A Note from Him

Where are you, and where are you going?
Our hearts have wandered too far apart.
Do you still hunger and itch?
Does your ears hear the meandering words that cause you to start?
Stop.
Remember the days we rejoiced in each other.
I miss you.
Be where I am.

Sleep

To sleep as sweetly as a little child
Who lays secure in tender loving care!
For though the rain should fall and winds should howl
He’ll sleep until the dawn has calmed the air.

What would I give for rest upon my soul?
The conscience pricked repeatedly anew
Reminded everyday of gaping holes
Inside and treasured hidden from my view.

How fortunate are ones that’re saved by grace
For though our sinful states will still remain
You bring us out and shine your glorious face
That we may see your love that bares our shame

Oh shine your truth upon our own deceit
For nothing else would bring the restful sleep

Lever

He gave a push, he pulled and shoved
the walking, talking trees.
He tried to place them one above;
the other, underneath.

He calculated, summed the weights
of leafy boughs and trunks
He wrote down all the small mistakes
and carved the greatest ones.

With tactful words and feigning smile
He used the biggest saw
Endeared himself yet all the while
He cut them, made them fall

Oh what could trees do in response
To such a cruel a fate?
But one recourse, to take at once:
To life be now awake.

Would levers leave advantages
of airy ladened words?
Could clever man who leverages
be more than be endured?

The one who takes by force or guile
will surely be assumed
into the roots of earthen trials
or fiery wooden doom,

until the day will come and break,
revealing truths untold.
And give him more than he can take
inside his fragile bowl.

In either case he’ll break before,
or after time has stopped.
Until that time, a tree can hold
his wounds as though a cross.

Passing Judgement

Passing judgement on others is a poor substitute for your own righteousness. You cannot become any more righteous by pointing out the flaws of others. In fact, it is more likely that it will make you less rightoues. There is of course a time and place for discipline. But God disciplines those He loves. Our failed attempts to ‘discipline’ others is caused by the fact that we don’t truly love them.

At the other end of the spectrum, being tolerant of others is also a poor subsitute for loving your neighbor as yourself. You do not merely ‘tolerate’ yourself – you look out for your best interest. When you are hurting you try to cheer yourself up. When you are hungry you look for food. When you are cold, you look for shelter. You do not merely ‘tolerate’ these conditions upon yourself. To merely tolerate others is to take couple of steps back in the Tao (and I use this in the same way Lewis uses it in The Abolition of Man) from the Golden rule.

Thoughts on Creativity

I have been trying to be disciplined about writing poetry last couple weeks. At the beginning it came pretty naturally; I guess I was lugging around these phrases for a while in my mind and just had a lot of material to work off of. But as the days progressed, i used up all my ideas and was found grasping for inspiration. Although one is not the best judge of one’s own works, I’m pretty sure that the poems I wrote earlier in this period of fortnight was higher in quality, in expressiveness, and lyricism, compared to the ones I driveled out later on. Why? What about the poems themselves that made this so evident? What concrete (and dare I say ‘objective’?) standards of measurement could I bring against poems?

For many aspiring poets, there is always that temptation of trying to be original. And in that process, by trying so hard to achieve this quality, we invariable fail to obtain it, slinking back in to cliched, awkward phrases and metaphors. It is when we focus more on what we describe, not how we describe it, that our poems expand to their full expressive potential. The better poems of mine have a quality of originality stemming from its focus, while the worse ones are characterized by the underlying creative frustration behind every forced iambic pentameter from wavering thoughts.

The very best of poems, however, even extend beyond that. (I wish I could say I have written something in my lifetime – a line, or even a phrase – that approach this.) They bring everything together from the past, while remaining fresh and original, and subsequent readings make it seem even more alive. The very best of poems are very best because they could not have been written otherwise; there is a sense of inevitability to them. No other combination of words could possibly come close to expressing what those poems express in their simple brevity.

Is this Platonian? Perhaps. But I’m sure everyone who has read a poem that they really liked, and resonated with, felt the same way. Or if you are the handful of the lucky few who have written something like that, there was a moment after you’ve been groping long and hard for the right words, and suddenly, you think of the perfect phrase, and you know that those are the ones you’ve been looking for the entire time.

