Inns on the road

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and pose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

- C.S.Lewis, from The Problem of Pain, Chapter 7

Poem (written 14.6.05 and still relevant)

John the Baptist

I confess
I am afraid of you
with your wild eyes
your tangled hair and your voice
crying in the wilderness.
Your uncompromising,
unreasonable, discomforting
call.
You’re weird.
The wild man, calling.
I am deeply afraid of you.
Why do you have to come to me?
Upsetting things,
upsetting me,
crying in the wilderness,
eating locusts and honey?

Yet, I confess
I am in love with you
and with your desert call,
your shouting, your clarion
trumpet tongue
raging
against cheap normality,
the way of the world,
the death of things.

And
I want to be you,
John the Baptist.
I want the bitterness of the locust
and the sweetness of honey.
I do love you,
terrifying man.
It is the wound in me
that bolts from you
and wants to scream and cry
and run
and keep quiet, holding my breath,
hoping you’ll go away.

Heal me, John the Baptist.
Baptise me.
Let me come out of the water
facing you
and discover that you are pointing
to the Lamb of God.