I've started a new blog at http://mymiddlepages.wordpress.com/
For those of you who've been following my blog for the last three years, thank you. I hope you'll check out what I'm doing at My Middle Pages. It's a slight change in direction, but hopefully one for the better.
Thanks,
Seth
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Disappointment
When the light at the end of the tunnel
Turns out to be a torch
Somewhere in the middle
That suddenly goes out
All you can do is keep walking
Turns out to be a torch
Somewhere in the middle
That suddenly goes out
All you can do is keep walking
Thursday, March 7, 2013
(Fw:) A Message from the Grey Pilgrim
The following is a passage taken from "The Quest of Erebor", found in J.R.R. Tolkien's Unfinished Tales, which was written after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, and was intended to serve as a more objective, big-picture retelling of The Hobbit narrative. This time, the tale is told to Frodo and his companions by Gandalf, who attempts to fill in the holes left open in Bilbo's version.
This passage in particular, in which Gandalf describes his choosing Bilbo to accompany the Dwarves on their adventure, stands out to me as an excellent example of what Tolkien called "applicability", and should serve as an encouragement to parents, educators, ministers - to all who share a burden for preserving the good in our ever-waning humanity.
This passage in particular, in which Gandalf describes his choosing Bilbo to accompany the Dwarves on their adventure, stands out to me as an excellent example of what Tolkien called "applicability", and should serve as an encouragement to parents, educators, ministers - to all who share a burden for preserving the good in our ever-waning humanity.
'And then there was the Shire-folk. I began to have a warm place in my heart for them in the Long Winter, which none of you can remember. They were very hard put to it then: one of the worst pinches they have been in, dying of cold, and starving in the dreadful dearth that followed. But that was the time to see their courage, and their pity one for another. It was by their pity as much as by their tough uncomplaining courage that they survived. I wanted them still to survive. But I saw that the Westlands were in for another very bad time again, sooner or later, though of quite a different sort: pitiless war. To come through that I thought they would need something more than they now had. It is not easy to say what. Well, they would want to know a bit more, understand a bit clearer what it was all about, and where they stood.
'They had begun to forget: forget their own beginnings and legends, forget what little they had known about the greatness of the world. It was not yet gone, but it was getting buried: the memory of the high and the perilous. But you cannot teach that sort of thing to a whole people quickly. There was not time. And anyway you must begin at some point, with some one person. I dare say he was "chosen" and I was only chosen to choose him; but I picked out Bilbo.'
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
(Re:) The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters (1905-1931)
(This post has been sitting in my drafts for over a year now. I don't know why it took me so long to finish it, but here it is.)
Four years ago, during our first Christmas as a married couple, Beth and I were at a Christian bookstore looking for an inexpensive (but personal enough not to seem inexpensive) present for one or two people on our list. I was scanning the clearance shelves, not expecting to find much, when the perfect gift asserted itself like a choleric in a roomful of introverts: a boxed set of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. The perfect gift for me. The titles were written in big black letters on the white spines of two very thick volumes.
"Whoa," I thought, "This is on clearance?"
I picked up the box to look at the price sticker and felt that guilty sense of anticipation that usually accompanies a selfishly impulsive purchase.
"This is only thirteen dollars?" I said out loud.
"What is it?" Beth asked. I showed it to her.
"I've read quotes from some of his letters, but I didn't know they had this huge collection. And thirteen dollars is crazy."
She half-rolled her eyes and smiled in that "You're cute when you're obviously trying not to be obvious" way and asked, "Do you want it?"
"I really shouldn't buy something for myself when we're trying to afford presents for other people."
"It can be your present from me."
"I thought we weren't buying each other gifts."
"Just get it."
"Oh... ok," I consented "reluctantly", and thought, "My wife is so awesome."