This, I propose, is somewhat like how morality works. There are definite qualities of poems that can be measured; and those I suppose, correspond to the moral laws. These are all very good and excellent, for they can weed out rather quickly the really bad poems. But for the gray areas, where the goodness and badness of an action is harder to judge, and the quality of a poem is harder to determine, it is not for the fact that morality has all of a sudden become subjective or that poetic quality cannot objectively be measured. Rather, it is the case that we have a harder time understanding these rules and measurements. These rules themselves are harder to comprehend, to describe, and less quantifiable. But does the poem have that sense of inevitability that has stood from beyond the time of creation? Does the moral issues that we face have definite truths that have always existed that we have somehow blinded ourselves to? Yes, and yes; but it is hard to answer in the affirmative, and even harder to proclaim it lovingly and humbly.

This creative process, I propose further, is also in the way God works. He is, after all, the Author of all of history. The Creat-or must surely be creat-ive. This feeling you get when you find exactly the right words, this feeling you get when you finish reading the last chapter and everything falls in to place and you are rather astonished that you have not seen it all along when in fact in a way you have, this is in a way God works, the way Love works. That is why I love the doctrine of election.

hardened shells

When all you’ve left is hollowed hardened shell,
and nothing soft could enter in your heart,
you realize that you have made a hell,
where strongest poisons seep through in the dark.

The voices of the world are all ignored,
and only hatred, envy, lies exist,
for nothing soft could enter in with force,
not even joys the stars do shine in bliss.

Oh Love that took the shame, endured the nails,
could break the walls of such a foolish pride.
Expose my sinful soul, so weak and frail,
and spring the streams of mercy, far and wide.

For what could break the obstinate walls of self?
The greatest Love of all, and nothing else.

Ten Thousand Suns

In yonder hills, ten thousand suns do sleep,
awaiting for the moment of their births,
Where each will burst with crimson light do bleed
the morning skies with gaiety and mirth.

In confidence the blazing path traversed,
across the heavens, as his brothers have,
he finds his steps in memory reversed,
as if with different eyes he saw the past.

Alas, at last, with glorious dying sigh,
he yields his strength to coming of the night.
With dying breath he bids the world goodbye
and bleeds his soul in shattered scattered light.

The mighty suns will live for but a day;
Your word, oh Lord, will never pass away.

You wonder why he loves you

You wonder why he loves you when you see
the dirty rags of filth you’re covered in
Not only that, the skin of leprosy
and heart so blackened by the countless sins.

You wonder why he loves you when you set
your foot into his holy dwelling place,
its beauty second to the One it kept,
Your self you feel to Him should be a waste

But quick-eyed Love, who sees my blackened state
unravels all my robes so filthy, wet
instead He covers me with sovereign grace
declaring in His sight my righteousness.

How then could I persist, continue in
the same old thoughts and acts of this disease?
Behold the Man who gave it all to win
this soul of mine for all eternity!

Oh Creature! Loved by God and newly made!
to Him give all thy heart, his word obey!

Waiting

She waits for you around the corner,
just around the bend.
She’ll wait for you, perhaps forever,
’til the time could end.

The only catch you must remember,
fully comprehend:
she doesn’t wait for you to have her,
nor her truest friend.

The reason Wisdom waits is simpler.
ask her why she’s sent.
The answer she will give: “The Author
gaveth His command.”

She waits for you around the corner,
just around the bend.
She cannot wait for you forever;
time will surely end.

The Writer’s Block

Sometimes when digging deep in cavernous mines,
beneath the rubble, ‘fore the precious rocks,
your pen may hit upon a useless find -
the cubic shape they call the writer’s block.

Dimensions of these blocks are said to last
in varying length, so prudence must be used.
No manner of impetuous and rash
dislodging efforts free unwelcome cubes.

You ask me how to deal with such a thing,
when really you should see it differently.
For if you see an obstacle, you think
it couldn’t fuel your creativity.

The precious jewels you seek are only found
within the blocks themselves, and not around.