“Your letter is a wonderfully clear and beautiful expression of an experience often desired but not often achieved to the degree you and Jean achieved it. My reason for sending it back is my belief that if you re-read it often, till you can look at it as if it were someone else’s story, you … Continue reading A Severe Mercy
Month: November 2022
SUMMER
O love! do you remember? country busAnd England, meadows and blue sky?The drowsy-sweet lost summer calling usTo walk there, you and I? And how you drew my eyes to yours, still gazingTill quietly between us two,Across the bus, our eyes grown soft and praising,A summer sweetness grew. A country stop. A glance. And out we … Continue reading SUMMER
On the Suffering Inherent in All Loves, with CS Lewis
We shall draw near to God, not by trying to avoid sufferings inherent in all loves, but accepting them and offering them to him. Throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if he chooses this as a way, in which they should break, so be it. — CS Lewis
What His Child Needs
He is the God of comfort and consolation. He will soothe and satisfy his children better than any mother her infant. The only thing he will not give them is leave to stay in the dark. If a child cry, "I want the darkness," and complain that he will not give it, yet he will … Continue reading What His Child Needs
Be(ing) Grateful
Our grounds for gratitude are really far greater than our powers of being grateful. — GK Chesterton
Diary of an Old Soul, 11:11, 12 & 13
My Lord, I have no clothes to come to thee; My shoes are pierced and broken with the road; I am torn and weathered, wounded with the goad, And soiled with tugging at my weary load: The more I need thee! A very prodigal I stagger into thy presence, Lord of me: One look, my … Continue reading Diary of an Old Soul, 11:11, 12 & 13
The Inn at the End of the World
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,And never before or again,When the nights are strong with a darkness long,And the dark is alive with rain.Never we know but in sleet and in snow,The place where the great fires are,That the midst of the earth is a raging mirthAnd the heart of the … Continue reading The Inn at the End of the World
The Sweeper of the Floor
Methought that in a solemn church I stood. Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet, Lay spread from door to door, from street to street. Midway the form hung high upon the rood Of him who gave his life to be our good; Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet, Among the candles shining … Continue reading The Sweeper of the Floor
Wormwood
Thou only art alternative to God, oh, dark An burning island among spirits, tenth hierarch, Wormwood, immortal Satan, Ahriman, alone Second to Him to whom no second else were known, Being essential fire, sprung of His fire, but bound Within the lightless furnace of thy Self, bricked round To range in the reverberated heat from … Continue reading Wormwood
To S. F. S. — Sorrows Together Go
They say that lonely sorrows do not chance: More gently, I think, sorrows together go; A new one joins the funeral gliding slow With less of jar than when it breaks the dance. Grief swages grief, and joy doth joy enhance; Nature is generous to her children so. And were they quick to spy the … Continue reading To S. F. S. — Sorrows Together Go
Following A Star 