Poem for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Old Age
The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
conceal that emptiness which age decries.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
lets in new light through chinks which Time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
as they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
that stand upon the threshold of the new.

Edmund Waller 1606 – 1687

You probably know Leonard Cohen’s moving Anthem with the lines:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.

About 300 years earlier the poet Edmund Waller was on to the same theme:
The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks which Time hath made.

No need to wait for old age to discover this truth. We can waste a lot of time and
energy striving for perfection. God is at work in us and on us alright; but
meanwhile our Maker delights to use us just as we are. Often it is in our cracked
weakness that we are most open and available and new light can get through,
and we find ourselves on that threshold between this world and the next.

TL