Whatever It Takes

I haven't been to church in weeks.  I've even stopped planning to go. When my Lyme disease first started affecting me, I woke up on Sunday mornings with every intention of getting up, getting dressed, and getting to church.  But like every other day of the week, before my feet even hit the floor I would be slammed with an intense headache, or my limbs would be too weak to move, or my heart would begin to beat to a random rhythm.  Disease takes no Sabbath.  And so back to bed I would go, without the refreshment of the Word and the joy of being with God's people.  
Recently, it has been sheer exhaustion and a compromised immune system that keeps me home on most days.  Thankfully, the medicine and a strict diet are slowly erasing symptoms and I'm looking forward to the day that I can return to the meeting of the Body.  But in some ways, healing makes it more frustrating.  I'm getting better at snail's pace and I'm still mostly home-bound.  So I turn to those things God has given as means of coping.  Writing, reading, and prayer.  I'm so thirsty for the Word!  Which is a really good feeling!  A lot of times, when I'm at school I forget what it is to really crave the Word because it surrounds me all the time. You aren't thirsty when you live with your face under the faucet.  But I've come to a desert and it's nice to know that the desire for God's Word isn't something I've conjured up on my own.  He's working it in me!  


Another thing I've been learning is that the Christian life isn't about ethics. It's easy to think that it is.  Sometimes I make it that way. I spend a long time talking about standards and the details of laws. While I'm not saying that those discussions have no place in my time, it reveals that I miss the point more often than not. God didn't save me to help me pick the right Bible version.  He doesn't bring sinners into His family to clean them up and make them look clean-shaven and neat. In short, it isn't about ethics.  It's about Jesus.  


By grace, I am slowly unlearning the fleshly tendencies that lead me to measure God's love for me by my performance on a given day.  I'm beginning to realize that if that is one of God's reasons in making me sick, He certainly knows what He is doing!  It is wise and loving of Him to say, "Hey!  You think that you can earn my love? You think that you are more righteous the more you do for me!?  Well, let me help you destroy that lie by flattening you."  So, I sit on the couch for hours a day.  I take frequent naps and require lots of embarrassing help with little tasks.  And through all of it, I've been asking the wrong question.  "Abba!  I want to serve you!  Why don't you make me well!?"  


I took my parched soul to Philippians last week.  I had no particular reason for choosing Philippians other than the fact that I could read it all in one sitting and enjoy some meaty Truth.  Having not read the book in several months, I was shocked (oh the irony!) to be reminded of how dazzlingly applicable the gospel is to my situation.  After a quick intro, Paul jumps into a weighty sentence.  


vs 12- "I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel..."


Did I just see some parallels.  Paul has found himself in a position where (from all appearances) his ministry would be stilted, delayed, put on hold...etc.  I have been put in a place that seems like an abort mission.  I was happily fulfilling God's will when the smooth sailing abruptly ended.  But what is Paul's point?  God can use ANYTHING to advance the gospel.  Sure, what I saw as "my ministry" has been ended but to no loss on God's part.  He will actually use my trial to continue His work!  I love that!  Satan looks at the trial and says, "Ha!  Now she will curse God!  I'm removing what she loved most!"  And God says, "Now I have another chance to be gracious to her!  I will use even this to bring me glory and she will learn to love me more than what I've lovingly removed!"  So the plans of darkness are foiled once again by the grace that saved me.


What's the good?  He will advance the gospel in my own life as I learn to cherish it more and understand it more deeply.  He will advance it in those around me as He gives me opportunity to share His love.  And somehow, for some reason, and in ways I may never understand, He will advance the gospel in places I'm not, because I'm not there.  He knows what He's doing.  For His good reasons it is essential that I am where I am and I'm not where I'm not.  Is that oversimplification?  I don't think so.
Paul later states:  


But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
(Philippians 3:7-11 ESV)  


In this case, I can biblically say that health would be a loss and I should count it as rubbish.  Why?  It was standing in the way of me knowing Jesus better.  Because there are ways that God is trying to help me to see Him and it can't be done unless He kills my independence.  Oh, to know Him!  It is to be my highest goal!  John writes that knowing Jesus is eternal life!  That statement agrees with this passage.  Paul says that knowing God leads to the resurrection from the dead!  And so God is trying to prepare me for eternal life.  Should I try to resist that?  Would any right-minded person dying of thirst reject free water? Without this illness, I am still liable to trying to work my sanctification on my own.  For some reason, I still think it's about ethics sometimes and I try to make God happy by showing Him how purely I'm living.  I forget that He is happy about the righteousness of Jesus that covers me.  I forget that it is HIS work that brings Him glory and not my own pathetic attempts at covering my wickedness.  I forget that my righteousness is filthy rags and what He is looking for is a deeper knowledge of Him that leads to deeper love and finally (after all the right motives are there) He wants love-motivated holiness.  But to share in that life, I have to die.  And, to my shame, I don't die very easily.  


