On a Piece of Music

On a Piece of Music

By Gerard Manley Hopkins 

How all's to one thing wrought!

The members, how they sit!

O what a tune the thought

Must be fancied it. 

Nor angel insight can

Learn how the heart is hence: 

Since all the make of man

Is law's indifference. 

[Who shaped these walls has shewn

The music of his mind, 

Made known, though thick through stone,

What beauty beat behind.]

Not free in this because 

His powers seemed free to play:

He swept what scope he was

To sweep and must obey. 

Though down his being's bent

Like air he changed his choice,

That was an instrument 

Which overvaulted voice. 

What makes the man and what

The man within that makes:

Ask whom he serves or not

Serves and what side he takes. 

For good grows wild and wide, 

Has shades, is nowhere none;

But right must seek a side

And choose for chieftain one. 

Therefore this masterhood,

This piece of perfect song,

This fault-not-found-with good

Is neither right nor wrong,

No more than red and blue,

No more than Re and Mi,

Or sweet the golden glue

That's built for by the bee. 

[Who built these walls made known

The music of his mind,

Yet here he has but shewn

His ruder-rounded rind. 

His brightest blooms lie there unblown,

His sweetest nectar hides behind.]

Disclaimer!

Dear friends,

First of all, thank you for reading my blog, it means so very much to me! I wanted to just write a little note and explain briefly about my last blog post. A few of my readers were worried about me after reading it and I want to put all y'all's minds at rest. 

The Dark City (a poem of sorts) was not about a "dark night of the soul" experience I was going through or had gone through, nor was it about me. I wrote this because I was inspired by a little quote one of our youth gave me on a retreat saying, "The most dangerous word in the spiritual life is later." 

This poem talks of a place where "later" is the anthem and where people are so lost they believe courage to be a fable! This is a place where Christ is rejected, literally, every day. 

I am so sorry if it sounded like I was going through a dark time! My poem was written merely to show a spiritual world of darkness and then to show redemption when Christ is accepted. 

God bless and keep you! 

Soli Deo Gloria!

Elizabeth

The Dark City (a poem of sorts)

The Dark City-

Hope rises in the darkest times,

When hearts beat faintly and blood trickles fatally,

At the hour when putrefaction rots the mind

And shadows skulk and all the streets evolve into one foreboding alley. 

Seized with fear the people be,

Silenced by their children's screams in the night,

By their blood coursing down the street,

Too paralyzed to contend for their lives. 

Roses no longer have fragrance or shade  or remind of love, but are stems with razor-sharp  thorns. 

Water is bitter and acerbic. 

No sunrise greets them in the morn,

The light in their world has been bludgeoned. 

Maybe a hero will come,

Perhaps a savior will emerge. 

How can one be summoned

When no one has the courage?

For here courage is naught but a fable,

A theory from ages past,

But no one is willing or able

To join underneath a foolish flag raised on a legend mast. 

They dare not complain anymore

For it was we the people who decided our fate

And made our place of hope quite poor,

Thus creating a dismal rule and making prison for our souls not up for debate. 

Every day at the three o'clock hour

A man walks through calling at the quickly closed shutters,

"My love, My love! Let me take you away and deliver you from this power!"

But their minds won't leave the gutter and his gentle voice makes them shudder. 

"Leave us alone," they shout, "we love the dark!"

But he still comes each day, reaching for the hearts they've forgotten they have. 

He sings out like a lark, "Come, my love, come!" But it doesn't reach their hearts. 

He offers healing, but they loathe his restoring salve. 

I live with and am one of them. 

I wallow in darkness and won't consider life. 

I enjoy my selfish sin and won't cave in. 

I'd rather abide in horror and strife. 

Later, later, I always say. 

Tomorrow is when I'll be saved.

Lord, perhaps a more convenient day,

Then I will give my heart away. 

But now is the time,

Today is the day.

My salvation is on the line!

