Sunday, April 6, 2008

"The Beautiful Changes"

"Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and thing's selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder."

I feel like I keep coming up against this piece of a poem (by Richard Wilbur); you know how there are sometimes passages or characters or descriptions you can't get away from? I've written it over and over again in my journal in different contexts, and it seems to answer all these different questions and struggles without really answering them at all.
Like how a good Father can let his children die.
Like paganism, like how the Gospel doesn't seem to have any power over the hardened sin in this world.
Like how people can love God so fiercely in the absense of their hearts.
I couldn't explain logically how it answers those, but bring in the generosity of God, and those questions turn different colors, run together, become silly, laughing, almost tongue-in-cheek.
If God holds roses in a way that says they are not only his...
Then all the breaking in the world must be like that, must be a gift like everything else.
In such kind ways.
For every loss, ever single loss, a second finding.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

:) i love that analogy.
-Sometimes when we laugh and joke about things maybe it's our human way of somehow understanding the fact that God's light shines through the cracks of "humankind"
...despite my foggy doubt of that at times, He's holds us all. all the time.