Tag: poems

Faith · poetry

In a Box

Sally2 Comments

The Word of the Day is instrument, so, of course, I searched my draft folder. The only thing with that word was this quote which I had copied into a post back in 2015 and never wrote any more.

The Holy Spirit is not a gift for us to use as we like, but a power using us at his good pleasure. Nevertheless our freewill is his instrument, and he does not force it… His action is like the rising waters of the tide, ready to fill every cranny that opens in the reef it engulfs, yet forcing no openings that are not offered.

~~ Austin Farrer, Saving Belief

It is a theme I have been thinking about for years — the way we think that we are the potters and He is the clay, the way we try to manipulate God. I know people who have totally turned their backs on religion because of the way some religious folk use God as a cudgel.

“God in a box” — that’s what I think people do. He’s much safer that way. We control him. Here are two verses of a too-long poem I wrote that also sits unfinished.

I fold up god to fit the box
Then put the lid on tightly
It’s so much safer – him in there –
I go to see him nightly

I say hello, complain a bit
Ask for a thing or two
Put the lid back on the box
Before heading to the loo

poetry

Oh, to be a flower

Sally19 Comments

“Please select
Me!” She wanted to direct
The gardener as he scanned,
Hand

Already
Full of flowers, gaze steady.
He looked for one final bloom.
Gloom

Just settled
Over her. Her gold petaled
Head drooped in an oh-so-sad
Bad

Way. Downcast,
Rejected, again outcast,
Passed over. But then he stopped
Dropped

His pruner
“I wish I’d seen you sooner,”
He said to her. “You are sweet!
Meet

Your sidekicks.”
[snip!] She joined the spray, transfixed
By the beauty around her.
“We’re

Delighted
You can join us!” She sighted
A welcoming rose and mum.
“Come!”

This is for the W3 challenge this week. Heather (Sgeoil) challenged the participants to do a little personification. I had an idea for a flower being plucked from the garden for a bouquet (inspired in part by the bouquet that was on my bedside table when I stayed at my son’s house). My idea involved going in that sacrificial direction of losing life for the sake of something bigger. But, as you can see, it went in a totally different direction.

I wish I understood my own process.

AND — because I like Celtic forms, I went with a Deibide Baise Fri Toin, and Irish form with aabb rhyme scheme and syllable count of 3-7-7-1 for each stanza. The first two lines rhyme on a 2 syllable word and the last two lines rhyme on one syllable.