Crowds Of Buried Memories Sleep

John Clare could well talk of "crowds of buried memories." His life was ragged. Nearly half of it was spent confined to assylums, which in the early 1800's were not the comfy dorms that we now know. Memories he had, and to spare--many of them worth keeping buried.

Clare's poem, THOUGHTS IN A CHURCH-YARD, (1835) is quite obviously playing off Thomas Gray's better known ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD (1750). It would at first appear that Clare had written a sort of "Cliff Notes" version of Gray's. He replays it all: the quiet spot, death's way of raising the poor and humbling the mighty, etc.

Remote From Anything The Builders Intended

To what end do we suffer? To what end, really, do we fall on our faces? For what good are sin and folly and loss and waste?

We make such fools of ourselves! I'd hate to be in the same room at a party with the me of twenty years ago! I'd hide my face and pray that no one recognized us as the same guy!

Our past is, thank God, past! It is done! It will no longer plague us!

Jesus died to take it away as far as the east is from the west, etc.

And yet; and yet; and yet. . .

Was it all for nothing? Were we simply awaiting what Francis Thompson calls "love's uplifted stroke" in which our pasts vanish?

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

To Choose Doubt

"If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

Yann Martel, in Life Of Pi

A Debt We Must All Pay

Man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward.--Eliphaz (to Job) ca A Long Time Ago



Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone—as though we had never been here. -- King David ca 1000BC



Life is suffering.--Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha ca 530BC



But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay. --Euripides ca 430 BC

A Poor Life This

Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

Death By Small Doses

To follow yesterday's post of Ode To Life by Pablo Neruda, here is another poem by the same name. I've been told that it is also Neruda, but after scouring a dozen of his books I can find no trace of it. I don't know if it is his or not. Internet sites credit it to Neruda, but where is the paper version of it?

Regardless of who wrote it, it is an intriguing poem. The two are very different in many ways, but both sound clear and ringing warnings, and each are woven throughout with hope and possiblility.


Ode To Life

Slowly dies he who becomes a slave to habit,
repeating the same journey every day,
he who doesn’t change his march, he who doesn’t risk

His Mistaken Solitude

Today I walked around mulling over this question of life: What is it? Why do I sometimes feel very much alive and sometimes I feel hardly alive? Do the dead still feel, to themselves, as if they lived? And as I mused I noticed a bumper sticker that read simply: "Smile. You're Alive!" And so I smiled. Because I'm alive. And I can.


Then I came home and looked up the following poem by Pablo Neruda. While this is called Ode To Life, Neruda also wrote another poem that is much more well known and has the same title. I'll post it tomorrow.



Ode to life
The entire night
armed with a hatchet,
has broken me with grief,
but sleep

We Die In Earnest

What is our life? A play of passion,
Our mirth the music of division,
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the setting sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we, playing, to our latest rest,
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

What really is our life? Is it, as Sir Walter Raleigh said, just a "short comedy"? Or should we complain with MacBeth that:

So Remembering

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

Sheltered From Winds That Beat On Thee

Amy Carmichael: no soft slippers on her feet, no dainty parisian meals to be toyed with and coyly pushed around her plate, no doting hubby protecting her from the scars of the world. In her mission in India she faced the harsh realities of sin in our world, of destroyed lives, of meager rations and little hope for improvement. She willingly sought that life as a young woman, raised in a world of plenty, and more than plenty. Why? For others? Yes. For the girls whom she rescued? Yes! But there seems to be much more to it than that, as this poem and many of her others hint at.


FLAME OF GOD

From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,

Your Book, Just As You Laid It Down

Interim


The room is full of you! -- As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick! --

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers, --
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death --
Has strangled that habitual breath of home

For Our Conversation Is In Heaven

Richard Ledderer relates the story that when St. Paul's Cathedral burned in the fire of 1666, Sir Christopher Wren was hired to rebuild it. After 35 years of work the new building was finished and Queen Anne came to see it. After a tour she told Sir Christopher that his cathedral was "awful, artificial and amusing." He was delighted! What splendid praise from the queen!

"Awful" of course meant awe inspiring.

Had I Leant My Eyes Unduly?

This is, I think, only the second time that I've posted an original poem of mine on here. I don't normally like to do so, but in honor of my friends Devika and Wan Dee I will do it. This is a first draft, so I totally welcome the harshest criticism while I work toward a final version.

When I wrote this I somewhat used Edna St Vincent Millay's poem Renascence as a jumping off point. You will notice similarities in our beginnings, but not much more. If you click on her name below you can see her poem.




Glimmer

Two tall pines and a sugar maple
Upside down in the pond I see;

It's Academic

Someone just told me (in an email) that the type of writing I do sounds rather academic. I responded that some of it is, but that the most academic writing I've done (Covenant And Community) has changed me in countless ways. She asked me to explain. Here is my response.



To begin with, you need to understand that I’m religious, Christian. That’s why I do theology.

For years I had seen my religion as being primarily between myself and God.

Hast thou no scar?

When God was converting Saul (Paul), he didn't suggest that anyone tell him how much rosier his life would be with Christ. Instead he promised Ananias that:

"I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Acts 9:16

That was God's appeal to Saul? Is that how we sell the Gospel? Paul later seemed to assume that suffering for Christ was a proof of our usefulness to him.

"Are they servants of Christ?-- I speak as if insane--

Church Happens When . . .

A few years ago, two friends were acting as missionaries, befriending and evangelizing a group of people who would never intentionally go to any church. They purposely gave up their own ownership of their lives to be available to their new friends. Their goals were to:

A) live out the Gospel in community with these people
B) show them Jesus through their relationships (more than in talk or on paper)
C) see them come to know Jesus for themselves
D) help them find good church homes in which to grow

One day, as they were meeting with some of these friends who had become as close as family,

Exponential Growth

"Half of all churches in America did not add one person through conversion last year."

Read that again.

Now, read it again.

That is pathetic! Our nation is crumbling, the people are searching, searching, searching. What they are searching for, no one seems sure. But they are searching. This nation is hungry, and we in the Church know that we have access to a food that truly satisfies.

So what is wrong?

Oh Death, Set The Dying Free!

Written by Christina Rossetti on the fourth (or fifth?) anniversary of the death of her dear friend (and old beau) Charles Bagot Cayley.

Bury Hope (originally untitled, title added by later editors)

Bury Hope out of sight,
No book for it and no bell;
It never could bear the light
Even while growing and well:
Think if now it could bear
The light on its face of care
And gray scattered hair.

Too Stupendous For Comprehension

"I suppose no man ever saw Niagara for the first time without feeling disappointed. I suppose no man ever saw it the fifth time without wondering how he could ever have been so blind and stupid as to find any excuse for disappointment in the first place. I suppose that any one of nature's most celebrated wonders will always look rather insignificant to a visitor at first, but on a better acquaintance will swell and stretch out and spread abroad, until it finally grows clear beyond his grasp - becomes too stupendous for his comprehension.

Profoundly Emptied Souls

This is from a book that I am not allowed to review until the middle of the month, but then I will post a review on here. It is a most excellent book, so stay tuned. Until then, I can't wait to post a quote or two.


When we adopt an ideological approach to Christianity,