I read Lewis' first letter (written as a seven-year-old to his older brother) later that evening and officially finished Volume 1 this past Thanksgiving. Obviously, a book that takes four years to read isn't what you would call a can't-put-it-down page-turner. In its defense, however, there were 1024 pages to turn, plus 742 pages of accompanying literature - but more on that later. If pressed, I would have to characterize this type of reading as project, rather than pleasure, but, since self-imposed, deadline-free projects are a source of pleasure for me, and since this project has brought deep insight into the life and thoughts of my favorite author, I would also have to say that I found it thoroughly enjoyable.
Appropriately subtitled "Family Letters", this first volume is predominantly a collection of Lewis' letters to three people: his father Albert Lewis, his brother Warren, and his best friend Arthur Greeves, who, at least during the earlier part of his life, was closer to Lewis than any blood relation. The letters included date from 1905 to 1931, and follow the writer through boarding school (which he despised), private education, service and wounding in World War I, higher education at Oxford University, a struggling season of unemployment, and the early part of his fellowship at Oxford's Magdalen College.
In 1919, Lewis published his first literary work: a collection of poems entitled Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. When I reached the point of its publication in the chronology of the letters, I stopped to read it, and decided to do so with each subsequent publication as well. Although this practice (and the resulting need to acquire said publications) has stalled my progression a few times, I believe it will provide three important benefits: 1) fun - prolongation and intensification of my pleasure-project, 2) fullness - knowledge of the background and thought processes surrounding each work, and 3) finality - by the end of however many years this takes, I will have read Lewis' entire bibliography (some of you won't get this, but people with my personality type really get into this kind of stuff).
Those somewhat familiar with C.S. Lewis will correctly assume that much of the material written during the early part of his life comes from an atheistic viewpoint. In fact, out of all the reading I've done over the past four years, only the final letter included in Volume 1 was written after the author's conversion to Christianity. This being the case, I think that the central value of these letters (and of the diary Lewis kept from 1922 to 1927, published posthumously as All My Road Before Me) is a better understanding of his pre-Christian background and his journey toward faith in Christ.
Although I wouldn't necessarily characterize his personal life as hedonistic, there are definitely areas where the unbelieving Lewis was out of step with Biblical morality. His relationship with his father was obligatorily polite, but his letters to Arthur and Warren show a marked lack of love and respect for the man. As a teenager, Lewis explored (intellectually, at least) both sadomasochism and the occult. In keeping a promise to Paddy Moore, a friend who had been killed in the War, he began living with Paddy's mother Jane, a separated, yet legally married woman who was twenty-six years older than he, in 1919. Although Lewis and Mrs. Moore slept in separate rooms, the nature of their relationship was rather questionable. It is clear that Lewis' family did not approve of the arrangement, and, though his talk of her in his diary and letters is not romantically affectionate, he seems to have related to her as a "partner".*
In a post-conversion letter to Arthur (I've started Volume 2), Lewis admitted that pride was one of his most characteristic sins:
Philosophically, we see Lewis move "from materialism to idealism, from idealism to pantheism, from pantheism to theism, and from theism to Christianity" (Lewis, letter to Paul Elmer More, October 25, 1934). Natural examples of each of these philosophies surface in his letters - especially in those written to Arthur Greeves, whose relationship with Lewis was openly honest and "authentic", as the cool church kids say:
Materialism
Woven throughout this spiritual journey, we find many references to what Lewis would later refer to as "Joy" - that mysterious longing for something beyond our reality, a longing that is never quite fulfilled, the desire of desire. For Lewis, this sense of Joy was most often evoked by books and by nature, although certain pieces of music also moved him. The desire for Joy consumed him as both an atheist and a Christian, and he often related his Joyful experiences to Arthur in his letters or recorded them in his diary. He loved taking walks in the country, reading ancient mythologies, and exploring great works of art, but Joy is rarely found twice in the same place. Only after his conversion did Lewis discover the object of his desire, and the reality that that desire would not be fulfilled until his death.
