Swimming through fire

Artist: Margret Hofheinz-Döring

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I told you yesterday that Fr. Clyde Glandon had outdone himself with the quotations he sent to his email list this week. One of his offerings was a Mary Oliver poem that I had not come across before and I absolutely love it:

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world

And look! Look! Look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

Ah! Let us not waste our time looking for an easier world.

It occurs to me that looking for an easier world and making a better world are two different journeys. I would submit that Jesus calls us to the latter.