The White Hot Fire

Wow. It's been a long time.
I used to really enjoy blogging frequently. I relished the chance to spill words out on the screen and once satisfied with the result, click that "Publish" button. Not sure what happened, besides, well, "Life"...

Also, I'm not sure who would read this anymore, but I've kept thinking of my little spot on the blogging world lately, this 'Wren Row', and I guess it's for a reason.
So, here I am! ^_^  I just have one poem that I wrote in the interim between the my last post and now. it describes one of the hardest days I ever had, and what I learned from it. 

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Rusty bits of wire, barbed
torn and decayed plastics
clear, smudged glass
broken to bits by sadness, smashed by white anger. 

I took my pain out to the woods that day
I took my heart, set it in a bottle, safe
then I raised my hands, filled with glass
and hurled them against rocks
til there were only shards. 

It didn't change anything
(the world didn't rock at all)
My crying, my  screaming 

was only heard by me,
the woods, God, and the stream. 

But at the end, after everything was gone
broken to pieces at my feet
and I felt empty, very empty
finally (and strangely)
there was room for me to breathe. 

Rusty bits of wire, barbed
torn and decayed plastics
clear, smudged glass
broken to bits by sadness,
to make a way for  new peace.

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Glass is fascinating and alluring to me. I could spend hours-- no, days-- in the Cornell Glass museum and never tire of observing glass. It has so many forms, colors, shapes, and even textures. It's strong, but it's weak. It can be breathtakingly beautiful, or tiresomely plain. 
Glass is somehow a ordinary thing--sand--turned into a beautiful, useful, fragile, and oftentimes gorgeous substance.

It's melted and blown into shape. And for those brief moments, it's malleable, soft (though none can touch it) and blazing hot.

When it dries, it's cold, and clear, and no longer flexible. It can break into a million tiny pieces with one drop of the hand. Or it can shatter and yet stay intact with one car impact.

Glass is strange and to me, a real mystery... I can't understand it fully.
I guess that's why I love it.

Glass always reminds me of several Scriptures:

"Everyone's going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you'll be well-preserved, protected from the eternal flames. Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace." 
(Mark 9, v. 49-50)


And this one, it's my favorite:

    Bless our God, O peoples! 
      Give him a thunderous welcome! 
   Didn't he set us on the road to life? 
      Didn't he keep us out of the ditch? 
   He trained us first, 
      passed us like silver through refining fires, 
   Brought us into hardscrabble country, 
      pushed us to our very limit, 
   Road-tested us inside and out, 
      took us to hell and back; 
   Finally he brought us 
      to this well-watered place.


(Psalm 66, v. 8-12)