If one aspect of Lewis' writing has bound me to him as a reader, it has been this concept of Joy, and watching it develop in his mind has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this project. I have been on a similar pusuit of that desire ever since I first read The Chronicles of Narnia as a boy. From the beavers' snow-covered lodge, to Puddleglum's marsh, to Uncle Andrew's study, lined with bookshelves, Lewis' fantasy world is full of scenes that stick in my mind the way that George MacDonald's stuck in his. He found Joy in Faerie and Asgard. I've found it in Narnia and Middle-Earth. He found it listening to Wagner. I've found it listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Flogging Molly. He found it in the English countryside. I've found it in the Ozark hills and downtown alleyways of the Midwest. One day we will all find what we truly seek in the New Heaven and the New Earth, but until that day, I have a lot more reading to do.
I'll be continuing my slow progression through the rich landscape of C.S. Lewis' writings, both published and personal, and, probably a few years from now, I'll review my thoughts on Volume 2. See you then.
Four years ago, during our first Christmas as a married couple, Beth and I were at a Christian bookstore looking for an inexpensive (but personal enough not to seem inexpensive) present for one or two people on our list. I was scanning the clearance shelves, not expecting to find much, when the perfect gift asserted itself like a choleric in a roomful of introverts: a boxed set of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. The perfect gift for me. The titles were written in big black letters on the white spines of two very thick volumes.
"Whoa," I thought, "This is on clearance?"
I picked up the box to look at the price sticker and felt that guilty sense of anticipation that usually accompanies a selfishly impulsive purchase.
"This is only thirteen dollars?" I said out loud.
"What is it?" Beth asked. I showed it to her.
"I've read quotes from some of his letters, but I didn't know they had this huge collection. And thirteen dollars is crazy."
She half-rolled her eyes and smiled in that "You're cute when you're obviously trying not to be obvious" way and asked, "Do you want it?"
"I really shouldn't buy something for myself when we're trying to afford presents for other people."
"It can be your present from me."
"I thought we weren't buying each other gifts."
"Just get it."
"Oh... ok," I consented "reluctantly", and thought, "My wife is so awesome."
I read Lewis' first letter (written as a seven-year-old to his older brother) later that evening and officially finished Volume 1 this past Thanksgiving. Obviously, a book that takes four years to read isn't what you would call a can't-put-it-down page-turner. In its defense, however, there were 1024 pages to turn, plus 742 pages of accompanying literature - but more on that later. If pressed, I would have to characterize this type of reading as project, rather than pleasure, but, since self-imposed, deadline-free projects are a source of pleasure for me, and since this project has brought deep insight into the life and thoughts of my favorite author, I would also have to say that I found it thoroughly enjoyable.
Appropriately subtitled "Family Letters", this first volume is predominantly a collection of Lewis' letters to three people: his father Albert Lewis, his brother Warren, and his best friend Arthur Greeves, who, at least during the earlier part of his life, was closer to Lewis than any blood relation. The letters included date from 1905 to 1931, and follow the writer through boarding school (which he despised), private education, service and wounding in World War I, higher education at Oxford University, a struggling season of unemployment, and the early part of his fellowship at Oxford's Magdalen College.
In 1919, Lewis published his first literary work: a collection of poems entitled Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. When I reached the point of its publication in the chronology of the letters, I stopped to read it, and decided to do so with each subsequent publication as well. Although this practice (and the resulting need to acquire said publications) has stalled my progression a few times, I believe it will provide three important benefits: 1) fun - prolongation and intensification of my pleasure-project, 2) fullness - knowledge of the background and thought processes surrounding each work, and 3) finality - by the end of however many years this takes, I will have read Lewis' entire bibliography (some of you won't get this, but people with my personality type really get into this kind of stuff).
Those somewhat familiar with C.S. Lewis will correctly assume that much of the material written during the early part of his life comes from an atheistic viewpoint. In fact, out of all the reading I've done over the past four years, only the final letter included in Volume 1 was written after the author's conversion to Christianity. This being the case, I think that the central value of these letters (and of the diary Lewis kept from 1922 to 1927, published posthumously as All My Road Before Me) is a better understanding of his pre-Christian background and his journey toward faith in Christ.
