Tonight at our Lenten conversation we talked about having fun as an essential spiritual discipline - laughing at ourselves and taking time to be conscious of an other's needs, too. The blessing is that we are finding new and even tender ways to claim God's presence for us in the ordinary events of everyday life. In that light, dig this poem by James McAuley: "In the Twentieth Century."
Christ, you walked on the sea
But cannot walk in a poem,
Not in our century.
There's something deeply wrong
Either with us or with you.
Our bright loud world is strong
And better i some ways
Than the old haunting kingdoms:
I don't reject our days.
But in you I taste bread,
Freshness, the honey of being,
And rising from the dead:
Like yolk in a warm shell -
Simplicities of power,
And water from a well.
We live like diagrams
Moving on a screen.
Somewhere a door slams
Shut, and emptiness spreads.
Our loves are processes
Upon foam-rubber beds.
Our speech is chemical waste;
The words have a plastic feel,
An antibiotic taste.
And yet we dream of song
Like parables of joy.
There's something deeply wrong.
Like shades we must drink blood
To find the living voice
That flesh once understood.
No comments:
Post a Comment