What I Know for Sure

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a fairly uncertain person. I am uncertain about what major I want to pursue, uncertain about what job I want, uncertain about what classes to take etc. Sometimes I get so distracted by all the possibilities that I have trouble seeing clearly. Sometimes the truth is so hard to understand that everything I say and do needs qualifications. But there are some things I do know for sure.

I know that I know very little but there are some things i know for sure.

I know that some things are entirely good, and that some things are entirely bad.

And I know that while snow cones and genocide are among these things, people are not.

I know that each person is a story full of incongruities and beautiful phrases.

I know that this is easy to forget.

I know that there is no man in the moon, even though I have never seen its lonely rockscapes.

I know that I will die.

I know that I don't really believe this.

I know that the world was here before I was and that it will be here after I am gone.

I know that the same God who raised men from the dead allows the death of innocents.

I know that he is good.

And I know that he is not accountable to me.

I know that I love and am loved, even when I don't know why.

I know that the sun will always shine again.

And I know that it will always rain again.

I know that though I don't know how to ask the questions there are answers.

I know that e=mc2, but I don't really know why.

I know that plants change colors because of Carotenoids but could be convinced that they are painted.

I know that there are some things we can never know but that that shouldn't keep us from trying to learn them anyways.

I know that you can't know where you are going but that you should always try to know where you are.

And I know that there are thoughts, and dreams, and ideas that can never be conveyed with words.

But I know that because we are human we will always need to try.

I know that I know very little but there are some things i know for sure.

Seven Stanzas of Easter

Here is a poem that one of my professors introduced me to last semester. I love it and find it to be a beautiful reminder of the true power and mystery of the resurrection. Hope you enjoy, and have a blessed Easter.

SEVEN STANZAS OF EASTER
By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.