Sweet peace

The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre loue, is vaine
That fondly feare to loose your liberty,
when loosing one, two liberties ye gayne,
and make him bond that bondage earst dyd fly.
Sweet be the bands, the which true loue doth tye,
without constraynt or dread of any ill:
the gentle birde feeles no captiuity
within her cage, but singes and feeds her fill.
There pride dare not approch, nor discord spill
the league twixt them, that loyal loue hath bound:
but simple truth and mutuall good will,
seekes with sweet peace to salue each others wound
There fayth doth fearlesse dwell in brasen towre,
and spotlesse pleasure builds her sacred bowre.

 (Spenser, Amoretti, #65)

In my end is my beginning

I'm in a seminar on T.S. Eliot this semester, and lately we've been reading his Four Quartets. The final stanzas of "East Coker" struck me as particularly beautiful. I've often encountered poetic interventions in life, when a piece crosses my path precisely when I need it most; it's both poignant and cathartic. This was one of those.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. 

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

My life is not my own; I do not reserve the right to tell God how I serve Him. Peace comes from obedience.