Retired English Professor
Musings
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 10:42 PM
Subject: [888] Meditations
I have a deep love for literature. My "worldly vocation" is:
English professor. I rarely share that information for it sounds so stilted to
so many. (More than a few of us remember our high school English teacher!)
Actually, I no longer teach. I’ve traded in my composition pen for a manure
shovel, and I’m extremely happy shoveling stalls. My lovely wife and I are
caretakers on a Dude Ranch. I’m still around the smell of BS, just a
different kind.
I said, I have a deep love for literature. I find it mimics life. It’s true,
life imitates art and art imitates life. That shouldn’t surprise us, for God
was the First Poet and his creation is his poetry. In Acts 4:24 the word
translated "God" is the Greek word "Poites" which means
"Poet." God wrote a poem on that week of creation! Longfellow, the
poet, called believers "living poems." He wrote in
"Children,"
Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.
Implicit is the idea that God’s living poems are far superior to man’s
dead ones. Yes, creation is his poetry, believers are God’s living poems,
and both live in him. You and I are his work of creation, his poetry. And God
is the Master Poet. The First Poet.
I’m leading up to something. You might say—this is a set up. Now &
then Sterling shares with us his "quote of the day." Now & then
I’ll be sharing with David’s Outcasts Meditations from Literature. Right
up front, I ask your forgiveness for self-indulgence. Simply hit
"delete," should this not be your bag of tea. At any rate, here’s
the first meditation:
________________
So often we deserve the worst but get the best. There is a character
(actually it’s the narrator) in Marcel Proust’s novel Swann’s Way that
keeps discovering his past. Sleep constantly eludes his invalid frame. And
in the dim twilight between sleep and waking, sometimes at midnights, his
past, like an unwanted visitor, keeps returning.
One night he remembered as a little boy he was sent to bed without his
mother’s good-night kiss. She routinely came into the room, tucked him
under, and kissed him on the cheek. The security and joy of feeling her
cheek against his always drove away the frightened night. But that
particular evening Mr. Swann had come to visit and mother was downstairs
entertaining. He knew he would be punished, but still the lad waited up,
scared and alone. When mother came upstairs, weeping, he flung himself upon
her. To his surprise, the punishment that was rightfully his was thwarted.
Instead, she stayed in the room all night long.
God’s like that.
