T.S. Tuesdays

If you know me at all, you knew this had to be coming. Well, the alliteration part if not the T.S. Eliot part. T.S. Eliot is one of my favorite poets, so I decided to dedicate one day of the week to posting some of my favorite lines of his.

I am doing this because:
1. I think T.S. Eliot is the bomb dot com.

2. I was getting a little self-conscious about spilling my heart and soul every day.

3. It gives me an excuse to read more T.S. Eliot to find more tasty T.S. tidbits for you.

4. Alliteration. Enough said.

This has long been one of my favorites from his poem "East Coker" (Number 2 of 'Four Quartets'):

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Don't worry, I'm not exactly sure what he means by this either. But I love the way it sounds. I love the idea of emptying ourselves of our preconceived expectations of hope, love, and faith. I am intrigued by the parallel to Jesus' upside down Kingdom in which "the first shall be last and the last shall be first." In my hurried life, I'm convicted and challenged by the importance placed on waiting. And I love the image of the quiet, patient, stillness allowing space for the dancing in our souls.