Be of good comfort

by chuckofish

Less than two weeks til Christmas! I have a lot still to do on my ‘to do’ list, but at least I wrote my Christmas letter and put my cards in the mail! Also my packages are mailed, so now I just need to wrap, wrap, wrap. And I don’t have as much to wrap as in years past. However, the OM seems to be making up for all the cutting back I have attempted to do. Mysterious packages continue to arrive daily.

In Instagram news, John Piper shared a poem he wrote about the martyrdom of John Bradford:

I like it, don’t you? English reformer John Bradford was burned at the stake for “stirring up a mob” (i.e. preaching) by Queen “Bloody” Mary in 1555. Bradford is commemorated at the Marian Martyrs’ Monument in Smithfield, London. Lest we forget.

This is a thoughtful piece about the obstacles in life that ultimately are instructive: “But we are a people who don’t like to be hemmed in, held back, inconvenienced. Yet how many times are those the very things that carve beauty in our souls? How many opportunities would we pass by in our haste if we hadn’t been slowed down and forced to consider our way?”

And here’s a poem shared by Don: “Poetry for Supper”

‘Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck

And grows slowly from obtuse soil

To the white flower of immortal beauty.’

‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer

Said once about the long toil

That goes like blood to the poem’s making?

Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,

Limp as bindweed, if it break at all

Life’s iron crust. Man, you must sweat

And rhyme your guts taut, if you’d build
Your verse a ladder.’





‘You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.’

‘Sunlight’s a thing that needs a window

Before it enter a dark room.

Windows don’t happen.’






So two old poets,

Hunched at their beer in the low haze

Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose

–R.S. Thomas, Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Have a good day. Read some poetry, wrap some presents, contemplate the brightness of the truth.