Holy Passion

Next to my computer I have Milton's piece on his blindness and a photo of F. Hart standing next to his National Cathedral sculpture and a quote by Eugene Peterson about how to be a close companion on the journey and photos of Alla in Minsk (best wishes to you and Michel on your marriage!) and Lucy and me in Kiev (thanks for coming all the way from Minsk!) and various sayings and photos. I have bits of humor, too, like John Updike's observation that "most of the stuff on the information highway is roadkill."

And among these favorites is Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne. As I worked on the sexual intimacy book, I came to appreciate that while Donne lived four hundred years ago, he's as contemporary as an iPhone. He wrote the sonnet below as part of a series of nineteen composed after the death of his wife in 1617, and it expresses his passionate nature turned toward God:

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend:
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like a usurped town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captivated and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed to your enemy.
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste except you ravish me.