Reflecting on the shared experience of six friends’ ministries this past year, I marvel how the balance works between belief (that is rational) and living experience of God (that often just grabs people unexpectedly from behind). Perhaps the best ways of relating both these dimensions of faith to each other and us are paradox and image. Offering a poem a day from this retreat/review at Alton, I suggest the paradoxes of a fascinating poem by New Zealand poet M. K. Joseph (1914-1981), and the great icon of SS Mary, John and Benedict in the Church here, which looked especially loaded and extraordinary surrounded by leftover candles from Candlemas on Tuesday.A Riddle of the Soul
I cannot give
Unless I have
I cannot have
Unless I save
Unless I have
I cannot save
Unless I give
I cannot have.Unless I live
I cannot be
Unless I am
I cannot seem
I cannot be
Unless I seem
I cannot live
Unless I am.I cannot be
Unless I give
I cannot have
Unless I die
Unless I grieve
I cannot love
Unless I die
I cannot live
2 comments:
I love Christian paradoxes. And in those moments when we're close to God they all make sense and aren't paradox at all.
And that is a beautiful poem, thank you for posting it.
But I would question whether we are ever really rational. So often, what is rational to one is clearly full or false assumption and prejudice to another that the concept of rationality seems almost to be a faith of its own.
And finally, I think that the tension between reason and faith only exists before you have met the living God. Afterwards, faith makes perfect rational sense.
Your faith and your beliefs then merge in a unified whole.
Just another take from the riddle.
Save my soul- filled with grief
longing in love.
My physical being now, is as; what seems.
Compared to what it is going to be, after I die.
To be eternally united with God, only then, truly living, having, being and giving. Being who I am to the fullest.
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