What Does The Dream Of The Rood Mean

The author uses these to enhance our understanding, on a more personal level, of the word redemption, and later, the impact it would have on the life of a faithful Christian when dealt by the hand of God.

     Throughout these chapters we see many portrayals of God’s character: The destroyer, the ever-judging, a God with expectations, a God that grieves, feels pain, repents, a God that demands justice; a self-evaluating, ruling and omnipotent God whom also passes on saving grace to the deserving.

To die, to sleep-/ No more- and by a sleep to say we end’ The heartache and the thousand natural shocks, That flesh is heir to/‘tis a consummation”(3.1 64-71).

The Bible has been translated into 451 languages, sold over 6 billion times, and depicted in over 40 movies. The Bible and the crucifixion of the Messiah are prominent aspects in cultures all around the world today. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has been translated, dramatized, televised, adapted, and cartooned. In “The Dream of the Rood,” translated by R.M. Liuzza, the Biblical cross comes to life to tell its own version of Christ’s death and resurrection. The author recreated the Biblical account to appeal to the Anglo-Saxon warrior group to effectively convert them. However, the story from the cross’s perspective matches the crucial material of the Biblical account of the crucifixion without defaming Christ.

The grieving that individuals experience with death is unique, but the main stages are universal across cultures (Axelrod, 2017). There are five stages of grief. Nicolas Wolterstorff’s story, Lament for a Son, addresses these five stages as he tries to find joy after the loss of his son. The meaning and significance of death in light of the Christian narrative is also addressed in the story. Having a hope of the resurrection can help comfort individuals in situations similar to Wolterstorff (Wolterstorff, 1978).

To analyze the meaning of the poem of Mark Jarman, he does a philosophical reflection that invites his audience to think about the purpose of human beings in the life. However, to understand in a deeper lever this concept, Jarman goes beyond the mundane life purpose and makes a reflection about what is beyond death in order to know how it can affect this purpose. His thoughts are also related with the idea of the human natural curiosity and how through the stages of life it changes and humans being are discovering their purpose for this life. Therefore, Jarman shows in this “Unholy sonnet 5” how making a deep reflection about the purpose of life before fronting death and being before God's presence, one can fall into the conclusion that at the end having enjoyed this life will be what it really will be worth.

The book is neither meant to be a theological treatise nor an academic exposition but a toolkit to unleash human potentials; a resource for intervention in dealing with human life hurts and as a channel of Gods healing and liberation through Jesus Christ.

In The Dream of the Rood, the first speaker or dreamer shows you that he chooses Christianity over anything else when he says “I look forward constantly toward that time the Lord’s rood which I beheld before here on this earth shall fetch me away from this fleeting life and bring me then where bliss is eternal to joy in Paradise..” (Lines 135-140). That vision was like a beacon of hope the dreamer, being alone with nothing and no one, having a hint of something to lean or depend on gives them faith. The story the rood or

Upon everyone’s reunification in heaven they realize that the one thing that paradise is missing is life. They decide that they need to be reborn in order to experience the beauty that is living. Through all of their struggles, they have experienced a myriad of emotions. They have hated life, and yearned for death. Now they look forward towards life with a changed and renewed outlook.

Edward Taylor’s “Meditation Six” uses a coin-based conceit to explore the ambivalence of the persona; using the coin, Taylor describes his spiritual value to God in material terms. The first stanza reflects an uncertainty within Taylor about his worth to God. He equates himself to gold, asking if he is “thy gold” (1) or merely a vessel for God’s wealth—the congregation. The speaker worries he may only appear to be worthful to God, but he is worthless underneath and “brass in heart,” alluding to the Brazen Serpent of the Bible. Working through his ambivalence, the speaker compares the impression of the grace of God to the stamp on a coin, and he asks if God has left such an impression on him, stamping value onto worthless metal. Taylor writes that he is “a golden angel” in God’s hand, meaning he is valuable to God, which ends his ambivalence as he concludes that he is worthful as a man. In the final stanza, the speaker asks God to make his soul the plate, a blank coin, onto which God stamps value with his “superscription in a holy style” (16). The speaker then becomes a coin with value to God, part of God’s hoard, whereby Taylor acknowledges that he is one of many. A surrender ends the conceit and poem, the speaker asks if he may be an angel, period slang for an English coin, in God’s eyes and if God may be his Lord.

“The Dream of the Rood” uses stoicism to promise reward for suffering where Christ and the cross are linked, yet paralleled with the dreamer in that he joins in the comitatus of Christ through the cross therefor gaining redemption and eternal life and home in heaven. Christ himself though does not serve the same role as he does in biblical texts, here he is brave and stoic, like a great warrior.

The ethical paradigm traditionally associated with the treasurehouse model of mentality in Old English poetry—the sapiential economy of the accumulation and then distribution of mental valuables— converges in The Dream of the Rood with the poet’s religious ideal of the Christian faith as universally acknowledged and collectively practiced in the form of devotion to the Cross”(Mize Britt, pg 177). The rood's description, had a deep connection and references to both the Christian and Pagan culture, also indicating the obedient relationship he had or shared with Jesus Christ as that of a Lord and thane.

‘The Dream of the Rood’ has been marveled as one of the finest religious poems from the Anglo-Saxon time period. The poem itself shows the contrast between the Pagan religion and Christianity and the overlap of religious symbols between them. It follows the crucifixion of Jesus and the dreamer’s journey to finding faith. The rood is seen as the backbone of the crucifixion and is depicted as being praised more than Christ. Using the literary devices of kenning and alliteration the author highlights the heroic nature of the rood, the dreamer’s gradual progression to optimism and the struggle of the people of the time to remove Pagan traditions in literature.

Conversely, there is an alternate way of looking at eros. In order to have hope, God has to appear to human life as not a receding horizon but an absolute savior. Human beings long for the truth and due to the constraints of science and history, Jesus is seen in an alternate way because he is no longer limited by space or time. In this case, Karl Rahner and Saint Augustine both agree that God always initiates the relationship with human life. Namely, they asserted that we are constantly drawn to God and God is not drawn to us. Because of this, we have the option of forming a better relationship with God. Rahner said that God dispenses his grace to all human beings of every religion in and God is continually accepting. Chiefly, it is not God’s choice to accept or deny us, for that is not his matter
. Anthony De Mello describes another explanation of human fulfillment to us. He explains to us that in order to have human fulfillment, we must detach ourselves from our worldly attachments. As human beings, we allow ourselves to believe that we cannot be happy without a certain thing or person in our life. Thus, that is not

In the Anglo-Saxon literature, the scop has a privilege of retaining history, culture and social values of that society. In many cases the scop exercises the power to create stories which reflect the values of that society. The Rood in the ¡°The Dream of the Rood¡± also tells a story of which affects its society and people. The existence of this witness that reports the suffering and the glorification of Christ proves necessary for the people to believe. The Rood becomes a hero that preserves an event that proves crucial to the society. As the Rood observes the suffering of Christ, it also shares with him the pains of crucifixion. In other words, the Rood takes part in Christ¡¯s crucifixion which pertains to the salvation of the souls.