{"id":1589,"date":"2015-10-05T15:01:23","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T19:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/city-of-glass\/"},"modified":"2015-10-05T15:01:23","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T19:01:23","slug":"city-of-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/city-of-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Melodious Monk<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I met a new friend this week, Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. While recently feeling a little lost and tired of looking for God with seemingly no answer back, I went to a shelf of poetry books in hopes that someone else&#8217;s words might open my eyes a bit differently.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it was Paul Powis&#8217; colorful illustration on the front cover of the R. S. Thomas collection that caught my attention, but every poem of R. S. Thomas that I read I find compelling, thought-provoking, and profoundly mysterious.<\/p>\n<p>One such poem is titled, \u201cthe empty church. \u201c I spend a significant amount of time in an empty church here at the Community of Jesus&#8211; either cleaning, doing maintenance work, or praying alone&#8211;so, in quickly glancing through the index, this poem&#8217;s title leaped out at me as one to read.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Empty Church<\/p>\n<p>They laid this stone trap<br \/>\nfor him, enticing him with candles,<br \/>\nas though he would come like some huge moth<br \/>\nout of the darkness to beat there.<br \/>\nAh, he had burned himself<br \/>\nbefore in the human flame<br \/>\nand escaped, leaving the reason<br \/>\ntorn. He will not come any more<br \/>\nto our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still<br \/>\nstriking my prayers on a stone<br \/>\nheart? Is it in hope one<br \/>\nof them will ignite yet and throw<br \/>\non its illumined walls the shadow<br \/>\nof someone greater than I can understand?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In the short time I\u2019ve spent with this Anglican priest\u2019s poetry, I have found a strong sense of the knowledge of God\u2019s presence when, and perhaps especially when, He is not tangible to us. I often ask God why this road through life has so many components that often feel pointless or at cross-purposes with one another. I think Thomas might say that our inability to understand God in our lives is not something to be afraid of. At the end of his poem <em>Emerging,<\/em> Thomas reminds us that God has destined us for good.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are questions we are the solution<br \/>\nto, others whose echoes we must expand<br \/>\nto contain. Circular as our way is,<br \/>\nit leads not back to that snake-haunted<br \/>\ngarden, but onward to the tall city<br \/>\nof glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Poetry by R. S. Thomas. Artwork by Paul Powis<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/purple_shade.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-5625084 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.communityofjesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/purple_shade.jpg\" alt=\"Purple Shade by Paul Powis\" width=\"394\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Follow us<\/strong><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/communityofjesus.org<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheCommunityOfJesus\/~4\/TXpRX4_Fxs0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Melodious Monk I met a new friend this week, Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. While recently feeling a little lost and tired of looking for God with seemingly no answer back, I went to a shelf of poetry books &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/city-of-glass\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}