Tuesday, April 8, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Watch and pray
With their patience worn out by the journey,
the people complained against God and Moses,
“Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,
where there is no food or water?
We are disgusted with this wretched food!”
Sometimes a poem just hits you in the head and you can barely get up from where you fell. W. H. Auden, who died in 1973, wrote a poem like that. It takes a minute to get into the rhythm of the thing:
As I Walked Out One Evening
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
Love has no ending.
I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.
O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
How easy it is to fall in love with someone who loves you back. How difficult it is to love all God’s children, all my neighbors in the midst of never-ending social and perverse injustice.
I live life along the river, walking with my sweetheart while the full moon smiles down on us … and then life along another river, one of countless beggars and invalids, our families gone, calling out for help, calling out for alms, calling out for love. When does one end and the other begin? Don’t they go on into the fog together?
We are sick of this disgusting food!
I wonder what tomorrow will bring. How long till I learn to watch, and pray, and keep my angry, careless words to myself? I believe, help my unbelief. Because I belong to this world.
Jesus said to them, “You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.”
(Numbers 21, Psalm 102, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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