Wa-Hoo and Ye-Hah

Reading this morning in Billy Collins’ latest book of poetry, Ballistics, and ran across this poem…

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry -
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets
would make of all this,
these shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrators of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,
Ye-Hah.

Today, with God’s creation blooming all around me, I choose to embrace Wa-Hoo and Ye-Haw and delight in the small things.

I think I hear my 8-year old calling Ye-Haw now…

John Donne’s Holy Sonnets

Dana Stoddard has turned our Band of Brothers group on to the English Jacobean poet John Donne recently. Donne was known as an “English Dandy”, or womanizer, during his day and his early works were very erotic and sensual. After he experienced THE romance and quit settling for cheap substitutes, his writing was transformed.

Donne’s most known line from Meditation XVII was actually made famous by Hemingway, who used the phrase as a title of his famous work For Whom the Bell Tolls. Here is the original line…

Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

This morning while re-reading Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV I was struck by the brutally honesty description Donne gives of his struggle to keep his heart focused on God. It reminds me of Paul’s struggle in Romans 7…

Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

For so many years, I thought grace was only for those who did not have a relationship with Christ and, after salvation, we live Holy lives as a thank you to God for saving us. This erroneous thinking led me to a lonely, painful existence because I was getting my butt-kicked daily by sin. I simply did not understand grace. Rather than inviting God into my struggle with sin and allow His power to give me victory, I felt like God was disappointed that I was struggling at all. This meant I had to push this struggle into the shadows of my life because certainly I was the only believer who was struggling. After all, I knew better! So I worked harder and performed more so that nobody would have so much as a hint of my struggle.

By exposing me, God was loving me well. He loved me too much to allow me to continue to live as a shell of a man, trying to kill off my heart while polishing my exterior with nothing more than behavioralism. The good news of grace…the message that I was so afraid of in my self righteousness…is that each of us are desperate for Christ today. This understanding allowed me to once and for all step off the performance treadmill that was wearing me out and plunge into the reservoir that is God’s love. I began to embrace my humanity and to truly live…not a life of duty any longer…but a true adventure with our wild-hearted Papa!

Papa, help me to see my desperate need for You today. As Donne put it, enthrall me and ravish me to the point that nothing that is set before me today compares to the unspeakable joy of knowing You intimately.