Applied Heart

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

from “Holy Sonnets”

These words of John Donne’s come to my mind often. I feel the truth of them. I bear witness to them. His grasp of the dilemma of the converted and his poetic and succinct means of expressing our thralldom and need for liberation, and a liberator, from outside ourselves, is profound and true and acknowledged by all in our honest moments.

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