Although I wouldn't necessarily characterize his personal life as hedonistic, there are definitely areas where the unbelieving Lewis was out of step with Biblical morality. His relationship with his father was obligatorily polite, but his letters to Arthur and Warren show a marked lack of love and respect for the man. As a teenager, Lewis explored (intellectually, at least) both sadomasochism and the occult. In keeping a promise to Paddy Moore, a friend who had been killed in the War, he began living with Paddy's mother Jane, a separated, yet legally married woman who was twenty-six years older than he, in 1919. Although Lewis and Mrs. Moore slept in separate rooms, the nature of their relationship was rather questionable. It is clear that Lewis' family did not approve of the arrangement, and, though his talk of her in his diary and letters is not romantically affectionate, he seems to have related to her as a "partner".*
In a post-conversion letter to Arthur (I've started Volume 2), Lewis admitted that pride was one of his most characteristic sins:
[S]ympathy is your strong point, as stability is mine - if I have a strong point at all, which is doubtful: or weakness is your danger, as pride is mine.We can definitely see the truth of this statement in Lewis' pre-Christian writings. Being very gifted intellectually, he often exhibited a superior attitude toward those who were not, and would bluntly rebuke those he considered his equals when their reasoning or demeanor did not meet his own standards. He was, in fact, an unapologetic snob, and the esoteric nature of his first two published works (Spirits in Bondage and Dymer) reflect that snobbery. It is a great testimony to the Spirit's transformational power that, as a Christian, Lewis was later able to communicate his highly intellectual ideas with such grace and accessibility.
- September 12, 1933
Philosophically, we see Lewis move "from materialism to idealism, from idealism to pantheism, from pantheism to theism, and from theism to Christianity" (Lewis, letter to Paul Elmer More, October 25, 1934). Natural examples of each of these philosophies surface in his letters - especially in those written to Arthur Greeves, whose relationship with Lewis was openly honest and "authentic", as the cool church kids say:
Materialism
As to the other question about religion, I was sad to read your letter. You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man's own invention - Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn't understand - thunder, pestilence, snakes, etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices, etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.Idealism
Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up. Often, too, great men were regarded as gods after their death - such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahweh-worship, and so Christianity came into being - one mythology among many, but the one that we happen to have been brought up in.
Now all this you must have heard before: it is the recognized scientific account of the growth of religions. Superstition of course in every age has held the common people, but in every age the educated and thinking ones have stood outside it, though usually outwardly conceding to it for convenience. I had thought that you were gradually being emancipated from the old beliefs, but if this is not so, I hope we are too sensible to quarrel about abstract ideas. I must only add that ones views on religious subjects don't make any difference in morals, of course. A good member of society must of course try to be honest, chaste, truthful, kindly etc: these are things we owe to our own manhood & dignity and not to any imagined god or gods.
- Letter to Arthur, October 12, 1916
If you take a tree, for instance, you call it beautiful because of its shape, colour and motions, and perhaps a little because of association. Now these colours etc are sensations in my eye, produced by vibrations on the aether between me and the tree: the real tree is something quite different - a combination of colourless, shapeless, invisible atoms. It follows then that neither the tree, nor any other material object can be beautiful in itself: I can never see them as they are, and if I could it would give me no delight. The beauty therefore is not in matter at all, but is something purely spiritual, arising mysteriously out of the relation between me & the tree: or perhaps as I suggest in my Song, out of some indwelling spirit behind the matter of the tree - the Dryad in fact.
You see the conviction is gaining ground on me that after all Spirit does exist; and that we come in contact with the spiritual element by means of these 'thrills'. I fancy there is Something right outside time & place, which did not create matter, as the Christians say, but is matter's great enemy: and that Beauty is the call of the spirit in that something to the spirit in us. You see how frankly I admit that my views have changed: I hope I don't bore you.
- Letter to Arthur, May 29, 1918
[Spirits in Bondage] is mainly strung around the idea that I mentioned to you before - that nature is wholly diabolical & malevolent, and that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements.Paganism
- Letter to Arthur, September 12, 1918
You will be interested to hear that in the course of my philosophy - on the existence of matter - I have had to postulate some sort of God as the least objectionable theory: but of course we know nothing. At any rate we don't know what the real God is, and consequently I have stopped defying heaven.
