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Glorious Defeat (a poem)

In our midweek Bible studies with our church we’ve been discussing the book of Hosea, and this poem is based on one of the themes we found there—a theme I’ve experienced in my own life as well.

Glorious Defeat

I raise my eyes
to my opponent
standing in the way
towering above my head
and shining like the day
I size him up
I shake my fist
I’m impotent
yet I resist
“Why?”
I shout out my complaint
though my own voice
sounds small and quaint
“Why are you here blocking me?
Move aside, now! Let me be!”
He doesn’t budge
his sword is drawn
he’s ready now for action
his eyes are burning hot
with an unsettling compassion
and with a voice
like rushing water
larger than the world
he answers with a knowing smile
“Child” he says
“My child”—is that really who I am?
“I only stand to save you from the peril
that you’re in. This path leads to destruction—
if you turn, you’ll live again. So I’ll block you
and I’ll fight you and I’ll stop you till you see
that the path to perfect freedom
is the path that leads to me.”
And so I am undone
in my glorious defeat
I run into his arms
and I find the victory

A Saint Patrick’s Day Selection Box

I’m posting a day early this week, in honour of Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s a national holiday here in Ireland, and rightfully so. I’ve collected this selection of links to help you understand and celebrate the man who brought good news to Ireland.

The Growing Power of Wilful Ignorance

She didn’t want to go to the dentist.

My friend already knew she had cavities, and she knew the dentist would want to do something about them. If she avoided seeing him, she could ignore the problem a little longer. It’s easy to ignore a cavity if the tooth is still functioning. Drills and fillings feel drastic when it’s entirely possible to carry on as normal with no intervention at all. The easiest way to deal with a little bit of decay is to apply a little bit of wilful ignorance to it. The trouble, of course, is that wilful ignorance is not an effective treatment for cavities. It only gives them time to grow. And as the decay grows, the wilful ignorance will have to grow with it. To keep a growing problem out of our minds, we must continually increase the capacity of our tolerance for it, slowly expanding the diameter of our blind spots to fit over its ugly edges.

A Thousand Lives (a poem)

Here’s a poem to compliment my previous post, A Treasure Chest for Thoughts

I have often wandered in
The Hundred Acre Wood
If you’ve never been to Neverland
I’ll tell you that you could
But mind yourself—
There’s pirates there
And don’t trust Long John Silver
You need a bear like ol’ Baloo,
The jungle-wisdom giver
I’ve been in boats with Rat and Mole
And Huckleberry Finn
And for a time the Pevensies
Were pretty much my kin
I cried when Old Dan died and I
Rejoiced when Gandalf was revived
And I have lived a thousand lives
While sitting by the bookshelf

A Treasure Chest for Thoughts

Class was finished for the day at Munster Bible College. As my friend looked over the school’s library, he said, “I never used to read at all before I came here. I just looked at movies and videos and stuff like that. But then I had to read for class, and now I can’t wait to get my hands on more books. I had no idea how many treasures there are in those pages!”

What else does God Name?

A break in the clouds made the sun shine briefly, and it filtered through the leaves of the trees that surrounded me. I’m still not well versed on the native tree species of Ireland, so I didn’t know what to call all the varieties around me. As I looked more closely at them, I thought species names wouldn’t really do them justice, anyway. Each tree was so unique, twisted and knobbed in its own peculiar ways, reaching outward and upward and marked with its own particular spots and stripes and lumpy roots. Each told its own silent story of growth over decades, with its scars to prove the challenge of survival and its buds to show the promise of life. I wanted to call each one by its own name, something fitting to itself, honouring its own unique existence. I stopped at one tree in particular and tried to find a name that would suit it. It looked stately and strong, like a weathered General in his dress uniform, but General is more of a title than a name, and probably too general. Anyway, it’s a bit silly and sentimental to be going around naming trees, isn’t it?

Right Here (a poem)

Life is not a reward that comes
after all of the chores are done

after all of the children
are fed and the
workweek is over and
laundry is sorted we
hope that our plans won’t be scrapped or reordered
for moments of peace, or a day to de-stress—

if that’s what life is,
tell me what is the rest?

Life is right here
hiding here in these moments
in dishes and spreadsheets and auto mechanics
in toothpaste and heartbreaks and peeling the carrots
and only the ones who refuse to ignore it

will live every day they’re alive

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.”
— C.S. Lewis

Life is a Vapour. Enjoy it.

I stood at the window with my coffee in hand, enjoying the unique stillness of a Saturday morning. The clouds in the eastern sky were blushing, in anticipation of the sun’s imminent arrival. Between me and them, a mist was rising, like the earth’s exhaled breath—growing, shifting, and dispersing, glowing in the golden morning glory. A breath. A vapour. This is what King Solomon called life itself, in the book of Ecclesiastes. Like your own breath in the crisp winter air—you can see it and feel the warmth of it, but the one thing you can never do is hold it.

The Leaf Collector (a very short story)

He had not been prepared. It was meant to be a routine check-up, not a death sentence, so he didn’t blame himself for the things he said in anger. Anyway, now his mind was clear. The tidal wave of shock and grief had washed away every excess concern and left him with one solitary desire which he now realised had always been there—he just hadn’t noticed it among the clutter he’d been collecting. The foundation was bared. His heart was exposed, and focused like never before.

He wanted to live.

Just the thing (a poem)

When the thing that I thought
I was waiting for happened
it opened my eyes up to see
that the thing that I thought
I was waiting for wasn’t
the thing that I thought
it would be
so I thought I would wait
for another thing, maybe
and this one would be
just the thing
but it turned out it was
just the thing that it was
not the thing that I hoped
it would be
I could go on forever just
hoping and waiting
for something to be
just the thing
or stop with the somethings
and turn to the Someone
who teaches my heart
how to sing