Hey my Jake,
Happy Monday up there in Heaven. I am writing you because today is the third anniversary of your getting there. You know your old mother, I have thought a lot and a prayed a lot and missed you a lot. Through some little whisper of God, and an ear turned to Him, and as much for me as anyone, I’ve been sharing my heart with these Happy Mondays since you left. Following your lead as a young Aggie cadet at A&M, I send them out, to people who for one reason or another, have claimed a stake on my human heart. Today as I sit in front of my computer I wonder; why were you compelled to share words and worries and doubts so personal? What were you thinking when searching for poems whose rhyme and meter sang the soul of your heart? While you and I will not sit face to face to share these answers until we meet again in Heaven, my heart already knows the answer; the hunger of the human soul to understand this earthly world and our place in it, finds refuge and ease when the soul is poured out with ink on paper. The power of words, whether they are from the hand of a 19 year old Aggie or those who have left their marks in ancient texts and poems and sonnets, sings a similar song. Of all the things that humans can do that will last, the written word may be one of them. The power of shared words lasts as long as we can read them. Through these Happy Mondays of two years and more, through my soul searching for God’s ease, I thank Him for words; yours, and ones I read from history and Scripture. I thank him for the creative soul and heart He gave man that let us share, across time and space, words that are ageless, and I marvel at words that recount history that matters. While I was rummaging through my computer I came across one of your old Happy Mondays that you sent out almost ten years ago… John Donne put those words to paper almost 400 before that and in the early morning of a day a decade ago you read them and they spoke to you and you sought to share them with people who had a piece of your heart. And, son, today, across time and space they speak to me as well. I love you Jake.
Jake Wrote: This what I sometimes think when everything sends to be out of order, and going wrong.
Holy Sonnet I
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards Hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old sublte foe so tempteth me
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
John Donne
