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6/18/2009
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by Edward Waters
(first posted on 'Facebook',
25th January 2009)
1. Someone once said that, given an absolute choice of two things, I almost always manage to find a third. I've long considered this one of the truest observations ever made about me.
2. I detest being called 'Mister Waters' -- by anyone of any age for any reason. It does not communicate respect. Respect is calling me what I wish to be called. My name is Edward.
[Note: A few old friends do still call me 'Ed', but this is only because they met me when I was trying to shake off the 'Eddie' of my childhood. 'Ed' was a transitional compromise.]
3. Apart from necessarily formal occasions (weddings, funerals, etc) or costume events (Hallowe'en, Twelfth Night, Renaissance Festivals), I wear essentially the same outfit every day: Blue or black jeans, sturdy walking shoes, and a long-sleeve shirt of dark grey, black, or navy. It's a deliberate gesture of simplicity in a life where simplicity is all too rare, and it suggests my respect for some of the ideals of monasticism.
4. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor moderate, nor generally indifferent. My sympathies on specific issues fall all along the spectrum. As this has the potential for needlessly antagonizing almost everyone at some point, I avoid discussing politics.
5. I first saw Cindy sitting in the back of a room where I was singing during my freshman year of college. Drawing on the vast experience of having gone out on one date in my entire life, I thought, 'She's cute, but she's not my type.' -- I'm an idiot.
6. I have always found competitive sports mind-numbingly boring and don't really enjoy competition in any context. I also don't like weapons. I regard the automobile as the most disastrous invention in human history, potentially even more destructive to the world at large than nuclear arms. I have never defined myself by my day-job and have had otherwise close friends for years without knowing what they did for a living. I 'saved myself for marriage', and anyway never clearly understood how sex took place until a biology course in my second year of college. I did most of the housekeeping (and some cooking) for nine of the first dozen years of our marriage, and it was my suggestion that I continue to manage at least half the chores once we were both working outside the home. I still commemorate not just Cindy's and my wedding anniversary, but the day we met, the day of our first date, and the day we became engaged. I am sentimental to the brink of neurosis. I find nothing so cathartic as a good cry (though generally in private). 'Beauty and the Beast' is my favourite classic faerie tale, Disney film, and American television serial (CBS 1987-90).
... So I rather resent people presupposing anything about me based on male stereotypes.
7. I had my first three cups of coffee over the course of a week in my early teens. They were also my last. I didn't enjoy them and saw no reason thereafter to take up the habit. I discovered tea, however, around my last year of college, about the same time that I began to realize how many of my long-time favourite books, films, legends, musical works, foods, and even furniture were British in origin (albeit more representative of an earlier era). It would still be another decade, however, before a couple from South Africa (yes, Ian; I mean you and Quirien) finally taught us how to prepare tea properly. The rest is history.
8. What George MacDonald's Phantastes was to C.S. Lewis, The Lord of the Rings has been to me. My parents tried heroically to make a reader out of me, but it was not until my fifth-grade English teacher began reading aloud from The Hobbit at the end of her classes that a book genuinely ignited something inside me. I persuaded my mother to buy me a copy which I devoured almost overnight. Then, discovering it to be a 'prequel' to a larger work, I ploughed through J.R.R. Tolkien's three-volume masterpiece with more enthusiasm than true comprehension. Since those days I have read it at least a dozen times, on my own or aloud to Cindy; I own cassette and CD copies of the BBC radio serial (not to be confused with the appalling 'Mind's Eye' version); I have read much of Tolkien's other work, both fiction and scholarship; and, despite the eventual blossoming of my interests in many subjects and a personal library of over 2000 books, the great epic of the End of the Third Age of Middle-earth remains at the core of my literary world, and has permanently and profoundly shaped my perspective on life and my understanding of joy, sorrow, hope, sacrifice, humility, courage, beauty, loyalty, devotion, and the simple, homely pleasures and gifts the modern world too easily throws away or ploughs under.
Like many, I felt betrayed by Peter Jackson's cinematic version, not because he inevitably adapted the story to perceived film requirements, but because he completely changed the fundamental spirit and motivation of every major character save one. Patience was reinterpreted as lack of confidence, loyal friendship as accidental encounter, bold resolution as the product of trickery and manipulation, and selfless wisdom and virtue as low self-esteem. These were not the people I knew. In Tolkien's hands, however, their great hearts had 'baptized my imagination', nurtured my soul for nearly half a century, and set me on the path to becoming a devotee of books and of the English language.
