Lent Day 32

To-day is March 26, 2015, Thursday in the fifth week of Lent.

The daily flip calendar that sits on my desk at work has short, good readings for each day - most of these discuss friendships and love. To-day's verse is by John Keats, a 19th century English Romantic poet. It reads:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness.

And since we are diligently taught that beauty is both only 'skin-deep' and often found only in the eye of the beholder, I am sorely vexed.
Paraphrased, I read

If a thing is beautiful to me (even thought that beauty is surficial), then it is a joy forever.
It just keeps getting lovelier, and will never be nothing.


... ... ...


See, this is why I never liked poetry (or romance, for that matter).

In math's, eight sevens equals 56 (in spite of what my creative nephew Benjamin would tell me).

In a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse. Always.
I can prove it. Indeed it has been proven by many and in many different ways over the last couple of thousand years. There are no 'exceptions' to that rule. It is. It's always true.

Joy is relative. Beauty we have discussed. Loveliness depends on point of view.
Nothingness may mean zero or 0; but zero is really something. It has a place on the number line. It has been the ending monthly balance of my checking account more often than not.
Nothingness, I think, is a concept much deeper.

Nothing - the lack of anything

I imagine a Venn Diagram with two non-intersecting (we call them disjoint) sets. The one on the left is full of containers that have at least one item. The one on the right has an empty container - filled with nothing.

... ... ...

Dearest Father, 

My mind's eye is giving me a vision of what it may be like without You...

Dark, lacking, empty, ...

I don't like that thought.

Fill me with Your Spirit, let me never be separated from You!
Look past my sin, Lord, that I might never enter into that darkness.

Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.