So, may He slay me!  And "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" His slaying is not for death, but for life!  Faithful are the wounds of my Wounded Friend.  He breaks that He might heal.  
It brings to mind the words of the song "It Is Not Death to Die."  While the song should be taken literally in the sense that physical death for the believer is not death at all, I like to remember that spiritual self-death in submission to God is not death at all either.  It's life! It's abandoning the weary road to rest in Jesus.  You can't enjoy sin and Jesus at the same time.  They are sign posts pointing in opposite directions.  Sin leads to death.  Knowing Christ leads to life.  
Prayerfully, I want my God to train me to embrace those things that wound me for His sake.  Not because I am a great saint worthy of such wounds, but because I am a great sinner necessitating such wounds.  
That I may know Him!  


"Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down."  -jd

A Festival of Lights

My brother is a man of odd interests.  In his fascinating and tumultuous personality nothing stays the same for too long.  And he has never known stoicism or apathy. Only a few things have remained constant in his passions and one of those things is an abiding interest in Jewish culture (which I have begun to share).  I began studying Hebrew on my own about a year ago, and I've been learning how much of Christianity is built on Jewish belief.  Jesus was a Jew.  :)  No surprises there, I hope.   The promises of the Tanakh are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.  However, if you're like me, you've noticed that Christmas has become highly commercialized.  Even most believers give only a cursory glance at the manger and spend most of their time at the tree.  Have we forgotten that the manger is the first step to the cross?  And the cross is our only means of salvation.  We easily forget that Christmas is the gospel.
My parents have kept Christmas small for us ever since my brothers and I were little.  They give us each one present every year, and we've given the other family members one present each.  If you do the math, it means I've received no more than four presents a year.  It's been great!  Rather than a pile of meaningless gifts to sort through, each of us has to think hard about what to get the others.  (Only one chance!)  I actually had no clue that other kids got more than that until I was in jr. high school.  And I also didn't know until recently that my parents have been ridiculed for keeping Christmas this way.  They have had other believers (!) tell them that they aren't treating their children with fairness.  That because they don't compare the price tags of our gifts, they are showing favoritism.  Here's the point, if it's not about the gifts, then it's not about the gifts.  Period.  Dot.  Is it about Jesus?  Or is it about the gifts?  We love to SAY that we know "the true meaning of Christmas."  But we don't love to act that way.  We love to talk about how horribly commercialized Christmas has become, but we don't really do anything about it.  If we really thought it was too commercialized and we really cared about that fact, wouldn't we act differently?  Wouldn't we make a point to make Jesus the point?
So this year my family has added a few things to our Christmas traditions.  The normal stuff is right on schedule.  We decorated the tree together and put up our lights.  We delivered the senior angel tree gifts in Hampton, and we still have the family get together events this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at my grandma's house in between Christmas Eve Candlelight services and Christmas Day services at church.  But yesterday the Hanukkah season started and we've added menorah-lighting to our holiday rituals.
We have several reasons for this.  First of all, the story of Hanukkah is more than just a story.  It's part of Jewish history.  While we are not ethnically Jews, we owe much to the heritage that is Judaism.  Secondly, the Jews thought that Judah Maccabee (the hero of the Hanukkah story) was the Messiah for a while (and with good reason!)  While we know that he wasn't, we can appreciate the sentiment and knowledge of Scripture that led them to see the attributes of Messiah, even though many of them missed Him a century later.  Lastly, the miracle of Hanukkah is one in which the holiness of God and His light to the world is honored and made glorious.  As American Christians, we sometimes shy away from our history.  But Adam and I are enjoying embracing it.  Admittedly, Judaism entails an incomplete expression of Messiah.  But it's a notable one.  And for the light that it gives, we see no darkness in honoring it in memory of what eventually gave us the Savior.
In the meantime, I've enjoyed beating Adam at dreidel and can't wait to see the joy on his face when I give him his Christmas present.
Merry Christmas...and Happy Hanukkah!
Nes Gadol Haya Sham!
-emj

