To His Ever-Loving God

Unknown

To His Ever-Loving God

Can I not come to Thee, my God, for these

So very-many-meeting hindrances,

That slack my pace; but yet not make me stay?

Who slowly goes, rids (in the end) his way.

Cleere Thou my paths, or shorten Thou my miles,

Remove the barrs, or lift me o'er the stiles:

Since rough the way is, help me when I call,

And take me up; or els prevent the fall.

I kenn my home; and it affords some ease,

To see far off the smoaking Villages.

Fain would I rest; yet covet not to die,

For fear of future-biting penurie:

No, no (my God) Thou know'st my wishes be

To leave this life, not loving it, but Thee.

Robert Herrick

“I kenn my home; and it affords some ease, to see far off the smoaking Villages.” 
 

Such a satisfying poem – that image of a road full of frustrating obstacles, and the smoking chimney of home drawing us on in spite of our tiredness – the expressive choice of words, “so-very-many-meeting hindrances”, “future-biting penury” - the rhythmic back-and-forth of his pleas, do this or this, help me this way or else another - the sure-fit of the rhyme balanced against the uncertainty within his journey – all of this moves me, nevermind the last line, the line that stops the swish-swash of thoughts, yanks me from the earthosphere and back into the eternal. I know my home. My home is God, not the house but the Him-everywhere-and within.

Finite and Infinite

Gustave Courbet - "The Wave"

Finite and Infinite

The wind sounds only in opposing straits,

The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends

Its quiet only up against the ends

Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates,

Where, worked and worn by passionate debates,

And losing by the loss it apprehends,

The flesh rocks round and every breath it sends

Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states

Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord,

Make room for rest, around me! out of sight

Now float me of the vexing land abhorred,

Till in deep calms of space my soul may right

Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,

And rush exultant on the Infinite.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

“All tortured states/ suppose a straitened place.”  What a beautifully accurate image that is! The poem is so perfectly crafted, showing how the wind and water are only worked up when they have boundaries to stop them, when they are held in, pent up, limited. The way Elizabeth Browning uses the metaphor of crashing waves for her state of mind moves me. I can relate. I've lived in a "straitened place" for several years now. A place where I am continually cast up against my own limitations. There has been little room for rest or peace. I too, have been crying out to God for relief, for room, for "deep calms of space {where} my soul may right her nature". "Vexing land abhorred" ?!! She's got that right. How good it is to know others have been in this place, and felt this way, and continued on calling out to God and putting up sails.

Sabbaths

Kurt Jackson, "Fungi Hunter"

Sabbaths 1999

Again I resume the long

lesson: how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.

With the ongoing havoc

the woods this morning is

almost unnaturally still.

Through stalled air, unshadowed

light, a few leaves fall

of their own weight.

The sky

is gray. It begins in mist

almost at the ground

and rises forever. The trees

rise in silence almost

natural, but not quite,

almost eternal, but

not quite.

What more did I

think I wanted? Here is

what has always been.

Here is what will always

be. Even in me,

the Maker of all this

returns in rest, even

to the slightest of His works,

a yellow leaf slowly

falling, and is pleased.

Wendell Berry 

Wendell Berry writes on this theme so well, so 'satisfyingly', in my opinion. "How small a thing", "how little in this hard world" - can fill us and lift us and be enough. How the trees and mist rise in a stillness that is almost eternal. The landscape is itself just a place and a moment, but it evokes so much more. I mean, here's a man on a walk in the woods, and it's good, it's - that old word we don't use much anymore -  meet. It recalls him to that moment after God created the world, when He looked at it all, and said, "It's good", and then he rested. Wendell seems to have that sense within himself of God resting. What a cheering thought. That God would find pleasure in a man walking in the woods, and in a single falling leaf, well, it says a lot about him.

 

In the Dark

John Salminen, "Chicago River"

In the Dark

God said: Let the dark be dark.

Let the stars shine properly.

And let darkness with no stars

heal the damage caused by the light.

Men said: Let there be light all

 night through, where there is no-one

much or no-one at all, let

the gathered haze from street-lamps,

undying brand-names, full-blaze

unpopulated windows

stain the undersides of clouds

even when the nights are cloudless.

God said: Light itself needs rest.

Some things are best seen, unseen,

in darkness unhindered by

Great Light. Me, for example.

Robin Fulton Macpherson 

Another "let" poem. I like that its the opposite of "Let there be light!" It reminds me of Ecclesiastes - "There's a time for everything." Time for light, and time for darkness. Time to work, and time to rest. The last stanza makes me think of  Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", in which the protagonist comes to what he feels is the epicenter of evil and darkness, and finds the tiniest pinpoint of light there, and feels for the first time the full power of  it. Its the contrasts sometimes, that speak to us most.