Day 11

Can I just start off with a big ol' "Yikes?" 

It has been SIX days since I last blogged...six (6) whole days. So much for consistently blogging every day.

I apologize for my general flakiness(mostly to myself since I'm trying to build a habit here, but I realize y'all are along for the ride too.)

In my defense I was attending my first week of law school...but that excuse will have to wait till later in the semester to carry more weight.

Where do we go from here?

The last time I skipped a day I combined Days 3 & 4 in one post. That worked at the time, but it's less than ideal for six (6) whole days of missed content. So instead I think I'll just extend the length of this project/experiment by six days. The great part about setting your own deadlines is that you tend to make exceptions to your own standards for yourself generally, so making an exception in any particular case is not too hard. That being said...

 

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 19, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

For Day 11, I want to share a song/poem type-thing I wrote. Today I'm sharing it without too much context so you can form first impressions, and over the next few days we'll be teasing it apart to analyze for meaning

 

By way of introduction, I wrote this poem on the notes app of my phone one afternoon senior year of college. It was born out of frustration, actually. Frustration with the flimsy, "God-is-love" theology that I saw in so many churches pandering to my generation.

And by God-is-love theology, I don't mean to downplay the importance of love as a character quality of God. After all, God is Love (1 John 4:8). I mean blowing up a nebulous concept of love as this warm, fuzzy feeling and then applying that (Hallmarkesque, enabling, and all around wrong) concept of love to God. In its most extreme form, God-is-love theology would be more accurately termed Love-is-god theology. And it sounds just right enough to be dangerous.

So anyway, the poem:

 

9. World Keeps Turning

 

We tell the story as we heard it long ago

They gathered stones and threw her at his feet

He stooped in silence while they watched and let her go

Their quaking footsteps sounding out defeat

 

But we end the telling there, we forget the final lines

When he told her go, and sin no more, and looked her in the eyes

 

It’s a twisted sort of mercy

It’s a clouded shade of grace

Makes us wonder how the world keeps turning

Time and time again

The knife goes in, we twist it

We wring out our bleeding hearts

We wonder where we go from here, and how we’ve come so far

 

It’s a twisted sort of justice

It’s a silent stab of pain

And we wonder how the world keeps turning

Time and time again

We’ve poured out the horn of plenty

In a dry and desert land

Tossing dice with the devil

Playing hide-and-seek with the Reaper Man

 

How's that for first impressions?

It's late and I have early classes tomorrow, so I'll have to end this post right when things are just beginning. Rest assured, tomorrow we'll pick up where we left off and explicate this baby line-by-ever-loving-line.

Here's to every line and to everything in between them.

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara