QUESTIONS OF THE HEART
Ponderings
From the wanderings
Of my mind
These questions
Beg for asking
All the time
Here is just a sampling
With a little bit of rhyme:
Would people do
What they do
Ostensibly for God
If no one ever knew?
They toss a beggar a crumb or two,
Thinking that will surely do,
Then move swiftly on their way
Their names to cultivate all day.
Glorious empires they must build,
Both here and in the sky,
Ones they think they will inhabit
In the by and by
And all the time the echo
Of self-absorption's sin
Blows about the darkness
Howling like the wind.
But empires safely built now,
And names so widely known,
They think themselves
Secure from guilt
Upon their lofty thrones.
And through their lifelong effort
The seeds that they have sown
Are tares of bitter darkness
That now they too must own
Comments (13)
This is remarkable...I love the imagery of sitting in their self-absorbed empires while the winds of their sin howl in the darkness...the final stanza is astute, poetic (artfully so), and chilling...Good work!! There's a line in the Dallas Willard book, "Divine Conspiracy" which comes to mind about religously ostentatious sin..I don't have the book right here...I'll get it later; leaving to go shopping now.
ryc...LOL! Guilty, I guess, convicted by my own words.
blessings...Jim
A panoramic view I see
Like the dust to which
I'm ground
I feel the weight
Of all around.
Like an eagle
With no nest
I soar aloft
In search of rest.
I oft so rise
But that I see
With open eyes
The path that I
And all might take
If we be
Truly wise
For this I soar
Above the crowd
The better view
To see
That meeting God
Upon the cloud
The better me
I be.
Tis not for heaven
We must wait
For even now we're there
But heaven waits
For us to wake
And bring its light
To bear.
Just the garbage that others throw down the wells of our lives, mistaking us for outhouses when we're young and can't fight back. No wonder some of us are more comfortable outside the grand palaces others crave.
This was profound! Thank you. Your comments and verses have been more than inspirational. Thanks for being there.
Okay, it's not a masterpiece, and I usually don't like regular meter and rhyme, but I guess there's a lot of dirt to move...
somewhere between the wealth of kings
and pious poverty
from giving all that's mine away
there is a place for me.
Somewhere between rejoicing
in the freedom that is mine
and mourning for the ones still chained
a place for me I'll find.
somewhere between the anger
toward a vile, abusive man
and the pity for his broken wife
there's room for me to stand.
somewhere between the Heaven
that I hope to see one day
and the Hell I so deserve
is just a glimmer to light my way.
somewhere less toward watching
to point out where you sin
and closer to my stumbling walk
is where my eyes belong.
Breath of Dawn,
Well, I guess that depends on which lineage I want to trace. If I look to the Iberian Spanish line, the oldest standing church structure in the U.S. is only a few miles from my family. As far as I know, none of my biological ancestors built the church, but it stands in symbolically as part of my collective heritage.
Conversely, if I follow my pre-Columbian line, our temples/universities were systematically destroyed during the first wave of Christianization. They exist today as "ruins" that archeologists "study"--but again, it's nearly impossible to confirm that my family are direct descendents of the Mexica or Toltec. Blood quantum identity politics are of no interest to me here, as Mesoamerica stands in symbolically as part of my cultural heritage. History is fascinating, isn't it?
Breath of Dawn,
The passage you reference is one of my favorites. Perhaps spiritual rebirth is like a refreshing breeze--though it's "invisible," the experience is concrete, embodied. This wind brings us to a manner of living in which God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. While we do not and cannot force the wind to refresh us, we certainly are compelled by it to live as Jesus repeatedly and consistently taught us to live. If I remember correctly, Nicodemus was a Sanhedrin ambassador. The Sanhedrin, the most important religious assembly of the time, were Jesus' primary opponents. 2,000 years later, when I look at the most powerful religious assembly of our day, it seems little changes across time. Agree?
huh.
Who are you?