Skip to main content

Horizon


What started as a stroll on a balmy afternoon
Turned quickly to a jog at dusk
Before long, it evolved to a full sprint
As night set in
And the night kept coming
Darker still
Voices shined temporary light
But once stilled, the dark returned
Enveloping, surrounding, pressing down
Moist walls on either side give not so much guidance
As narrowed license
Both the path and the air thins
Until the valley in the heart begins to fill
Slowly it fills
Then horizon gleams in the distance
Distant still
Until the sun begins to rise
Though there are moments when eyes close
To keep the dark
The sun cannot be moved
Dark crumbles
Shaken down
Laying the foundation of a firmer path
Then, when the light pierces through
Warmth replaces loneliness
Light replaces gloom
An ascent from the valley
Reveals patches of green
On ground parched from thirst
Until the green become ubiquity
The valley reduced now to a pit
A pit from which the traveler can choose to step
And when that step is taken
She sees the sun, resplendent and brighter
Than it could have ever been
From where she came
On that other side of the valley
Shining in ways she could never have foreseen
And from the descent deep into that valley comes
A knowledge of the miles she can travel
That could never have been understood
From tepid steps through the shallow places
The valley, now filled with the rubble
Left from remnants of the dark,
Becomes the bedrock of a city
Lit bright and alive with hue
And in that place
Once dark and damp with sadness,
She offers refuge to the broken
And a clear path,
Built on the very thing that meant her harm
And all the while the words of the Sun are heard clearer
For from where else does light come
Except through the Son:
"I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...