living the life more abundant.