(I first wrote this poem when inspiration hit me, while I was in taiwan, after a shower. I wrote the first stanza on the fogged up mirror with my finger, which freaked out my mother when she stepped in after me)

NIGHT FALLS: a poem

The literates of the world will tell you that night
falls, as if it were
the clothes draped over the deceased, or the
lowering of the coffin lid;
as with a certain
suddenness.
That is not the case.

As any casual observer of the stars will tell you,
night does not fall.
It seeps.
It blends and mixes with the light till it becomes dark.
From the afternoon sun, it bleeds white to blue
to the stillness of the night.

Night is slow. The few awake at its apex
have seen the speed of the night,
the crawl of the stars high above in their own
desired paths. There is a stillness,
a quiet, a shutting down and out and ending
of the things of the previous day.

The literates will say that dawn breaks.
This, though, I wholeheartedly agree with.
Dawn does not appear with any suddenness,
for the light of the sun heralds its arrival
far before the luminous sphere itself
appears in the sky. A wave of blue rings
out in ripples across the clouds, and the
brightness of dawn draws out the rooster's
call. No, dawn is not swift in its arrival,
but it is ever on time.

For night seeps in sideways, not from where the
Earthbound ever fix their sight: straight upward
into the clouds; or from beneath their feet, the
haven for awkward eyes in awkward times. No, it creeps in
from periphery, the blind spots, till the
unaware find themselves utterly caught
in it (as if they knew not
that night has to fall).
But dawn, dawn always breaks.
It hides nothing for it knows the way
darkness flees. Dawn breaks as cloth tears;
as stones roll away. And as dawn returns,
life endures, continues, evermore.

Labels: poem

To the uninitiated, my birthday's coming in a week, and Christmas is just slightly under 3 weeks away. Blatant self-advertising aside, I'm going to advise you not to get me anything living as a present. Really, anything breathing or green should be struck off your lists immediately. My house is great when it comes to taking care of people, but animals are very much less lucky. We have had hamsters that died of either suffocation or pneumonia, fishes that either thought they could fly or believed themselves to be salmon; frogs that preferred an eleven story free-fall over captivity, and even my pet rock grew mould and fell out a window. Point is, my house doesn't grow creatures very well.

And it's a weird thing having living creatures in your house. Why? Because living things grow. And when they grow, they change.

It's a common saying, that "change is the only constant". Want to know why? Because we are alive. In a world full of dead things and people, nothing would change. The spark of life in our temporal situations are what fuels change. Things change because things grow.

On a side note, this is also why I think a zombie apocalypse would be survivable. The undead? They're, well, medically dead. So their bodies don't grow. So whatever damage they sustain will never be healed. Sun, rain, winds, we survive them because we can heal. Zombies can't.

Returning again to the point, growth always brings change. Sure, there are plateaus where we don't grow much, but those are the times we don't change much either. If I may drop some scripture on us, here's a verse from 1 Corinthians 13:11

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."

That's what I mean. We grow, so we change; so we put our pasts behind us in order that we may look ahead.

Here's the thing, healthy life always means growth. A healthy 16 year old is growing. If a 13 year old teenager remained the exact size and shape, evidently something is amiss.

Same with our spiritual lives. If we are alive in the spirit, praying regularly, worshipping often; if our spiritual lives are healthy, then our spiritual lives are growing. If you've had a healthy relationship with God for 3 years you definitely won't be in the same mental, emotional, spiritual place you were 3 years ago. Life means growth, spiritual life means spiritual growth. Understand these implications on your personal walk.

Life means growth. And growth also means change. Which is also something we need to understand.

A stagnant ministry, a stagnant church, one without change, is one without growth. A church or a ministry that is alive in Christ will have growth. That is a given. Be it spiritual growth within the individual members, or physical growth in terms of worshippers in attendance, life means growth. And growth means change.

Personally, let me make it clear that I'm not a big fan of change. I'm a man of routine. I like my usual schedules, my usual tv shows (HIMYM, TBBT), my usual drink (fuji apple), and I don't like it when those change. I go to school by the same route every morning and go home by that same route. When something is committed to routine I don't like to change it.

But change is necessary. Because growth is necessary. Because life is necessary.

As do most of my posts, this one feels unready, unpolished, but I think the point is clear enough. Change isn't bad. Change is a sign of growth. And growth is a sign of life.

And life is good :)