- Letter to Leo Baker, September 25, 1920
I haven't read the essay of Clutton Brock's you mention, but the theory - that out of the deep reservoirs of nature (the Caverns of Erda) we draw power and inspiration which we make good or evil - is a familiar and favourite of my own. If you will re-read what I make the girl say in Canto VIII of Dymer you will get my view on that subject better expressed than I can hope to put it in a letter.Theism
- Letter to Arthur, June 26, 1927
I should like to know, too, in general, what you think of all the darker side of religion as we find it in old books. Formerly I regarded it as mere devil worship based on horrible superstitions. Now that I have found, and am still finding more and more, the element of truth in the old beliefs, I feel I cannot dismiss even their dreadful side so cavalierly. There must be something in it: only what?
- Letter to Arthur, December 27, 1929
In spite of all my recent changes of view, I am still inclined to think that you can only get what you call 'Christ' out of the Gospels by picking & choosing, & slurring over a good deal.
- Letter to Arthur, January 13, 1930
[T]hat is another of the beauties coming, I won't say, to religion but to an attempt at religion - one finds oneself on the main road with all humanity, and can compare notes with an endless succession of previous travelers.
- Letter to Arthur, January 26, 1930
Terrible things are happening to me. The 'Spirit' or 'Real I' is showing an alarming tendency to become much more personal and is taking the offensive, and behaving just like God.You'd better come on Monday at the latest or I may have entered a monastery.
- Letter to Owen Barfield, February 3, 1930
I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God's existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old skeptical habits, and the spirit of this age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don't think so - the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so. However, there is nothing to do but to peg away. One falls so often that it hardly seems worth while picking oneself up and going through the farce of starting over again as if you could ever hope to walk. Still, this seeming absurdity is the only sensible thing I do, so I must continue it. And all the time, on the other side, the imaginative side, (the fairy angel) I get such glimpses and vanishing memories as often take my breath away: as if they said 'Look what you're losing' - as if they were there just to deprive one of all excuse.Christianity
- Letter to Arthur, December 4, 1930
I think I have got over wishing for the past back again. I look at it this way. The delights of those days were given to lure us into the world of the Spirit, as sexual rapture is there to lead to offspring and family life. They were nuptial ardours. To ask that they should return, or should remain is like wishing to prolong the honeymoon at an age when a man should rather be interested in the careers of his growing sons. They have done their work, those days and led on to better things. All the 'homeliness' (wh. was your chief lesson to me) was the introduction to the Christian virtue of charity or love. I sometimes manage now to get into a state in wh. I think of all my enemies and can honestly say I find something lovable (even if it is only an oddity) in them all: and your conception of 'homeliness' is largely the route by wh. I have reached this. On the other hand, all the 'strangeness' (wh. was my lesson to you) has turned out to be the first step in far deeper mysteries. How deep I am just now beginning to see: for I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ - in Christianity.
- Letter to Arthur, October 1, 1931
As you can see (assuming you took the time to read the preceding quotations - which I have arguably included to the point of excess), Lewis' was not a simple atheist-to-Christian conversion, and it had much more to do with philosophy and literature than with science or history, which shouldn't come as a surprise to those of us who consider him to be one of the best philosopher/storytellers of the twentieth century.
