Fiery Grains

Came across this in a random little book from 1930 and it 'quickened my soul'. The passage is from a letter written by a disillusioned youngster to a parson, lamenting over his generation's lack of hope in the post-Great War era. This, in my opinion, is what the whole God-bothering thing is all about.

"I happened recently to read Masefield's 'Invocation' - you know it, I suppose -

O wanderer into my brains,
O spark the emperor's purple hides,
You sow the dusk with fiery grains
When the gold horseman rides.
O beauty on the darkness hurled,
Be it through me you shame the world.

There you have it - we feel, hoever dimly, that there is a wanderer who makes beauty more keen for us, who gives reality to our love of hills and sea and home, who is the meaning of sportsmanship and loyalty and courage and fair-play, who makes us certain that our own small lives, with their ordinary cares, have a purpose which we cannot understand.

...It is, I realise, a difficult question that we put to you, but what are the 'fiery grains' which only can give substance to our loyalties?"

We, the church, are the seekers and sowers of fiery grains, those glimpses of the numinous - reality as it really is - that point to Jesus.

Absolutely.