Rolling on the River – Mississippi River Pollution Near Alton, Illinois

if tears, i hope he

if tears, i hope he
also keeps these tangled threads;
neurons wiring griefs
__________________

My outlook at this very moment is not really as bleak as my last two haiku might suggest. Thank the Lord However, inasmuch as Wordsworth is right about poetry being, “emotion recollected in tranquility,” they do reflect strong emotion, specifically emotion over the complexity of our emotions themselves and the interactions we have with one another, especially in trying to understand one another.

Sometimes the inability to do this is a major point of spiritual doubt for me concerning the goodness of God. Why does it have to be so, so hard? On the other side of that very same coin, though, our intricate emotional and mental capacities are also a deep touchstone of belief. The one who created the complexities of the universe, including the seemingly infinite complexities of the creatures who we are (“What a piece of work is man?”), surely must understand every bit of each of us, at least that is my great hope.

Whatever else the new heavens and the new earth will be like, I am deeply looking forward to the restoration of communication. I do not know if Adam and Eve fully understood one another, perhaps that faculty always was and will be a role for God alone even in an unfallen context, but surely their communication was free of fracture if not misunderstanding.

“You number my wanderings; Put my tears into your bottle; Are they not in your book?
-Psalm 56:8

“Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.
-Proverbs 14:10

Alright, thanks for indulging a prose interlude. Now, back to the pictures and poetry

Thine the Deadly Pain

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine!
Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

Dead Duck Day

After a brief excursus into a different sort of blog post yesterday, the sun has risen again, all is well with the world, and the Dassler Effect is back to posting uplifting pcitures of dead birds This is part of the “And Wears Man’s Smudge” category of the blog, which is trying to illustrate the impact of our fallen nature on the planet. As for the last picture, well the only falleness nature that represents is a bunch of guys not keeping their shower clean. I am not sure exactly why we have a dead ducky in our shower, but I have long wanted to photograph it, as weird as that may sound. It seemed logical to do so on “dead duck day,” a title which comes from the book About a Boy and the movie of the same name, which you should watch if you have not done so. Brilliant.
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Even the Softening Tool Can’t Soften This

Power Corrupts

Power Corrupts

And a River Runs Through It

The Price of Windows

This photo is in a new category for the blog, which are ideas toward the next photo show perhaps.
This blog features a fair number of pictures of the beauty of nature. This is one of its more difficult side. In God and Humanity the other day, Dr. Williams commented that we must never make peace with human death, as that was not how it was meant to be. A discussion ensued about whether animals died before the Fall or were predators and prey. Even if they were, however, Dr. Williams said that humans were not meant to die, and for me even pictures of animal death depict the tragedy of death. As an aside, regardless of whether animals died before the Fall or were eaten by one another, I believe the first few chapters of Genesis tell us that humans were not meant to eat animals before the Fall. I also think this is so because otherwise the sacrificial system would not make much sense, but perhaps more on that another time.
I do not intend to post pictures of dead animals on my blog for gratuitous reasons, but hopefully they depict the glory and the dignity of the animals even as they lament their death.

And Wears Man’s Smudge