Avast!
Oh priceless beatitude, where art thou?
Living in a hedonist age, demanding freedom and enslaving the self in the process does no one any good. Love without truth is mere sentimentality, truth without love is cruel legalism. Ask for all of me, ask for a balance; your paradoxes make me smile but I don't find them unreasonable, just difficult.
Life is a tangled thing and it's not the knots that bother anyone, really. Knots in life don't matter, unless it's one around your neck. Then you were better to take it off and decide you had rather not crossed that threshold since it happened to be a rather irreversible one and you still wanted to make known a certain truth to a certain people, or to have more chocolate, or both.
Usually, however, the knot around neck rather symbolises some sort of neglect of the human spirit, and I am wont to be ashamed of not noticing it in more people. I don't wonder why people don't notice it in me. Perhaps that circle of wise counsel is closing in on me; perhaps things have come to a point where there is little wise counsel any more, much foolish banter available, and more deplorably, a general indifference to knots. Ashamed, I admit to being too tired, too irritable and too self-obsessed to put my own thoughts away and think someone else's thoughts.
I noticed, of course, that the world doesn't stop spinning at any point, regardless of my minute presence in time and space. Why does it matter, I ask? Why do I matter, for that matter? Why bring up my past, my future and loom it all in the balance of today and now and maybe tomorrow? Yesterday's news is today's pleasure and pain. Tomorrow's truth finds hope and a suspenseful, pregnant silence. The years could go yawning on and curling through time with no thought of where or why. Because where and whys are difficult questions to answer.
It's been a long time since the words have come, because words do not answer questions, or make things explicit. Words may describe, but to such a shabby degree that I have no reign on my mind's eloquence, only my pen's. Words cause so much more pain than one knows; written word is nearly always binding. Perhaps you call me cautious, too cautious. Perhaps I am. And perhaps I want to be. Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me? I have not a heart of stone. My skin breaks as easily as yours.
Tonight my portion seems so meagre, my meaning so flat. Lord, I ask for wholeness in the midst of brokenness, but not so much that I may be complacent without you. Test me no more, because I have no wish to be stale and lifeless as I am now. I ask you make clear to me your intentions; I have no fear as to what they are, I just want to hear your voice. Deep down inside, a raw gnawing feeling that this is my own fault. Please untie my knots.
My life is in your hands, my heart is in your keeping.
Oh priceless beatitude, where art thou?
Living in a hedonist age, demanding freedom and enslaving the self in the process does no one any good. Love without truth is mere sentimentality, truth without love is cruel legalism. Ask for all of me, ask for a balance; your paradoxes make me smile but I don't find them unreasonable, just difficult.
Life is a tangled thing and it's not the knots that bother anyone, really. Knots in life don't matter, unless it's one around your neck. Then you were better to take it off and decide you had rather not crossed that threshold since it happened to be a rather irreversible one and you still wanted to make known a certain truth to a certain people, or to have more chocolate, or both.
Usually, however, the knot around neck rather symbolises some sort of neglect of the human spirit, and I am wont to be ashamed of not noticing it in more people. I don't wonder why people don't notice it in me. Perhaps that circle of wise counsel is closing in on me; perhaps things have come to a point where there is little wise counsel any more, much foolish banter available, and more deplorably, a general indifference to knots. Ashamed, I admit to being too tired, too irritable and too self-obsessed to put my own thoughts away and think someone else's thoughts.
I noticed, of course, that the world doesn't stop spinning at any point, regardless of my minute presence in time and space. Why does it matter, I ask? Why do I matter, for that matter? Why bring up my past, my future and loom it all in the balance of today and now and maybe tomorrow? Yesterday's news is today's pleasure and pain. Tomorrow's truth finds hope and a suspenseful, pregnant silence. The years could go yawning on and curling through time with no thought of where or why. Because where and whys are difficult questions to answer.
It's been a long time since the words have come, because words do not answer questions, or make things explicit. Words may describe, but to such a shabby degree that I have no reign on my mind's eloquence, only my pen's. Words cause so much more pain than one knows; written word is nearly always binding. Perhaps you call me cautious, too cautious. Perhaps I am. And perhaps I want to be. Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me? I have not a heart of stone. My skin breaks as easily as yours.
Tonight my portion seems so meagre, my meaning so flat. Lord, I ask for wholeness in the midst of brokenness, but not so much that I may be complacent without you. Test me no more, because I have no wish to be stale and lifeless as I am now. I ask you make clear to me your intentions; I have no fear as to what they are, I just want to hear your voice. Deep down inside, a raw gnawing feeling that this is my own fault. Please untie my knots.
My life is in your hands, my heart is in your keeping.
