I can’t remember the last time a poem moved me to tears.  Possibly never before.

I think sometimes it is only in art that bits of God’s beauty and love are able to shine the most truly and purely.  The camel and needle metaphor will never again be the same for me.

Tangentially, this reminded me of the scene in Dawn Treader in which Aslan peels back the dragon layers from Eustace to change him back into a boy at long last.

Luke 18.25
by Karsten Piper

He spread his blanket on the sand,
kneeled and arranged his bowls and tools:
hook, mallet, clamp, chisel, rasp, razor.

His smile glinted in the rongeur’s claws,
and upside down in the curette’s spoon.
Light shone out of the needle’s eye.

“Hoosh,” he said and began plucking hairs,
paring calluses, shearing wool, shaving
to the follicles, cutting to the quick.

He sorted these, trimming skin with skin,
hair with hair, into rows of clay bowls,
and set a large basin to catch each sour drip

as he sliced the hide and used both fists
to yank back the whole stubbled, gray pelt,
as wet and red on its underside as afterbirth.

He piled this heavily away, draping it
in clean linen, and turned to the meat and bone
heaving under sheer, tight membrane.

Sawteeth chewed into femur, rib and shoulder.
Pliers twisted and wrenched away tendons
until everything softened, canted, and collapsed—

yet not one sliver dies. Each ribbon and shard
bawls for the horror and hurt of their missing,
wishing for the old braying wholeness.

Pain bloodies evening and morning,
stabbing day after day from even the first cuts,
like the slow light of far stars.

Eyeballs and heart float alone in the last bowl,
dark and defenseless, quavering when he leans down
and they recognize in his eyes how little is left.

“Easy now, Camel,” he says and lifts me
in his fingertips, one quivering strand at a time,
through the eye of the needle.

” He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before, but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair.  He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson.  He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.”

-Flannery O’Connor;  The Artificial Nigger

I’ve been reading a book of O’Connor’s short stories lately with varying degrees of interest and enjoyment.  There is no doubt she is a brilliant writer and well-deserving of her place in this country’s literary canon, but nonetheless, her stories make me very sad.  She manages to give birth to characters who exemplify the depravity of man so intensely that it is both exhausting and painful to read their stories.

So earlier this evening I was sitting in the Filling Station, fully prepared to be left saddened yet again by the story, when I came upon those words I just quoted at the end of one story.  “the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it.”  How incredibly powerful are those words?  Shouldn’t that very action be taking place in our hearts?  This bears a great deal more thought.

I find myself, unaccountably, with nothing to do for a couple hours today.  This new city life has its innumerable positives, but an aching negative that has weighed on me — the scarcity of quiet time by myself, being.

Of course this is partly my own fault; being silent in thought, meditation and prayer takes a great deal of discipline that I largely still lack.  How many nagging worries would diminish and come back into proper perspective if I would spend more time dwelling before my Father with them and less consulting the opinions of every close friend?

I can’t get this song out of my mind.  Regina performed this at the concert I attended this past Saturday and this song in particular struck me.

~

He stumbled into faith and thought,
“God, this is all there is?”
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breathe.
And all the gods and all the worlds
Began colliding on a
Backdrop of
Blue.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.

He took a step, but then felt tired.
He said, “I’ll rest a little while.”
But when he tried to walk again,
He wasn’t a child.
And all the people hurried fast,
Real fast,
And no one ever smiled.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

He stumbled into faith and thought,
“God, this is all there is?”
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breathe.
And no one saw, and no one heard.
They just followed the lead.
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breed.

They started out beneath the knowledge tree.
Then they chopped it down to make white picket fences,
And, marching along the railroad tracks,
They smile real wide for the camera lenses.
They made it past the enemy lines
Just to become enslaved in the assembly lines.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

Blue,
The most human color.
Blue,
The most human color.
Blue,
The most human color…

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

I spent a bit of time looking back through my favorite shots on Flickr this evening.   It’s interesting to see the shift of color spectrum and feeling subtly change to reflect the seasons and my mood.

Apparently I’ve been drawn lately to reds and blues, mushrooms and berries, animals and things made out of yarn, strikingly-revealing self-portraits and pictures of couples…  oh, and collections of things.

1. Untitled, 2. don’t go quietly, 3. Untitled, 4. sunday foraging., 5. Tim Roth, 6. Rain, 7. Untitled, 8. Untitled, 9. Untitled

Paloma, after meeting Kakuro Ozu for the first time:

“So here is my profound thought for the day: this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. That may seem trivial but I think it is profound all the same. We never look beyond our assumptions and, what’s worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don’t recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.”

- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…

– E.M. Forster, Howards End

‘and tonight in the light of the gathering rain, I could hear creation groan.

and a sigh rose up from the streets of the city to the foot of heaven’s throne.

and the people hear the sound of a sweet refrain — an absolution in the fray.

it tells of the death of the one for the lives of the many

more than any picket sign could say.’

All I want to be,
is someone that makes new things.
And thinks about them.

-John Maeda

“The Lord reveal himself more and more to us in the face of his Son Jesus Christ and magnify the power of his grace in cherishing those beginnings of grace in the midst of our corruptions, and sanctify the consideration of our own infirmities to humble us, and of his tender mercy to encourage us.

And may he persuade us that, since he has taken us into the covenant of grace, he will not cast us off for those corruptions which, as they grieve his Spirit, so they make us vile in our own eyes.

And because Satan labors to obscure the glory of his mercy and hinder our comfort by discouragements, the Lord add this to the rest of his mercies, that we may not lose any portion of comfort that is laid up for us in Christ.

And, may he grant that the prevailing power of his Spirit in us should be an evidence of the truth of grace begun, and a pledge of final victory, at that time when he will be all in all, in all his, for all eternity. Amen.”

—Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 127-28