First, I Fell in Love with God

I follow the popular "Humans of New York" page on Facebook.  The comments on these posts are rather predictable: one or two people will speak against the negative commentators (whose comments are so far down that one rarely reads them), and the rest speak some words of accolade and encouragement.

A picture of a young man popped up today, and his quote made me particularly happy.  It is, "Before I entered seminary, I fell in love with God. A few months into seminary, I fell in love with philosophy. Two years into seminary, I fell in love with a girl."  This is exactly as things should be.  When my mother tells me about first meeting my father, she always says that he loved God more than anyone she had ever met.  She didn't know there still were people who were so in love with God.  The reason she fell in love with him was because he was in love with God.

The negative comments were the top comments on this post.  Why?  How can we expect to truly love anyone, if we do not first love God?  How can we trust that anyone would love us, if we do not believe that God loves us?  When I take literature classes at Cuesta, my writing is most often critiqued as being too simple in theme.  My teacher this summer told me that my writing and thematic choices are at a high school level.  

It is all quite simple, really, and the great complexity of things lies in their simplicity.  This young man loved God, and then loved true learning because he already knew the single truth, and then loved a girl with an actual love.  We cannot love if we do not first love God.

My friend Hannah and I got into a texting conversation last night, and, as usual, I wrote way more than is normal for text messages.  I think a bit of it, though, is relevant here.  We were discussing the ideal of perfection in families.

Loving people see the perfection of their beloveds through all their imperfections...You've read The Great Divorce, right?  One ghost has a lizard on his shoulder who constantly fills him with all manner of wrongness.  The "real" man tears the lizard from the ghost an throws it on the ground.  The lizard dies, and resurrects as a perfect stallion.  When we love people we see and acknowledge the lizard, but we know that the lizard is really a stallion.  The worldly view of perfection denies the existence of lizards, and therefore denies the existence of stallions.  One person "loves" another, but denies all that is deeply true about the person they think they love."

When we deny the love of God, we deny the love of anyone.  When we deny God, we deny love altogether.

Here's the link to the Humans of New York post: LINK

A Poem Inspired By Phantastes

I just read George MacDonald's Phantastes, the theme of which happens to be particularly relevant to wonderings and conversations which take up a good bit of my life at the moment.  This theme is beautifully stated in a poem within the book.

Better to sit at the waters' birth,
     Than a sea of waves to win;
To live in the love that floweth forth,
     Than the love that cometh in.

Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
     Flowing, and free, and sure;
For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
     Keeps not the spirit pure.

I have been writing sonnets as of late, and feel I am improving.  The above poem meant so much to me that I attempted to write one which quotes it.  Hope you enjoy.


"Be thou a well of love," I read in old,
Most dear of stories.  But, "Be thou thine own
Full fountain, self secure," I now am told.
For, "from a well is love drawn out: the stone
Which holds thee up shall age and crack; the deep
Of water dry and lonesome be, for wells
Which give will give and give till dry.  She weeps
For ev'ry parchéd tongue whose thirst she quells,
Who, whole made through her love, move on to love
The greater.  Be then, dear heart, fountain for
Thyself.  Be thou thine warmth own, thine own love."
And yet, if into empty hearts we pour,
Ever give love, though love we never get:
Alone be we, but lone not with regret.

Train Ride to Encinitas

I'm on a train back to school.  High fog veils the sun, making delicate the way it spreads out over the water.  When the fog is high like this it makes the sun a drop of white-gold watercolor, seeping outward and melding into the clouds so that you know about where it is but not where exactly.  I'd like to paint that sun.  I'd like to paint the ocean.  I sit here sipping on tea and wondering how I will manage to paint the ocean.  The ocean is grey but it is the type of grey which is composed of a thousand shades of blue and ivory.  It's the ocean which reminds one not of summer and sandwiches but of seagulls and long skirts in the wind and holding hands.  I'm enjoying the tea but want to get off this train and run down to the water.  I want to call my friends and tell them to go to the water, because the day is beautiful and I'd like to give them a beautiful day.  I fell asleep at the station and dreamt that one of them traveled with me.  I almost wish he did, because he loves the sky and the water as much as I do.