9. I love Cindy. More than anything in this world. Folk far worthier than I will ever be rarely find such happiness, and I count it as nothing short of a miracle that I did. My marriage has taught me the deepest gratitude -- to Cindy and for Cindy. In a song I wrote for and sang at our wedding, I said, 'Because you're joining me, I know I never really was alone.'
10. I am a Christian, but I was not really raised as such. My highly intellectual parents were becoming sceptics at that time, and what experience I did have of church up till my early teens was sheer boredom. Nor was I persuaded to faith by any sermon, religious literature, or 'personal evangelism'. I can only say that, for as far back as I remember, throughout a very melancholy and lonely childhood, there had always been a Presence on the edge of my consciousness. Eventually (and somewhat abruptly) that Presence drew closer and, through a series of circumstances, pointed me toward the Church and gently affirmed the foundations of traditional Christianity: The trustworthiness of Scripture, the unique divinity of Jesus, and the truths of Atonement and the Resurrection.
Thus, I am not a Christian because of blind faith in archaic texts and improbable testimonials, nor because I ignore the complex and often painful realities of Church history. I trust the Scriptures, with all their difficulties; I follow Christ, with all the outrageousness of His claims; and I embrace the Church, with all its human failings -- because God, the Creator of the cosmos, made Himself real to me first.
(Copyright © 2009 by Edward Waters)
12/7/2008
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT By Edward Waters (Copyright © 2003)
‘Mild He lays His glory by.’ CHARLES WESLEY
In his acclaimed book Peace Child,
Don Richardson recounts his difficulty, as a missionary in the 1960s,
trying to communicate the gospel to a remote tribe of cannibals whose
culture prized treachery as the highest of ideals. For them, earning
someone’s complete trust, then having them for dinner (first in one
sense, followed closely by another) constituted an art and a means to
status. So how was one to explain the life and work of Christ to a
people predisposed to see Judas as the hero of the tale? Richardson
eventually found the answer when he observed the tribe, desperate to
end a destructive war with a neighbour, secure peace by offering one of
its own beloved children to be raised by the enemy. The ‘peace child’
proved a decisive object lesson by which the missionary was able to
relate to that culture the identity and role of another beloved Son who
came and lived among enemies in order to bring peace between God and
mankind. I
think about this story every time I hear some well-meaning Christian
rail against the pagan origins of so many Christmas traditions. Yes,
adorning evergreen trees, making wreaths, decking the halls with boughs
of holly, even Christmas Day’s place on the calendar, all hail from
pre-Christian times and cultures. But, like Richardson’s use of the
tribe’s peace child idea – in fact, like the apostle Paul in Athens,
quoting Greek poets [1] and citing an altar ‘to an unknown god’ [2] –
early missionaries to Europe endeavoured to illustrate and help drive
home the Truths of the gospel (such as resurrection and eternal life)
by appropriating, reinterpreting, and so redeeming certain elements of
the cultures to which they ministered. God has been using this method
since the Fall, by the way: Even circumcision was around long before it
was entrusted to Moses. And let’s not forget the ghastly origins of the
cross!
So I try to allow myself to enjoy the Advent season, what most people
now call ‘Christmas time’. Admittedly, I make some adjustments:
Objecting to how commercial the holiday has become, my wife and I
generally give home-baked goods instead of buying presents – and if I
send cards, I design them myself. Also, from early in our marriage we
always said that if we had children we would seek to provide them with
some better source of wonder than a certain popular figure that has
become tarnished with rather more than just ashes and soot. But I do
love Christmas trees, Christmas dinners, snowy country scenes, reading
of Scrooge and his visitations, caroling, gatherings of friends around
the hearth, and so forth. In truth, many of the once-pagan elements of
the occasion have degenerated into something neither pagan nor
Christian but merely secular, and I find that more sad than threatening.
Yet, whatever comes into my Christmas observance, I for one never
forget that which the day now celebrates. In fact, every year – sooner
or later – I am struck anew by the phenomenal notion of the Incarnation
itself. Perhaps because I was a poet at heart raised by parents of a
strong scientific bent, I may comprehend the in-comprehensible
vastness of the universe as well as any finite human can – how tiny our
galaxy is in that universe, how tiny our sun is in that galaxy, how
tiny our planet is compared to that sun, and how tiny we are on the
face of this planet. And I am utterly awed by the thought that the
Creator of All, who infinitely dwarfs the seemingly infinite cosmos,
entered that cosmos and took on the shape, limitation, and
vulnerability of a tiny human child. He who by His very Being humbles
all things somehow became the definition of humility itself, and the
paragon of expressing eternal Truth in a familiar, accessible form.
‘Veil’d in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail, th’incarnate Deity!’
