​I love Hebrews 6. It is a passage that keeps the best theologians humble, and the best Christians working out their salvation with fear and trembling - looking for the fruit that should be in their lives. I don't think my version of the passage really expounds on anything or clarifies the issue of the preservation of the saints, but I like the way it worked out and think it's a good synopsis of one of the most interesting passages in the New Testament. 
 

​A number of years back I decided to go through Hebrews and write a sonnet for each segment of the book. I thought it would be a good way to process what I was reading. I really enjoyed it. "Hebrews 4" is one of my favorites because I got to use my chemistry material at the time. There are many mysteries of God that are difficult/impossible to explain. One is that God is a God at rest, yet God is also a God who is at work.The concept I used to embody this mystery is that God is like an "allotrope." Now I am sure if you broke this down it would lead to some sort of accusation of trinitarian modalism or something, though I'm not using it here to explain the trinity. I'm just saying that like a diamond and charcoal are both carbon - just rearranged a little differently, so it is with a God at rest who is at work. He is both. There is more content in this short sonnet, but that's my favorite part. 

After college, the reality of the world began to hit me more and more. As you hear about ministries going on around the world, become more interested in world news, and see the horrendous evil that goes on around the world, it makes you feel helpless. In fact, going to do missions in Romania has just exaggerated this feeling in me. When we go to a mission's conference, we hear about what all of the other missionaries are doing in that church. I always end up thinking, "we should go there, and there, and there." Every work needs more people and more money. I want to do everything. That's why I wrote, "the Body." It expresses my frustration with being so limited, but also defers to the wisdom of God in his decision to use the church as a whole rather than just you or just me. 

​Today is Easter, so I thought "Deathblow" would be as appropriate a poem as any to share. The poem compares two types of individuals - the recluse and the eccentric - and shows how they're really not much different. The recluse fears so much, they avoid contact with the world. They pull into their own life and don't allow anyone to touch it. Their fear manifests itself in a life of defense that attempts to ward off death, disappointment, and pain. The eccentric is fearful just like the hermit, though she expresses fear differently. The eccentric attempts to drown out fear. By surrounding herself with noise, the eccentric is able to ignore death, disappointment, and pain. There is always another friend, another party, or another excitement to fill the hole. Both the eccentric and the recluse are motivated by self-interest, live in fear, and repel true life. While they both attempt to keep death at bay and live life to their definition of the fullest, they both end up living lives devoid of life. They, like all men and women, are in need of a quickening by God which allows them to push out into the world in love, and fear not even death, for it has been conquered. 

​I had a friend in college who received an unexpected message that her best friend had died. It was devestating news, and though I didn't know the individual who died, it was one of my first personal experiences with the problem of God''s omnibenevolence and the fact that evil and death continued. "Dialogue: Betrayed" was me placing my feet in the shoes of those who experienced the greatest evil - death - and asked God where he was in it all. I am leaving out the reading of God's part here, as since I wrote the piece awhile back, I'm not sure how I feel about attributing words to him. I think the response in the dialogue is biblical, but I wouldn't attribute it to God in the future - not even loosely. 

​I always want to be careful about helping others. My normal response to problems is an attempt to fix them. When Catalina began struggling with depression, I wanted to first make sure I listened and empathized. However, as time progressed, I felt the urge to write a response to "Moonstruck." i didn't want to leave depression and despair in the driver's seat. At the same time, I didn't want to simply try to fix a problem - especially since such a thing would be extremely arrogant. Who am I to think that I am the one person with the insight to fix depression. "Sunstruck," then, acknowledged that there was hope even in the midst of the problem, even if the problem always persisted. It is not an attempt at a resolution or a fix, but rather a call to perspective that is meant to soften the blow.

​"Angel of Light" was written a few years into my teaching career. I was always so amazed that some parents could be so blind to their child's faults. This particular year I had a student who all of the teachers had issues with, but the parents were completely unsupportive. The parent thought their child was an angel. I wrote this poem where each stanza hides "Lucifer" in it, and points out that being an angel isn't necessarily a good thing. The father of lies was himself an angel. 

Since the first week of April is the week leading up to Catalina's birthday on the sixth, I thought I'd focus the first week's worth of poems on romantic love. The first poem I am sharing is titled "Unspoken." It was the first poem I wrote with Catalina in mind, though it wasn't a poem directed towards her. It was actually a poem that embodied my inner dialogue. I remember sitting in a Mexican airport waiting for a connecting flight back to Mexico City. I was deliberating whether or not I should share with Catalina how I felt. I wasn't a confident individual when it came to romantic pursuits, and I hadn't dated anyone for half a decade. 
 
"Unspoken" is the conclusion of my deliberation. While most discussion of words focuses on how bad it is to say mean words and how good it is to say nice words, my conclusion inverted this idea. In the poem I speak of bad words left unspoken as rising to heaven, as their unspokenness is an honorable thing. But the good words left unspoken do not encounter the same fate. I concluded that to avoid pursuing Catalina with my words could lead to an eternal tragedy, and time has shown me how true that would have been. ​