Lewis as Brilliant Poet

I pour a cup of blueberry tea and settle in to write.  I have still one exam to take in two hours that will seal the semester….I should be studying.  But I make it a point not to overstudy for exams.  20 minutes tops for this one.  And I can't NOT write at this moment.  I’m bursting with thoughts and feelings—words are oozing out of me today like sweat off a hockey player.  It’s not pretty.  I spend much of my day alone, which is torture!  And now I know why it is so dangerous ever to write anything down.  You galvanize words when you write them.  And if you write them in haste or thoughtless passion, you’ve just etched that mistake in stone.  I feel this pity for my favorite writer, Lewis.  He’s the reject of many conservative Christian circles merely because he wrote honestly and without the chains of orthodoxy.  He did so because he wasn’t saved in the little boxes we know of today.  He was saved out of utter atheism.  Let’s cut the man some slack.  His theology improves the older he gets...like most of ours does.  Read discerningly.  He changed his views a million times before he died.  Haven’t I?  Oh yes.  I wrote things in my journal before I knew Christ that I no longer believe.  I wrote things last week that I no longer believe.  Did I go back and correct each of those things?  No.  Thankfully, I didn’t publish them.  Lewis couldn’t unpublish himself.  If we judged all theologians with the same stringency with which we slam Lewis, we wouldn’t read most of our systematic theologies.  We also shouldn't read ANY secular poetry if we have issues with Lewis’s views.  He left much to the imagination and even more the implication.  Have I made my point to myself yet?  Enjoy Lewis!  He was a genius and a believer.  His poetry is unequalled, though he's better known for his prose.  (And, might I add, he would NOT appreciate the Disney Narnia movies..)  

And are we even aware of his poetry before we judge him? Ah!  I shall have to post it.  Below I've posted what works I can find in no particular order.  Keep in mind…he was mere earth-dweller and liable to fail.  Make your lists of his theological flaws if you wish…just try to enjoy the beauty of his earthly scribbling.  

 

Scanzons

Passing to-day by a cottage, I shed tears
When I remembered how once I had dwelled there
With my mortal friends who are dead. Years
Little had healed the wound that was laid bare.

Out, little spear that stabs, I, fool, believed
I had outgrown the local, unique sting,
I had transmuted away (I was deceived)
Into love universal the lov'd thing.

But Thou, Lord, surely knewest Thine own plan
When the angelic indifferences with no bar
Universally loved but Thou gav'st man
The tether and pang of the particular.

Which, like a chemic drop, infinitesimal,
Plashed into pure water, changing the whole,
Embodies and embitters and turns all
Spirit's sweet water to astringent soul.

That we, though small, may quiver with fire's same
Substantial form as Thou — not reflect merely,
As lunar angel, back to thee, cold flame.
Gods we are, Thou hast said: and we pay dearly.

The Meteorite

Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer space.

All that is Earth has once been sky;
Down from the sun of old she came,
Or from some star that travelled by
Too close to his entangling flame.

Hence, if belated drops yet fall
From heaven, on these her plastic power
Still works as once it worked on all
The glad rush of the golden shower. 

The Country of the Blind

Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men, 
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long 
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.

At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few, 
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date, 
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn;

Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their 
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some 
Eunuch'd, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of

Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor 
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea waves, or admired how
Warm tints change in a lady's cheek,

None complained he had used words from an alien tongue, 
None question'd. It was worse. All would agree 'Of course,'
Came their answer. "We've all felt
Just like that." They were wrong. And he


Knew too much to be clear, could not explain. The words --
Sold, raped flung to the dogs -- now could avail no more;
Hence silence. But the mouldwarps,
With glib confidence, easily

Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set
Fools concocting a myth, taking the worlds for things.
Do you think this a far-fetched
Picture? Go then about among

Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once,
Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable,
Dear but dear as a mountain- 
Mass, stood plain to the inward eye. 

The Condemned

There is a wildness still in England that will not feed 
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed 
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk 
Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make -
We, hedge-hogged as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke 
As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.

