efforts to ascertain why he was in prison at all. Even after he abandoned such efforts, however, the area of dispensation dwindled even more. If he strayed outside the established bounds, they beat him. He had to be content with only patches of grass and a flower or two.
Finally, they restricted him to a narrow pavement of the courtyard. In a crack of the pavement grew a few blades of grass. They absorbed all of his attention when he was let out from his cell. His concentration was so intense that he took back in his mind a vivid image of their details. That image required, however, daily refreshment by immediate contact with the blades of grass. He sometimes wondered how he would hold onto his sanity if they should disappear.
A drought came to afflict the region where the prison was located. During his confined stroll each day, he felt the withering heat and saw the green turn to brown. The condition of his blades of grass grew particularly alarming. He was not allowed to water them, and he saw them begin to die from the drought. Their imminent death seemed to presage his own.
After the blades of grass had shriveled and crumbled to the pavement, he fell into a deep depression and would not go out into the courtyard. His vitality, long sustained by the green plants of the courtyard, had dried up with them. His hours became a series of mechanical actions without purpose or joy. Vacant days and restless nights merged into an absurd continuum.
One day, he was stirred to go outdoors, although the drought had not abated. He mindlessly went to the pavement he had known so well and was astonished to see his blades of grass. They stood fresh and green, still covered with morning dew. When he reached out to touch them, however, he felt nothing. Yet their presence was too potent to deny. Suddenly he understood. It mattered not whether the blades of grass were there, so long as he and they were together here. From that time on, their union was indestructible, and joy flowed back into his life.
Arthur G. Dove, Red Sun, 1935
2
Tales of Jesus
Given the intimacy of my conversion to Christ, in my studies I pursued a curriculum that was Christocentric. This enabled me to put my conversion in an historical, as well as spiritual, context. Each of the following couplets invokes an event during or shortly after Jesus’ life based upon the accounts in the New Testament. I hope that these little poems will prove to be inspiring.
Logos
From the start there was the word
Lives of all to undergird.
Babe
Swaddled safe from hate and spite,
Vaulting dark he soars to light.
Mary
Mary sings a lullaby,
Wondering will he live or die.
Joseph
Joseph father in name only
Bore his duty grim and lonely.
John the Baptist
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