Sometimes I wonder if we can’t understand paradox in poetry then
we will have a difficult time understanding what Jesus was trying to teach
since he often spoke in paradox.
The poet Rumi said, “Find
the real world, give it endlessly away, Grow rich, fling gold to all who ask,
live at the empty heart of paradox, I’ll dance there with you cheek and cheek”.
To dance cheek and cheek with what Jesus said, and to live at
the empty heart of paradox might mean that we would at least try to begin to
ponder the paradoxes Jesus taught. But if we can’t understand poetry then we may
not understand perhaps the most profound paradox in the Bible and of the
spiritual life. Jesus said,
“Whoever tries to keep
his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.”
Emily Dickenson, another poet, understands paradox. She did
not care much for status. She did not care about being popular. She did not
care about being “somebody”. It almost seems she deliberately chose to be a “nobody”
, refusing to play the “game”. In her
poem titled, “Nobody”. She asks,
”I’m nobody, who are
you? Are you nobody too”?
Emily seemed to understand the paradox of becoming nobody to
actually become “somebody”. She looks
for other “nobody’s", asking, "Are you nobody too"?
But who am I to understand poetry? Who am I to know anything about dancing with
Jesus. I’m just a “nobody”.
Who are you?
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