A new scent troubles the air -- to you, friendly perhaps
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell. 
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps, 
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell. 

Science Fiction Cradlesong

By and by Man will try To get out into the sky, Sailing far beyond the air From Down and Here to Up and There. Stars and sky, sky and stars Make us feel the prison bars. Suppose it done. Now we ride Closed in steel, up there, outside Through our port-holes see the vast Heaven-scape go rushing past. Shall we? All that meets the eye Is sky and stars, stars and sky. Points of light with black between Hang like a painted scene Motionless, no nearer there Than on Earth, everywhere Equidistant from our ship. Heaven has given us the slip. Hush, be still. Outer space Is a concept, not a place. Try no more. Where we are Never can be sky or star. From prison, in a prison, we fly; There's no way into the sky.

Re-adjustment

I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning.
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won't be.

Between the new Hembidae and us who are dying, already
There rises a barrier across which no voice can ever carry,
For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever.
Uproot your loves, one by one, with care, from the future,
And trusting to no future, receive the massive thrust
And surge of the many-dimensional timeless rays converging
On this small, significant dew drop, the present that mirrors all. 

Prelude to Space

An Epithaliamium

So Man, grown vigorous now,
Holds himself ripe to breed,
Daily devises how
To ejaculate his seed
And boldly fertilize
The black womb of the unconsenting skies.

Some now alive expect
(I am told) to see the large,
Steel member grow erect,
Turgid with the fierce charge
Of our whole planet's skill,
Courage, wealth, knowledge, concentrated will,

Straining with lust to stamp
Our likeness on the abyss-
Bombs, gallows, Belsen camp,
Pox, polio, Thais' kiss
Or Judas, Moloch's fires
And Torquemada's (sons resemble sires).

Shall we, when the grim shape
Roars upward, dance and sing?
Yes: if we honour rape,
If we take pride to Ring
So bountifully on space
The sperm of our long woes, our large disgrace. 

On Being Human

Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence Behold the Forms of nature. They discern Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal Huge Principles appear. The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap; But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance Of sun from shadow where the trees begin, The blessed cool at every pore caressing us -An angel has no skin. They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it Drink the whole summer down into the breast. The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest. The tremor on the rippled pool of memory That from each smell in widening circles goes, The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it? An angel has no nose. The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes On death, and why, they utterly know; but not The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries. The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves, Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges. —An angel has no nerves. Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see; Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be. Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior, This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares With living men some secrets in a privacy Forever ours, not theirs.

On A Vulgar Error

No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not 
Invariably think the newer way Prosaic
mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot 
Upon the church? Did anybody say How 
modern and how ugly? They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot 
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay, 
Were these at first a horror? They were not.

If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food 
All set us hankering after yesterday, 
Need this be only an archaising mood?

Why, any man whose purse has been let blood 
By sharpers, when he finds all drained away 
Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude 
Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway 
All that I can't do now, all that I could?

So, when our guides unanimously decry 
The backward glance, I think we can guess why. 

An Evolutionary Hymn

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be). 

Cliché Came Out of Its Cage

1

You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'. 
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House 
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes, 
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes, 
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses 
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem. 
Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before 
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands 
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother 
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour 
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave 
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush 
Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped, 
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance. 
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods, 
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men, 
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged 
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die 
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing. 
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune 
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions; 
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears ... 
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.

2

Or did you mean another kind of heathenry? 
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth, 
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm. 
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll 
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound; 
But the bond wil1 break, the Beast run free. The weary gods, 
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand, 
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope 
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them; 
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die 
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong 
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last, 
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side. 
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits 
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men, 
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals 
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim. 
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs; 
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event 
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).

An Expostulation

Against too many writers of science fiction 

Why did you lure us on like this, 
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss, 
Building (as though we cared for size!) 
Empires that cover galaxies 
If at the journey's end we find 
The same old stuff we left behind, 
Well-worn Tellurian stories of 
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love, 
Whose setting might as well have been 
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bedinal Green?

Why should I leave this green-floored cell, 
Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell, 
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits 
Strangeness that moves us more than fear, 
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear, 
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart 
That finger-tip at which we start 
As if some thought too swift and shy 
For reason's grasp had just gone by? 

After Prayers, Lie Cold

Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness' and pardon's watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

I.