Love’s sacrifice on our behalf culminated at Calvary, but it began in
the womb of a young woman barely more than a child herself. People who
talk of ‘the Christmas spirit’ may mean any number of things, but the
true spirit of Christmas is humility born of love. He ‘who is enthroned
on high … humbles Himself’, wrote the psalmist. [3] ‘“They shall call
His name Immanuel,”’ quoted Matthew, ‘… God with us.’ [4] If the love
of God could so move Him to humble Himself, how can it not move us to
humble ourselves as well, both toward Him and toward one another? ‘Have
this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,’ wrote
Paul. [5] That indeed could be considered the apostle’s way of wishing
the Christmas spirit on us all. Scripture References: [1] Acts 17.28 [2] Acts 17.23 [3] Psalm 113.5-6 [4] Isaiah 7.14; Matthew 1.23 [5] Philippians 2.5
[Revised from a devotional first delivered in 2002 at Covenant Fellowship of Greensboro, North Carolina]
2/14/2008
Two Trees
[to my wife on the 21st anniversary of our first meeting]
By Edward Waters (Copyright © November 1996)
Two trees,
sharing one soil,
reaching together into one sunlight,
drinking with single joy of every rain,
in time
entangle roots,
meld trunk and branch,
wear common rings,
and come to live--
or die--
as one.
Wound this,
and that will wither;
but nurture that,
and this will thrive.
And if
at last
some storm or blight should fell them,
they will but perish
in each other's arms.
12/1/2007
Anyone else ...
Would have died in a miscarriage
on the hard road to Bethlehem ...
Would have perished of disease,
being born in a public stable ...
Would have been among the countless infants
who were slaughtered in Herod's jealous rage ...
Would have grown up only to be
stoned to death as a heretic
for speaking the Truth ...
Would have drowned
in the storm on the Sea of Galilee ...
Would have STAYED dead when crucified.
But not Messiah ...
* * *
'The light shines in the darkness;
And the darkness did not overpower it.'
(John 1.5)
This year,
May you discover the true miracle of Christmas.
His name is Jesus.
* * *
VEILED IN FLESH, THE GODHEAD SEE.
HAIL THE INCARNATE DEITY!
(Copyright © 1985, 2007 by Edward Waters)
[See also 'The Christmas Spirit' -- Edward's short essay on celebration and wonder in the Season of the Incarnation] 8/11/2007
Pandora's Prize
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 18 August 1994)
['. . . Hope. It was the only good the casket had held among the many evils . . .' --Edith Hamilton]
Even there It lived and seemingly had long survived, An alien amidst the undiluted bile which now burst forth upon the earth to mix with mortal life and so concoct and serve a drink called woe. How many eons had it thus endured? Crushed beneath that wretched weight. Smothered by the putrid air. Violated by the seething darkness. She thought it frail, and so it seemed when all was loosed and it alone remained. But still She held it fast, sensing its worth despite her fear and shame, And so proved, if a little late, her wisdom.  5/26/2007
Changeling
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 18 August 1993)
Passion always seemed to me a word of some unseemliness, allied only with dark, torrid conceits, unsettling ferocity, and craving -- the obsessions some think 'love'.
But lately I have gazed in pools of depths unguessed and found reflected there a face unknown, set with a look irresistible as tempests, adamant as steel, and gentle as the stir from bud to bloom. Intensity and grace in one regard, come to redeem its name.
3/18/2007
Ecclesiastes 3.11
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 13 May 1996)
Eternity is set within our hearts, And thus what we have never known we never can wholly forget. Even our vain treasures reveal our sense of frailty, like ballast borne in tiny ships adrift in endless seas. And yet, those waters are our native realm, And fear is but the cost of our forgetting, and the memory of our shame. They only drown who cling to sinking vessels.
Eternity is set within our hearts -- A curse to haunt the exile, But a tide to bear the wandering voyager home.

12/1/2006
A band of common labourers heard the angels sing. (Luke 2.13-14)
A handful of outsiders saw a heavenly sign. (Matthew 2.1-2)
A man near death saw God's promises come true. (Luke 2.25-32)
An aged widow long shut off from the world heard the news with joy and began to spread the word. (Luke 2.36-38)
The mighty, the influential, the arrogant, the proud saw nothing whatsoever, heard nothing save strange rumours,
As the Master of the Universe came among them.
* * *
'God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise ... the weak things of the world to shame the strong ...' (I Corinthians 1.27)
Wishing you this Christmas grace in your weakness.
* * *
HE MAKES THE NATIONS PROVE THE GLORIES OF HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.
