Gwyneth’s Blog

Amidst getting ready for a major event, what do I do: clean out my house.  It started in the bathroom and spread to a cabinet in the kitchen where I keep candles and candle holders and vases and such.  Folded in there was  a section from a concert program.  I’m not really sure how it got there but I remember being taken aback by a poem in the program that a song was inspired by.

It just reminded me of how we can get worked up by hurts in our life.  We can build walls that ultimately isolate and hurt ourselves.  God calls us to move beyond those things because his plans are greater and don’t involve walls.  It struck me as beautiful and in some ways how God would see many of us: lovely but covered in thorns and perhaps too involved in protecting ourselves to see that God has lifted us up and given us beauty and victory. 

“Les Chansons de Roses” Rilke

Against whom, rose

have you assumed

these thorns?

Is it your too fragile joy

that forced you

to become this

armed thing?

But from whom does it protect you,

this exaggerated defense?

How many enemies have I

lifted from you

who did not fear it at all?

On the contrary, from summer to autumn,

you wound the affection

that is given to you.