You think that we who do not shout and shake
Our first at God when youth or bravery die
Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache
Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why?
You have what sorrow always longs to find,
Someone to blame, some enemy in chief;
Anger's the anesthetic of the mind,
It does men good, it fumes away their grief.
We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate
Is equal. After that, for us begin
Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate,
And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win
A high, unearthly comfort, angel's food,
That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood. 

II.

There's a repose, a safety (even a taste
Of something like revenge?) in fixed despair
Which we're forbidden. We have to rise with haste
And start to climb what seems a crazy stair.
Our Consolation (for we are consoled,
So much of us, I mean, as may be left
After the dreadful process has unrolled)
For one bereavement makes us more bereft.
It asks for all we have, to the last shred;
Read Dante, who had known its best and worst –
He was bereaved and he was comforted
--- No one denies it, comforted – but first
Down to the frozen center, up the vast
Mountain of pain, from world to world, he passed.

III.

Of this we're certain; no one who dared knock
At heaven's door for earthly comfort found
Even a door – only smooth, endless rock,
And save the echo of his cry no sound.
It's dangerous to listen; you'll begin
To fancy that those echoes (hope can play
Pitiful tricks) are answers from within;
Far better to turn, grimly sane, away.
Heaven cannot thus, Earth cannot ever, give
The thing we want. We ask what isn't there
And by our asking water and make live
That very part of love which must despair
And die and go down cold into the earth
Before there's talk of springtime and rebirth.

IV.

Pitch your demand heaven-high and they'll be met.
Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)
Your earthly love. Why, yes; but how to set
One's foot on the first rung, how to begin?
The silence of one voice upon our ears
Beats like the waves; the coloured morning seems
A lying brag; the face we loved appears
Fainter each night, or ghastlier, in our dreams.
"that long way round which Dante trod was meant
For mighty saints and mystics not for me,"
So Nature cried. Yet if we once assent
To Nature's voice, we shall be like the bee
That booms against the window-pane for hours
Thinking that the way to reach the laden flowers.

V.

'If we could speak to her,' my doctor said,
'And told her, "Not that way! All, all in vain
You weary out wings and bruise your head,"
Might she not answer, buzzing at the pane,
"Let queens and mystics and religious bees
Talk of such inconceivables as glass;
the blunt lay worker flies at what she sees,
Look there – ahead, ahead – the flowers, the grass!"
We catch her in a handkerchief (who knows
What rage she feels, what terror, what despair?)
And shake her out – and gaily out she goes
Where quivering flowers and thick in summer air,
To drink their hearts. But left to her own will
She would have died upon the window-sill.