What has been holding me back (at any rate for the last year or so) has not been so much a difficulty in believing as a difficulty in knowing what the doctrine meant: you can’t believe a thing while you are ignorant what the thing is. My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ ‘saved’ or ‘opened salvation to’ the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary: one could see from ordinary experience how sin (e.g. the case of a drunkard) could get a man to such a point that he was bound to reach Hell (i.e. complete degradation and misery) in this life unless something quite beyond mere natural help or effort stepped in. And I could well imagine a whole world being in the same state and similarly in need of a miracle. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (who-ever he was) 2000 years ago could help us here and now – except in so far as his example helped us. And the example business, tho ‘ true and important, is not Christianity: rights in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St. Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (‘propitiation’ – ‘sacrifice’ – ‘the blood of the Lamb’) – expressions wh. I cd. only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.Now what Dyson and Tolkien** showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer) I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of dying and reviving a god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are man’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief and Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened.- Letter to Arthur, October 18, 1931
Woven throughout this spiritual journey, we find many references to what Lewis would later refer to as "Joy" - that mysterious longing for something beyond our reality, a longing that is never quite fulfilled, the desire of desire. For Lewis, this sense of Joy was most often evoked by books and by nature, although certain pieces of music also moved him. The desire for Joy consumed him as both an atheist and a Christian, and he often related his Joyful experiences to Arthur in his letters or recorded them in his diary. He loved taking walks in the country, reading ancient mythologies, and exploring great works of art, but Joy is rarely found twice in the same place. Only after his conversion did Lewis discover the object of his desire, and the reality that that desire would not be fulfilled until his death.
If one aspect of Lewis' writing has bound me to him as a reader, it has been this concept of Joy, and watching it develop in his mind has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this project. I have been on a similar pusuit of that desire ever since I first read The Chronicles of Narnia as a boy. From the beavers' snow-covered lodge, to Puddleglum's marsh, to Uncle Andrew's study, lined with bookshelves, Lewis' fantasy world is full of scenes that stick in my mind the way that George MacDonald's stuck in his. He found Joy in Faerie and Asgard. I've found it in Narnia and Middle-Earth. He found it listening to Wagner. I've found it listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Flogging Molly. He found it in the English countryside. I've found it in the Ozark hills and downtown alleyways of the Midwest. One day we will all find what we truly seek in the New Heaven and the New Earth, but until that day, I have a lot more reading to do.
I'll be continuing my slow progression through the rich landscape of C.S. Lewis' writings, both published and personal, and, probably a few years from now, I'll review my thoughts on Volume 2. See you then.
* Lewis did continue living with Mrs. Moore after his conversion. She spent much of that later period in poor health, and Lewis' attitude became primarily that of a friend and caregiver.
** Incidentally, this same conversation inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to write Mythopoeia, a poem which begins: "To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'".
Friday, February 15, 2013
A Proletariat's Prayer
O Lord, when will You save my tired soul?
I've given all, but still they ask for more
Of muscles worn, my heart the most
Cannot, I think, endure another day
"Withhold the straw, increase the bricks!"
They say it with a smile
I'm just another pawn to sacrifice
My moping resignation turns
To anger, burning hot
If hands that feed me beat me, may I bite?
I've sympathy for Marxist fools
Who want the farmer dead
But I can find no hope among the pigs
My only hope is built on nothing less
Than You, O Lord, the Kingly Carpenter
Of insult and of cruel abuse
You know far more than such as I might grasp
Your words are truthful, comforting
Men lie and condescend
They only take, but You give all good things
Your loving, nail-torn hands provide
What I could never earn
You pour out blessings I do not deserve
You've called me "son" and "valuable"
You've promised me Your best
And I have seen You working in the dark
O Lord, when will You save my tired soul?
O God of Jacob, saved from Laban's fist
I trust in You in mind and will
But Father, help my heart to understand
I've given all, but still they ask for more
Of muscles worn, my heart the most
Cannot, I think, endure another day
"Withhold the straw, increase the bricks!"
They say it with a smile
I'm just another pawn to sacrifice
My moping resignation turns
To anger, burning hot
If hands that feed me beat me, may I bite?
I've sympathy for Marxist fools
Who want the farmer dead
But I can find no hope among the pigs
My only hope is built on nothing less
Than You, O Lord, the Kingly Carpenter
Of insult and of cruel abuse
You know far more than such as I might grasp
Your words are truthful, comforting
Men lie and condescend
They only take, but You give all good things
Your loving, nail-torn hands provide
What I could never earn
You pour out blessings I do not deserve
You've called me "son" and "valuable"
You've promised me Your best
And I have seen You working in the dark
O Lord, when will You save my tired soul?
O God of Jacob, saved from Laban's fist
I trust in You in mind and will
But Father, help my heart to understand
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