(Copyright © 1994, 2006 by Edward Waters)

9/2/2006
EDWARD WATERS
'Bard of the Grey Wind' IN CONCERT
Friday, 15th September 2006, 7.30 p.m.
3206 Ardoch Court, Greensboro, North Carolina
This concert will be in a private home. It is free and open to the public, but space is limited; so out of consideration for the hosts and their efforts to plan effectively, please e-mail ( 4dharrisons@triad.rr.com) to let them know you plan to attend.
8/5/2006
Wisdom
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 9 April 1992)
I am faithful to a fault. I keep on trying when saner men would cease. I keep to promises, even when it is evident the one to whom I pledged gives not a damn for what I do. I keep on loving long past the point when I would rather die. I keep forgiving, although it nearly never fails that next time I sustain a deeper wound. I am a fool.
But I see wiser men who give more cautiously, who love more sparingly, who make their limits clear, who guard their self-respect. And, strangely, as I start again, I do not envy them.

7/20/2006 King David's Mind*
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 12 August 1992)
I think, perhaps, we do make our own torment in this life. Time is replete with victims of the cruelest pain who meet their fate or loss with faith and courage, even joy, and stewards of the greatest gifts who can but whine and rage for what they lack. Which fellowship is mine? My blessings pass my skill to count. My wealth surpasses gold. My eyes have seen, my ears have heard, my soul has touched more than most men can even dream. And yet, not for the first time, I stand upon a precipice, my back turned toward the Heights, and gaze on things below which would destroy me.
[* II Samuel 11.2]

7/8/2006
The Poet in My Soul
A Song by Edward Waters (Copyright © June 1991)
It seems the older that this body gets to be, I grow less certain of the things that I see. When I was young my eyes were bright, my vision well defined; O can it be that I am going blind? Maybe it's just part of growing old; Maybe it's a faith that's growing cold; Or maybe youth has ever been too bold. Maybe it's the poet in my soul.
I see a world of people yearning to know peace, Yet haunted by the ghosts of a past they won't release. They long for love, and yet they guard themselves as their own And so ensure they'll always be alone. Maybe it's their need to keep control; Maybe love is too much more to hold. Maybe I see more than can be told; Maybe it's the poet in my soul.
Would that I could heal the fear I glimpse in the eyes, The heart that's hid beneath a smile of disguise; But sturdy walls hold well against both enemy and friend, And who can say who's conquered in the end? Maybe some hearts never can be whole; Maybe I should let this doom unfold; But something in me can't accept that role -- Maybe it's the poet in my soul.
With age I learn anew how to be bold; Maybe it's the poet in my soul.

6/17/2006
Apology
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 27 March 1992)
Seeming empty space the air before me, immaterial and without force -- Until an eddy stirs, unseen save in the leaves which are its sport; Until the trees themselves sway in its worship; Until the very elements of water, earth, and fire are humbled or exalted at their elder brother's whim; Until invisibility is long forgotten in the sense-absorbing image of the storm.

5/7/2006
Epiphanies
A Song by Edward Waters
(Copyright © September 1995)
There are whispers in the trees. There is laughter in the stream.
There are stars that course the night. There's a story told in every dream.
There is Truth and there are lies: Both may wear the same disguise.
Blessed is he whose heart is pure. He alone will see and know for sure.
There are things you only hear when you know how to be still.
There are things that you can do only when you lay aside your will.
Sometimes you can only pray when you've nothing left to say.
He receives who understands and reaches out with empty hands.
There are moments wrought of grace when from this troubled sleep we stir
And dimly glimpse the Waking World, then close our eyes again, secure.
There is healing for the pain. There is joy for the grief.
For the weariness there's rest. For the burden there is relief.
But sometimes you can only pray when you've nothing left to say.
He receives who understands and reaches out with empty hands.
There are moments wrought of grace when from this troubled sleep we stir
And dimly glimpse the Waking World, then close our eyes again, secure.
There is healing for the pain. There is joy for the grief.
For the weariness there's rest. And for all our burdens ...
there is relief.
4/29/2006
A World More Worthy
A Song by Edward Waters (Copyright © November 1994)
In the morning's early hours, taking solace in my tea, I gaze out of my window and I'm lost in reverie. And though the warming daylight gathers and the shadows thaw, It seems that my own night will not withdraw.
Where is the light I need To dawn inside of me? For I've work to be done and errands to run And the hope of my rest when all is through. Yet I sense in even these common things A deeper truth.
I stand on a mountain where the world seems to end, And I watch a hawk above me as he rides on the wind. And though my mind says he's hunting, with his keen and distant sight, My heart knows he's just revelling in flight!