Later is a most dangerous word and will make me dearly pay. 

Lord I accept your call,

I am weary of the dark.

I didn't know I could fall this far

Or that I could burn in hell from one mere spark. 

Thus a singular person chose to bring a candle of light

Into the dark world,

In everyone's sight,

And by this choice and from this place, darkness was hurled. 

~Elizabeth Andersen

This is all of joy

He is as zephyred winds upon the soul,

They said,

And cloudless cloister skies

Yawn over the galeless haven of the heart.

 

Strange, no one said His love would be

A vague unrest in all my deepest peace…

 

They spoke with sighs of flowery cloister ways

And of His smile

Like satin songs of evening.

 

But not a word was ever said of how

His gentle eyes would flog away repose,

And no one mentioned how His voice would thunder

Down my cool-scented caverns of compromise.

 

My hands, according to their counsel sheltered

For quiet prayer, they never told would bleed

With steep ascents’ crag-clinging, and the feet

They set to flower-bordered ways

They never said would know

Of black rocks’ tearing, tortuous paths

Among forbidden trees.

 

No, no one even hinted at the swords of His demand

That part the flesh from bone and leave the heart

Riven with a wild and white desire.

And no one knows except he once has heard

That loud, imperious call in his own heart

And left all padded satisfaction for the climb

That knows no peak. But this is all of joy.

 

-Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

 

I love this poem. It speaks of a faith that is past the skin deep religion of flowers and compromise, a peace that is of our own making. It is the pondering of the idea of a God whose voice is as thunder which breaths down our caverns of compromise, disturbing the façade of a faith that is like pampered skin and gourmet feasts, boasting of many things, but not sacrifice. It shoots down the idea that once you accept Christ, it is an easy path without stones or chasms or snakes or ice or fire, and presents the idea of a real Christian, suffering on a path of trial, a path of pain and climbing a never ending mountain that “knows no peak”. A path of spiritual flogging, bleeding hands, separating flesh and bone, and invoking in the heart an unquenchable desire to leave all comfort in pursuit of a higher, louder calling that is imbedded in us. This calling is suppressed, though, by believing the voices that surround us, telling of a faith that, here on earth, is comfy and cozy and full of ease, and not at all painful or challenging or tasking.

I had always felt that there was something wrong with me when I compared what my experience of Christianity was to what many of my friends told me. Back in Jesus’ time some believed that if you sinned you became ill, and in a similar way some of my friends would tell me that I wasn’t supposed to be having a rough time, that I was overthinking things, that I was too serious, that God wanted me to be joyful, that there was something wrong if I was constantly having to be healed by God from things. For a long time I struggled with the idea that if my heart was hurting, I couldn’t bring it to God, because He didn’t want to deal with a small so-called Christian who couldn’t get the system down. I was extremely wrong.

I have learned that God appreciates honesty, especially recognizing that we cannot fix our flaws on our own, that Christ waits for us to show Him our scarred faces, our bleeding hearts, so that HE can heal them. Yes, God wants us to be joyful, but a huge part of Christianity is being refined. I feel that we must suffer in this life so as to be purified for the next. Joyful suffering may sound like an oxymoron, but this is what we are called to endure. So many people separate these two words, but recognizing that we are being formed into who we were created to be, by fighting sin and temptations by, for example, stretching ourselves to treat others with kindness and respect, choosing to remain silent so as to listen better to others, waking up a little earlier so as to give undivided attention to Him in prayer, etc. are all extremely important. These are examples of small moments of suffering that draw us ever closer to Him by purging us of our selfish and sensual desires. I love that the poem goes to great lengths to describe the agony and surprise of following Christ, but ends it with “but this is all of joy”, for we truly find our joy as we scale the insurmountable peaks of daily improvement and purification. So let us be encouraged and spurred on to invite God to cleanse us from sin and to find the joy that is offered to us in the little sufferings of everyday life.