The Stillness of the World Before Jesus

John Shore’s post over at Huffington “Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian” offers a sensible approach to Christian critical thinking and is therefore highly worth reading even if you aren’t Christian. Shore, who has been “trying god’s patience since 1958” suggests that Christians need to be more humble, reflective, and “worldly” in the best sense. Surely these are good ideas for anyone, Christian or not.

One thing Christians might do more of is to read poetry. Here is a poem by Lars Gustafsson that I’ll offer as today’s Christian reading:

 

Eel and Well

 

In the province of Skane there was a custom:

into their deep black wells they put

small eels from the sea.

And these eels spend their lives

imprisoned in the wells’ deep blackness.

They keep the water crystal-clear and clean.

When sometimes the well-eel

is brought up in the bucket, white, frighteningly big,

blind, coiling in and out

of the riddles in its body, without knowledge,

everyone hurries to sink it back again.

Often I see myself

not just in the well-eel’s place

but as both eel and well.

Imprisoned in myself, and yet this self

is something else: I’m there.

I wash it with my wriggling,

muddy, white-bellied presence in the dark.

 

–from The Stillness of the World Before Bach: New Selected Poems edited by Christopher Middleton, New Directions Press

 

S.K.