Words from Winnie the Pooh

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

~ AA Milne - Winnie the Pooh

I'll admit a certain fascination with Winnie the Pooh as a child, though the Heffalumps and Woozels terrified me. There is something positively frightening about every ignoble character in every childhood movie I watched that forced me into watching from around corners. I couldn't watch the flying monkeys from wizard of oz, or stick around for the cheshire cat (still creeps me out, even in the book a bit), or numerous other baddies that rattled my bones with fright. Luckily, most childhood movies provide easy musical and visual cues (thunderstorms and minor chords) for indicating a scene wherein the villains are present: "time to hide behind mom" cues.

But I was looking through some Winnie the Pooh and stumbled across these gems. I love rivers, the snaking waters slithering down hillsides and mountains and stretching lazily across the plains on an adventure into the seas. Sometimes I remember these when playing Pooh-sticks on long hikes, or just when running along the riverbanks, or crossing the Columbia into Oregon or Washington, or when canoeing or kayaking, remember that I know everything needing knowing. It is like Keats said, though nature speaks fewer words:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all  

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

~Keats - Ode to a Grecian Urn

In those moments of beauty, watching the rivers and the mountains and the trees, all at peace, do I need know anything else? The Lord is near. 

And the second quote, which shames me sometimes in my busyness or impatience. It is like Abraham, when promised a son that is not forthcoming in many years, loses patience with God and goes in to his wife's maidservant. Sometimes that same quality of impatience is upon me, and I, without waiting on God's timing,  make a fool of myself and miss the mark. ...there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. Paulo Coehlo (author of the Alchemist and Veronika Decides to die - the latter is where this quote comes from) writes, "The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter." I'm forever leaping too early, or too late, and rarely listening to the whispering and shouting, beckoning and patient voice of Yeshua.  Wait. Listen. Leap into the arms of God.

I conceived a sunrise poem this morning, which I've temporarily named, "The dawn of day in beauty". In it, I discussed some of these ideas in verse, and I rather enjoy how it came out. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, a glad morning of fellowship and friends. I'm ready for the week, though patiently so. Let's go.

It's a Dangerous Business

The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there.

Why must the fire die?

When hope is frail and twilight nigh

Why must now we say goodbye,

The night still young with fireflies

One boon I ask if you may tell

What hope you passed yon wishing well?

I pray it not to end this spell,

forced to face what the toll doth bell.

There are many goodbyes, these days, and feared goodbyes.  Just this past week, I hugged and whispered goodbyes to A and S. Two other friends are terrified of goodbyes to family members suffering from cancer - and prayer is, seemingly, the last bastion. It is hardest to say these goodbyes.  I find myself constantly praying for these, and others: friends abroad, suffering, disappearing from my life, friends getting married and settling into new and adventurous lives, friends anxious and burdened by life.  In these times, where I’m feeling like the center of a giant web with strands stretching on the corners of the wind, my prayers are uncertain. Am I being selfish? I do not even know what to pray for at all. Do I pray for healing? Ease of passage? A happy new life? It is difficult to pray unselfishly. 

It is as times like these that I continually remember these verses from Romans:

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

The Spirit intercedes for me with groanings too deep for words. Too deep for words. There is something powerful in the mysticism of those words, and reassuring.  “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” It is dangerous, Bilbo, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I've the best of friends, and I'd pray and love on them if I had to sacrifice everything to do so. Sometimes you must.

I think the last time I got some alone time was almost two weeks ago.  I have read less than 300 pages in the last two weeks; missed writing on numerous nights due to busyness, though a good busyness. It’s been an exhausting run, but somehow restorative.