Clanging Cymbal
I had a friend who called herself a clanging cymbal. It seemed to us that everything she said was kind, but she would catch herself saying something that only she knew was unloving and say, "Oh! I'm being a gong!" Of course, she was referencing 1 Corinthians 13:1 a verse I never spent much time on,If I speak in tongues of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
When I hear, "Gong" or "Clanging cymbal", my first thought is a couple of really boring teachers that I had in junior high. One loud, ominous sounding, the other brassy and chattery and full of sarcasm.
Now that I'm a teacher, I too am a clanging cymbal. By far the most frustrating part of being an educator is that nobody listens to you, and then you have to repeat yourself 1,000 times. You also have to say a lot of things that you never wanted to hear come out of your own mouth in the heat of disciplining a student. Words like, "If you do that one more time..." My students know me well enough to know that my bark is worse than my bite. It can't be helped. Even though I don't let them run over me, I don't exactly have them under my thumb, either. Nobody listens to anybody else. I can't help but think that if I'm not talking, then life is so much sweeter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a library card. When I walk in, I just stand between the aisles, both excited and in pain. Excited, because I get to check out any book I want. I could just open it up and know something new. In pain because I will never read them all. And perhaps, I will choose the wrong one. Or maybe I won't be brave and explore the unfamiliar titles.
I start books but don't finish them. Who can still that long? But the thought of knowing all of those things...that thrills me! So I will grab a book and open it, read a little bit, and put it back. If I take the book home, it loses its magic and becomes a paperweight on my desk. I did check out this book, though, a book of poetry. I read it with my windows open while listening to classical music. Laugh, by all means. If I were you, and I were reading this blog, I would make fun of me, too.
But anyway, the whole goal was to share this poem.
"Before Easter"
by Isobel Thrilling
Spring;
yet still frost builds
dead palaces.
We hear the crack from
icicles of bone,
snow crowns
have snapped the throats
of daffodils,
the ice-queen walks in
her brittle dress.
No rose-blood in the stem
no cumulus
perfume in the trees,
each day
is a coffin of glass.
The sun is turned
to crystal,
it is our alchemy of winter;
inner cold.
Christ sleeps
behind a quickening stone.
posted by Heather at
4/13/2006
0 comment(s):
Post a comment
<< Home