(no subject)

[fpb]

A Prayer in Darkness
This much, O heaven—if I should brood or rave,
Pity me not; but let the world be fed,
Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead,
Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave.

If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,
Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,
In sun and rain and fruit in season shown,
The shining silence of the scorn of God.

Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,
If I must travail in a night of wrath,
Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,
Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.

Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had
Thought it beat brightly, even on—Calvary:
And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree
Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.

GK Chesterton

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Had.

[deansteinlage.livejournal.com]

My prayers for her, her family and friends.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Her father needs everyone's prayers. He is a figure of Greek tragedy proportions: he lost his wife when their only daughter was seven, was driven by grief to secret drinking (he admitted it afterwards, so there is no harm in saying it), broke with his daughter when she started posing for softcore mags, made up with her much later, only to find out within a few years that she had murderous and inoperable bone cancer, and watch her heroically and hopelessly fight it for the last seven years of her life. Now he is alone at 68, and he himself reports that his daughter, on her deathbed, begged him to let himself live on. This is not Victorian melodrama - it is real life, here, now. You can see why I thought of the One on the Cross.