Come up for some air

Last night I think I dreamed in Greek mythology- my sister would say that's what comes of reading too much poetry in the night watches. If she's right, then I think I will switch to meditative yoga. That dream was agony.

but so is Yeat's poem:

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

How do you go on with your evening with an image like that loose in your mind? Count sheep, bah, I bet you anything that has never worked.

No, you lay awake and puzzle and you pray. Last sunday the pastor said we have been "overwhelmed by God's love, and our efforts to refuse it are futile." Suddenly, that scares me. Am I as vulnerable to this God of love as Leda was to her god of lust? Is there something undignified and unworthy about a lover who asks neither consent nor approval, and just gives or takes at will?

Yes. there is. But the God of the Bible is not like that thrusting, overmastering nightmare god. He has given us choice, for all that we prate of his predestined guiding and counsel. Part of the logic is that if GOd is as glorious as Isaiah paints him, as inscrutable and powerful as Exodus and Acts declare, then how can we NOT worship and surrender to him? The idea that we could refuse to breath is more logical. But all I need is to review the past 2 hours of my life and I see that I have been given choice, and I have squandered my measure of praise on things that are not worthy. And he lets me.
It is a paradox, a mystery.

A deep, profound mystery which I cannot leave alone for long, and I must learn to share, and which I must learn to listen for. Because there are a thousand Leda's out there, bewildered and confused and crying:

tell me a story that means something.
paint me a picture that i will want to dream about.
give me a drink that won't leave me drunk
and despairing
lead me to a god who won't rape me
and when you talk
please
remember to come up for some air