John Donne's "The Good-Morrow"

 The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

The Giving Tree

Listening to the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack at the day's end with my hairpins removed makes me feel so spiritual. I'm sitting here, trying to write honestly. Right now,  I feel the lack of God's presence in my life. This week I've felt so. . .heavy laden. My soul feels as though it has been tied up in knots, twisted and gnarled, my psyche is suffering from Indian burn.

In moments like these, days like these, I see how hard it is for me to be even superficially pleasant. I don't know what makes me feel so badly, and I am aware, almost every moment, of my own inability to live a life of love. At work, one of the instructors read the book "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. She asked all of the students, and some of the staff, to choose one thing they would like to give others throughout the school year. I decided that I would give love, because that is the best gift I could think of, and the most costly. That gift mocks me every day, as I sit in my classroom looking at the Mother Theresa prayer for those serving the sick pinned to the bottom left corner of my bulletin board. It's hard to love, I tell you! But sometimes it's hard merely to want to love.

Today I feel full of despair again. It's so hard, sometimes, to believe that righteousness is possible. It's very easy to believe that the road to happiness is getting my own way, or the removal of every difficulty: it isn't though. When I pray, it feels like I'm begging an indifferent passerby on the street for sacks of gems. I don't expect anything, because I feel like a) I don't deserve it, and b) giving is not in the nature of the one I am beseeching. This is a lie of course, well, not the first part. I don't deserve anything beautiful, true, or good, but I'm expected to expect these things anyway. It's so hard to pray for joy when I feel like it never comes. It's so hard to pray for faith when you don't believe anything. It's impossible to believe that God is happy when I am so miserable. Or is it?

I need to be re-taught that God is a giving tree, that he hears us, hears me, when we pray, that he gives benevolently out of the overflowing goodness of his own excellent nature. But I doubt it; I doubt.

God is a giving tree. He gives conditionally, in that he gives us what is good even when this is not what we have desired. He gives conditionally, in that he gives when he ask according to his will. Is God deaf to my prayers? Have I sinned against him in a way that would cause him to stop-up his ears? Oh, God, grant what you command, and command what you will.

I have been thinking a lot about St. Augustine, Dante, George MacDonald, John Donne, Plato--everyone who writes about ordinate love and the beatific vision. It is so easy to love inordinately. 

"If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee." 

It's hard to be good. Part of the difficulty of being good is believing that God will make you good when you ask.

But God is a giving tree, he loves to give, to bless. He gives pain and he gives great joy.

Oh, I wanted to relate this back to George MacDonald. I'm re-reading At the Back of the North Wind, and I'm re-remembering (again) all that MacDonald says about being at the still point. Do you remember the still point? The still point harkens back to Boethius, to Dante, to lots of people. The point is this: at the center of the universe is God, a Being supremely perfect and happy. Evil happens around him, and he uses the good and the bad to shape human events while he himself remains wholly uncontaminated and unchanged. If I keep myself at the still point, where God is, I will not be shaken by the things in this life, small or great, that threaten to tie knots in my soul. I need to understand this because it is so easy to tie a knot in my soul. I am derailed by weather changes.

But God is a giving tree. He is a giving tree, and he loves us. He loves us. O! How he loves us!




Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.