his compassion

"The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel.

The sharp compassion of the healer's art."

~T.S. Eliot

The Four Quartets

my friend Micalah and I like to paint together. cardboard from a pizza box became our canvas. this phrase from Eliot has been on my mind a lot lately. There is a lot of pain that comes to bring about healing. Sometimes the medicine we drink is bitter and kills a part of us, in order that we may live. And just as a child with a hurting knee must learn to take his hands off the bleeding knee to let it's mother apply the salve that stings, and must let the stitches be sown that pierce to mend, so I must learn to let go of my wounds, and trust God do His perfect, painful healing work on my heart.

"Flames purify.

Self's idol do not mourn

For it must die

That I to love be born.

Fire can't devour

The holy children's mirth

That turns this hour

From death to radiant birth.

O burning Son,

Fiercer than the furnace flame,

O purifying One,

Come, burn me with thy Name.

So, dead to sin,

Alive only in thee

My life begin

Now in eternity."
-Madeleine L'Engle