When God Gives Us the Pencil and Paper (Inspiration: The Wild Iris)
So besides writing some of my own thoughts and creations here, I want to use this space on the interwebs to share the beautiful creations of others that have inspired me in some way. Here's my first work of note I'd like to share-- The Wild Iris by Louise Glück.
This is a work of poetry that is so thought provoking beautiful. It is the perfect mixture of symbols and elegance combined with raw frank thoughts of the characters. In this small book, characters including God, the poet gardener, various plants and flowers, a father, and a son all discuss deep aches, joys, and troubles with each other. This work delves into the deep feelings we all have as part of the human experience, longing for closeness and assistance from God. It also explores possible ways God may feel toward us as we interact with him based on our limited perspectives.
One of my favorite poems in this work is "Retreating Light." It appears to be God speaking, urging and encouraging someone (the poet gardener?) to create and make his own decisions, to try and be brave rather than wait for all the answers. It reads:
You were like very young children,
always waiting for a story.
And I'd been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper..
I gave you pends made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all those years of listening
I thought you'd know what a story was.
All you could do was weep.
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn't think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn't had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools alone weren't enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
Isn't that how it feels sometimes to us, though? As children of God, we crave His help, his assurance that we're doing what's best. And sometimes we feel like God has blindfolded us, tossed us into the deep end of the pool, and said "Okay, your turn to learn to swim, good luck!" But what I love most about this poem is the love that God has for his child.
All He wants is for His child to be able to EXPERIENCE, LEARN, and CREATE.
He's given us tools, he's given us examples (in our lives, in the lives of those around us, and in the scriptures we read). He's waiting for us to do something magnificent with it all. He wants us to learn to "think with . . . real boldness or passion . . ." And he is pleased when we pick up the "pencils" he's given us.
Glück's poem hit a true chord with me and similar things I've been feeling in my own life lately. I feel a desire to create, to be more, to do more, to become more. And thus I've been exploring options. I'm studying scriptures more deeply, pondering more, writing in multiple journals, striving to follow sudden promptings and ideas even when they seem outside of my comfort zone, changing my thinking to enabling rather than limiting thought patterns, and I'm trying to decide on hobbies I want to further develop. As I've been doing a little more here and there, day by day, I've felt closer to God, I've seen and felt His hand more, and my desire to know Him deeper and closer on grows. It's a really, really thrilling and good feeling, you guys.
Which brings me to my other favorite poem in The Wild Iris.
It's called "Snowdrops" --
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
Like a latent bulb under the ground, waiting through winter's chill, we find ourselves suppressed as trials and difficulties in life close in all around us. But then, somehow, spring comes. We struggle, try, and take risks. And suddenly we're over the hump and we've found new progression in ourselves. And from that, new life. (Even the "raw wind of a new world" to a tender new plant above ground, or of a new opportunity in front of us.)
It's the beauty of struggle, the vulnerability we feel as we rise above trials and keep going.
This is a work of poetry that is so thought provoking beautiful. It is the perfect mixture of symbols and elegance combined with raw frank thoughts of the characters. In this small book, characters including God, the poet gardener, various plants and flowers, a father, and a son all discuss deep aches, joys, and troubles with each other. This work delves into the deep feelings we all have as part of the human experience, longing for closeness and assistance from God. It also explores possible ways God may feel toward us as we interact with him based on our limited perspectives.
One of my favorite poems in this work is "Retreating Light." It appears to be God speaking, urging and encouraging someone (the poet gardener?) to create and make his own decisions, to try and be brave rather than wait for all the answers. It reads:
You were like very young children,
always waiting for a story.
And I'd been through it all too many times;
I was tired of telling stories.
So I gave you the pencil and paper..
I gave you pends made of reeds
I had gathered myself, afternoons in the dense meadows.
I told you, write your own story.
After all those years of listening
I thought you'd know what a story was.
All you could do was weep.
You wanted everything told to you
and nothing thought through yourselves.
Then I realized you couldn't think
with any real boldness or passion;
you hadn't had your own lives yet,
your own tragedies.
So I gave you lives, I gave you tragedies,
because apparently tools alone weren't enough.
You will never know how deeply
it pleases me to see you sitting there
like independent beings,
to see you dreaming by the open window,
holding the pencils I gave you
until the summer morning disappears into writing.
Creation has brought you
great excitement, as I knew it would,
as it does in the beginning.
And I am free to do as I please now,
to attend to other things, in confidence
you have no need of me anymore.
Isn't that how it feels sometimes to us, though? As children of God, we crave His help, his assurance that we're doing what's best. And sometimes we feel like God has blindfolded us, tossed us into the deep end of the pool, and said "Okay, your turn to learn to swim, good luck!" But what I love most about this poem is the love that God has for his child.
All He wants is for His child to be able to EXPERIENCE, LEARN, and CREATE.
He's given us tools, he's given us examples (in our lives, in the lives of those around us, and in the scriptures we read). He's waiting for us to do something magnificent with it all. He wants us to learn to "think with . . . real boldness or passion . . ." And he is pleased when we pick up the "pencils" he's given us.
Glück's poem hit a true chord with me and similar things I've been feeling in my own life lately. I feel a desire to create, to be more, to do more, to become more. And thus I've been exploring options. I'm studying scriptures more deeply, pondering more, writing in multiple journals, striving to follow sudden promptings and ideas even when they seem outside of my comfort zone, changing my thinking to enabling rather than limiting thought patterns, and I'm trying to decide on hobbies I want to further develop. As I've been doing a little more here and there, day by day, I've felt closer to God, I've seen and felt His hand more, and my desire to know Him deeper and closer on grows. It's a really, really thrilling and good feeling, you guys.
Which brings me to my other favorite poem in The Wild Iris.
It's called "Snowdrops" --
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
Like a latent bulb under the ground, waiting through winter's chill, we find ourselves suppressed as trials and difficulties in life close in all around us. But then, somehow, spring comes. We struggle, try, and take risks. And suddenly we're over the hump and we've found new progression in ourselves. And from that, new life. (Even the "raw wind of a new world" to a tender new plant above ground, or of a new opportunity in front of us.)
It's the beauty of struggle, the vulnerability we feel as we rise above trials and keep going.
Beautiful poems. I definitely feel this!
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