Getting Our Way

a poem

Psalm 131

My heart is not proud, O Lord
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me
O Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.

Getting Our Way
by Abigail J. Stevens

One could force their will into being
like bulldozers through walled gardens.
One could close off their heart
like the ice at earth's poles.
One could refuse to let go
like a lion its long-stalked prey.

But what's the use?
Neither force 
nor distrust 
nor grasping tightly
gets any of us what we want,
which is God.
And His heart's desire 
is not one way or the other,
but us remade
by one means or another.
Submitted to be fitted to His cross.
Keeping nothing for ourselves that God gifts us.
And trusting no one as we do Him.

By His wounds, we are healed.
By our wounding, we're remade,
having wrestled with God 
into admitting what we want
and accepting it's more of Him.

This poem was inspired by Wendell Berry's poem Anger Against Beasts, which I found in his collection The Peace of Wild Things, which is below.

Anger Against Beasts
by Wendell Berry

The hook of adrenaline shoves 
into the blood. Man's will,
long schooled to kill or have
its way, would drive the beast
against nature, transcend
the impossible in simply fury.
The blow falls like a dead seed.
It is defeat, for beasts
do not pardon, but heal or die
in the absence of the past.
The blow survives in the man.
His triumph is a wound. Spent,
he must wait the slow
unalterable forgiveness of time