George Herbert poetry is admirable in the way he wrestles with his spiritual doubts. He may owe a debt to “The Book of Job,” where we also see such wrestling.
In a powerful four-line poem, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge sums up the main lesson in the Book of Job: even when we suffer, we still have God.
As I think of the deaths and the destroyed communities that natural disasters have recently caused, from the Japanese tsunami to the Alabama tornadoes to the Mississippi flooding, the Book of Job comes to mind. After all, it is a story that addresses that most fundamental of questions, why do bad things happen to innocent people?
Posted in Bible | Also tagged Bible, Nature, Suffering |
I’ve had fun discussing the reading of Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas over the last couple of days, and while I’ve come up dry on further posts about the Supreme Court and literature, it has given me the idea of periodically dipping into reading stories of other political figures. I’ll start a list here, beginning […]
Posted in Alexander (Elizabeth), Angelou (Maya), Bible, Camus (Albert), Carle (Eric), Dickey (James), Fleming (Ian), Frost (Robert), Marquez (Gabriel Garcia), Morrison (Toni), O'Neill (Joseph), Robinson (Edward Arlington), Service (Robert), Sheridan (Richard), Stendahl, Tolstoy (Leo), Twain (Mark) | Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, Al Gore, Albert Camus, Barack Obama, Bible, Bill Clinton, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Cremation of Sam McGee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edward Arlington Robinson, Elizabeth Alexander, Eric Carle, From Russia with Love, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George W. Bush, George Washington, Ian Fleming, James Dickey, John Kennedy, Joseph O'Neill, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Mr. Flood's Party, Netherworld, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Proverbs, Richard Corey, Richard Nixon, Richard Sheridan, Robert Frost, Ronald Reagan, School for Scandal, Shooting of Dan McGrew, Song of Solomon, Stendahl, Teddy Roosevelt, The Red and the Black, The Stranger, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Toni Morrison |
