Son of God, hear us, and since Thou
By taking our blood, owest it us again,
Gain to Thyself, or us allow ;
And let not both us and Thyself be slain ;
O Lamb of God, which took'st our sin,
Which could not stick to Thee,
O let it not return to us again ;
But Patient and Physician being free,
As sin is nothing, let it nowhere be.
- J. Donne
Life is full of ends and beginnings-and in the middle it is mostly- a mess of full stops, muck, and restarts.
This is the end of John Donne's "Litany".
It's a shadow of life's True End.
Shadows also whisper that this little slice of time and space is not it; it is not the one true thing. It's just a sloshy, little step on the really real roadmap.
Was it the end God had in mind, or was it the road- when He began..."In the beginning..."?
Is that a false dichotomy?
And in the end, isn't the real end, just the Beginning anyway?
By taking our blood, owest it us again,
Gain to Thyself, or us allow ;
And let not both us and Thyself be slain ;
O Lamb of God, which took'st our sin,
Which could not stick to Thee,
O let it not return to us again ;
But Patient and Physician being free,
As sin is nothing, let it nowhere be.
- J. Donne
Life is full of ends and beginnings-and in the middle it is mostly- a mess of full stops, muck, and restarts.
This is the end of John Donne's "Litany".
It's a shadow of life's True End.
- Sin the once- "here Now"-- is at once - "no Where"
- That's a flip.
Shadows also whisper that this little slice of time and space is not it; it is not the one true thing. It's just a sloshy, little step on the really real roadmap.
Was it the end God had in mind, or was it the road- when He began..."In the beginning..."?
Is that a false dichotomy?
And in the end, isn't the real end, just the Beginning anyway?