The Planets

Lady LUNA, in light canoe,
By friths and shallows of fretted cloudland
Cruises monthly; with chrism of dews
And drench of dream, a drizzling glamour,
Enchants us--the cheat! changing sometime
A mind to madness, melancholy pale,
Bleached with gazing on her blank count'nance
Orb'd and ageless. In earth's bosom
The shower of her rays, sharp-feathered light
Reaching downward, ripens silver,
Forming and fashioning female brightness,
--Metal maidenlike. Her moist circle
Is nearest earth. Next beyond her
MERCURY marches;--madcap rover,
Patron of pilf'rers. Pert quicksilver
His gaze begets, goblin mineral,
Merry multitude of meeting selves,
Same but sundered. From the soul's darkness,
With wreathed wand, words he marshals,
Guides and gathers them--gay bellwether
Of flocking fancies. His flint has struck
The spark of speech from spirit's tinder,
Lord of language! He leads forever
The spangle and splendour, sport that mingles
Sound with senses, in subtle pattern,
Words in wedlock, and wedding also
Of thing with thought. In the third region
VENUS voyages...but my voice falters;
Rude rime-making wrongs her beauty,
Whose breasts and brow, and her breath's sweetness
Bewitch the worlds. Wide-spread the reign
Of her secret sceptre, in the sea's caverns,
In grass growing, and grain bursting,
Flower unfolding, and flesh longing,
And shower falling sharp in April.
The metal copper in the mine reddens
With muffled brightness, like muted gold,
By her fingers form'd. Far beyond her
The heaven's highway hums and trembles,
Drums and dindles, to the driv'n thunder
Of SOL's chariot, whose sword of light
Hurts and humbles; beheld only
Of eagle's eye. When his arrow glances
Through mortal mind, mists are parted
And mild as morning the mellow wisdom
Breathes o'er the breast, broadening eastward
Clear and cloudless. In a clos'd garden
(Unbound her burden) his beams foster
Soul in secret, where the soil puts forth
Paradisal palm, and pure fountains
Turn and re-temper, touching coolly
The uncomely common to cordial gold;
Whose ore also, in earth's matrix,
Is print and pressure of his proud signet
On the wax of the world. He is the worshipp'd male,
The earth's husband, all-beholding,
Arch-chemic eye. But other country
Dark with discord dins beyond him,
With noise of nakers, neighing of horses,
Hammering of harness. A haughty god
MARS mercenary, makes there his camp
And flies his flag; flaunts laughingly
The graceless beauty, grey-eyed and keen,
--Blond insolence--of his blithe visage
Which is hard and happy. He hews the act,
The indifferent deed with dint of his mallet
And his chisel of choice; achievement comes not
Unhelped by him; --hired gladiator
Of evil and good. All's one to Mars,
The wrong righted, rescued meekness,
Or trouble in trenches, with trees splintered
And birds banished, banks fill'd with gold
And the liar made lord. Like handiwork
He offers to all--earns his wages
And whistles the while. White-feathered dread
Mars has mastered. His metal's iron
That was hammered through hands into holy cross,
Cruel carpentry. He is cold and strong,
Necessity's song. Soft breathes the air
Mild, and meadowy, as we mount further
Where rippled radiance rolls about us
Moved with music--measureless the waves'
Joy and jubilee. It is JOVE's orbit,
Filled and festal, faster turning
With arc ampler. From the Isles of Tin
Tyrian traders, in trouble steering
Came with his cargoes; the Cornish treasure
That his ray ripens. Of wrath ended
And woes mended, of winter passed
And guilt forgiven, and good fortune
Jove is master; and of jocund revel,
Laughter of ladies. The lion-hearted,
The myriad-minded, men like the gods,
Helps and heroes, helms of nations
Just and gentle, are Jove's children,
Work his wonders. On his white forehead
Calm and kingly, no care darkens
Nor wrath wrinkles: but righteous power
And leisure and largess their loose splendours
Have wrapped around him--a rich mantle
Of ease and empire. Up far beyond
Goes SATURN silent in the seventh region,
The skirts of the sky. Scant grows the light,
Sickly, uncertain (the Sun's finger
Daunted with darkness). Distance hurts us,
And the vault severe of vast silence;
Where fancy fails us, and fair language,
And love leaves us, and light fails us
And Mars fails us, and the mirth of Jove
Is as tin tinkling. In tattered garment,
Weak with winters, he walks forever
A weary way, wide round the heav'n,
Stoop'd and stumbling, with staff groping,
The lord of lead. He is the last planet
Old and ugly. His eye fathers
Pale pestilence, pain of envy,
Remorse and murder. Melancholy drink
(For bane or blessing) of bitter wisdom
He pours out for his people, a perilous draught
That the lip loves not. We leave all things
To reach the rim of the round welkin,
Heaven's heritage, high and lonely.

~C.S. Lewis, "The Planets", Poems (1st pub. May 1935)

Fall 2011

This was written for and dedicated to Lydia Scott.  Lydia was my roommate last semester when I was figuring out all my health issues.  We had to pack a lot of memories into just 2 1/2 months, and she made a huge impact on my life.  She was there for all the tears and pain, all the laughs, and all the late-night studying.  She helped me pack when I had to leave, and it was one of the hardest good-byes of my life.  




That semester, Friend,
Was a stroll through a storm.
Sometimes we splashed through puddles
And sunshine shot out from the darkness overhead
Bright.  like the microwave light at night
Luminescent
      (annoying)
almost funny
But mostly we were sloshing through slickness
We were slipping on the sidewalks
and a lot of times
I fell
but you grabbed my arm to save me.
We ran a 5K
stopped
inhaled
Rose again next day to run another-
in the storm still.
But oh, I wish that I had thought
to shake our flimsy jackets-
in a jar, collect the raindrops from those
weeks we spend together
Every day a different song
We have drunk the raindrops
tasted all our tears
and known that we were meant to
share this pain.
For this I bless you
As the raindrops fall.