Showing posts with label As the Ruins Fall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label As the Ruins Fall. Show all posts

Sunday, July 22, 2012

"As the Ruins Fall" - C,S, Lewis

For several years now, I have read this poem on my birthday. Growing older has helped me realize the interconnectedness, our need for one another and ultimately our need for a God bigger than we could imagine.

Thank you all for joining me on this merry adventure, I look to many more years with you all.

-Matt

** ** ** ** **

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.