Jon Sampson

Let’s be honest. Poetry is a little too heady and cultured for this blog. It just is. I write in three-word sentences. I don’t write poetry.

But there’s this poem that Edgar Lee Masters wrote in his Spoon River Anthology that I think about every few months or so. The book is filled with poems – each a self-written epitaph of someone who has died in the fictional town of Spoon River. There’s one that stands out to me:

64. George Gray

I HAVE studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

Since we’ve been talking about action and following God, it just seems to fit. How can we live a life where we dive in and follow God? A life of no regrets?