Getting Wet
A few weeks back, I decided that Kenbridge Baptist needed another place for folks to converse about faith and life. Sunday School here is mostly lecture style, and goodness knows they get a lot of hot air thrown at them on Sunday mornings!
What we need, I think, is a place that’s open where we can share and talk about the many ways that faith intersects and changes (or should change) our everyday lives. To that end, I’m making Bible Study time very discussion-oriented, and I plan to allow us to get “drawn off course” if I sense there’s something we need to talk about. I’m very excited about the time… maybe more excited than the church members! We’ll see…
For that initial meeting a couple of weeks ago, I shared this poem I’d written. I didn’t get much of a reaction – probably because of my poor poetic skills. But it sums up what I’ve come to feel about God in recent months. No matter how much we learn about God, we are still only at the very edge of mystery… a fact for which I’m very glad!
Getting Wet
I open well-worn pages one time more,
To read a story that I’ve read before:
That, like the waves of the eternal sea,
Have lapped forever – and have wetted me.
Those waves – though they had lapped a thousand times,
Left tidepools: modern song and ancient rhyme –
Sometimes seem new and fresh to this tired soul,
But not because the same old tale is told.
So deeply in my heart this tale is fixed,
Its plots with my own story seem to mix.
At times its crests and valleys seem so near,
I’d swear that I had nothing there to fear.
And then, surveying that familiar view,
At times, I catch a glimpse of something new:
A sudden scene, that once before was dull;
I’d seen the parts, but never guessed the whole.
A calmer sea reveals a distant bar;
Or storm-worn beach bears branches from afar.
A meaning in the seagull’s distant swerve;
A far-off island I had not observed.
And then do I perceive the sea anew,
And find a stranger that I thought I knew.
And in those times I find great joy, and fear;
And finally make out my position clear:
I thought I might have rode among the whales,
Touching ocean deeps, and storm-tossed gales.
Or whirled with gulls and glimpsed the deeper blue
That only monks and sages dare to view.
But find at last I’m standing on dry land;
The ocean’s crest I’d tread was only sand.
And though I thought I’d seen into its depth,
I marvel that my toes are barely wet.
What fear to know the wonders that I’ve seen
Are but the surface of a deeper dream!
What joy to know the stories that I’ve known
Are but the cover of a thicker tome!
The twists and turnings of this crooked earth,
With joys and sorrows, with its death and birth:
Our science would uncover cogs and wheels,
Until they’d think that all had been revealed.
But under cogs and wheels a mystery hides,
An energy, a deeper thought abides,
Which all our science never will explain:
A distant shore the land-bound cannot name.
How often we would walk the waves with wonder,
While caring not for all that lies there-under!
For after all, the faith which we hold dear
Is made for cloud and shadow, not the clear.
So as we glimpse the surface of our strife,
And think we’ve plumbed the depths of ruined life,
There’s joy – and fear – to know that we have yet
To brave the surf, to step out – and get wet!
