If only I could write.

I took a moment to flip through some of the poems that I have kept and my heart rested on this one. This poem touches me in the way that only the image of a child's pure emotions can. It inspires me to write-- to capture flashes in time in the grip of two stanzas. It compels me to share...

Boy at the Window

By: Richard Wilbur

Seeing the snowman standing all alone

In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.

The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare

A night of gnashings and enormous moan.

His tearful sight can hardly reach to where

The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes

Returns him such a God-forsaken stare

As outcast Adam gave to paradise.

.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,

Having no wish to go inside and die.

Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.

Though frozen water is his element,

He melts enough to drop from one soft eye

A trickle of the purest rain, a tear

For the child at the bright pane surrounded by

Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

Message of the Arrows

I have begun reading The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Elredge for the third times. (For those unfamiliar with the text, it is a book written by Christian authors as an inspirational piece). The first two times I tried to read it, I got really excited by the first chapter and burnt out after the second. Today, however, I finally crossed a landmark in the book for me: chapter three. And I'm glad that I did because I am connecting to what they are saying.

I find myself particularly drawn to some of the things Curtis and Elredge speak of-- a deep longing for something more. A restlessness for excitement and romance. I understand what they are talking about when they say that people get bogged down by the "arrows." As I think back over my past 5 years I have spent so much time noticing aspects of the world that contradict my idea of Jesus. I have let my bitterness harden me and have pushed away the church more often than I have gravitated towards it (the church, not Jesus). But underneath the bitterness and anger, I have burried a real desire to be close to God again-- to seek him and know him, to be in his presence and be in fellowship with believers. I feel like I am finally hitting a place where I can look past my scars and remember what this Christianity thing is all about.

Over and over again I find myself drawn to a passage in Matthew 22:
34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

If only I can continue to follow my heart and not get dragged down by my stubborn independence or memories of pain...