Where is the wind I need To lift me off my weary feet? From the day of my birth I am bound to the earth, To the ground which receives me when I die. Yet, in scorn of reason, I am sure I was made to fly!
Who has not looked in the glass and, for an instant, seemed to see Beyond himself a world more worthy to be called 'reality'?
In our intellect and hubris, we deny or we ignore The relentless whisper in our hearts that there is something more. Could it be we live with shadows cast upon our field of sight By the truer things that stand within the light?
Though these shapes are all I've known, They awake in me a yearning for home. Call it only a dream, but this same poignant theme Has haunted hearts since the first poet's song, Like a lingering memory of the realm Where we belong.
 4/23/2006
THE LOST CHILD (a parable)
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 2002)
One day, while visiting a strange city, a man discovered a small child living in a back alley. She was filthy and foul-smelling, crawling with lice and dressed in rags that barely hid the skeleton which passed for her body. Her only shelter was an old corrugated box set against a wall beneath a fire-escape. Her bed was a pile of damp newspapers. And most of her food, such as it was, came from a large dumpster at the front of the alley near where it opened onto the street.
That was where he first saw her, climbing out of the rusty metal vault, her arms full of rotting scraps. When he started toward her she dropped everything, fled to her box, and hid as best she could in the shadows of its recess. The man followed, but stopped a few yards away. All he could see were her bony toes and ankles, and her huge eyes as they caught what dim light the alley allowed. He tried to speak to her, but she only began shaking with terror. So he left. He returned a short while later, however, with real food and several blankets. The child still would not come out, but the man set his gifts on the ground and left once more.
The next day he was back and noted with satisfaction that the food had been eaten and the blankets taken. He had brought more food, which he set down as before. He stayed only briefly, but he did say a few words of greeting in a kind voice, and this time the girl did not shake. She remained in her box, but she simply watched him in silence.
This went on for more than a week before the man earned some show of confidence. Eventually, however, the child began to come out and take away the food while he was still present, as long as he kept a safe distance. He always spoke to her, and though she never answered, she seemed to understand something of what he said. After two weeks she would even eat the food where he laid it, and allow him to talk at greater length while she crammed whole handfuls into her mouth. He told her stories, about what he did for a living, the places he had been, and the wonders he had seen. And sometimes a look would come into her eyes, as if for the first time her imagination was beginning to venture beyond the dirty brick walls surrounding her.
By the third week, he would see her at the mouth of the alley waiting for him. As he approached she always retreated into the dark passage, but when he rounded the corner she would be standing before her box expectantly. And now, though obviously cautious, she would take the plate from his hands.
Then one day, as she ate, he began to tell her a different kind of story. He said that he was her father -- that, when she was so young she could barely walk, she had been kidnapped. A ransom had been demanded and paid, but she was not returned. Eventually the kidnappers were caught and punished, but by then the child was no longer with them, though they insisted she had been alive when they last saw her.
Ever since, the father had searched for his lost child, following every trace of a lead until, after years, he had come to this alley. And now that he had found her, he was ready to take her away and give her a new life -- one where she would have a home with a real roof overhead, and a warm bed to sleep in; where she would have plenty to eat, and always be loved.
But as the man spoke, the child's eyes grew wide with fear. Suddenly she dropped the food and scurried back into her box. She grabbed up the blankets and threw them out onto the ground; then huddled in the corner, trembling violently. Now nothing he said could calm her.
She could not comprehend a real home or a warm bed, plenty of food or being loved. What she did understand was that this stranger wanted to take her away from everything familiar. As pitiful as it was, this world was her idea of safety. She preferred what she knew over his unbelievable promises.

4/15/2006
Beyond Entropy
By Edward Waters (Copyright © 5 August 1992)
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In the end, they say, all light fails. Darkness. Death. Cold. Collapse. Doomed is light and heat within a cosmos running down to utter stillness.
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Indeed, darkness seems the norm of things. Light can intrude, but once expired -- darkness is all remaining. The brightest star is but a pinprick bleeding in the void, a wound which time will heal and leave the body whole as one vast night.
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But I say, the body that can bleed can die. We feed on life; we dread blood; containing both and yielding both at last. So darkness, which devours and flees the light, may be mere flesh, caging a soul of light which some- Day must go free. |
 4/9/2006
Irony
A Song by Edward Waters
(Copyright © August 1994)
How often we are weakened by our struggle to be strong.
We fly the straightest arrows, but we choose our target wrong.
We fight for independence, but then we bow to its command
And we’re only free of the allies we have driven from our land.
We analyze the darkness so to understand the night,
And we think ourselves mature when we no longer seek the light.
We bury what is real and in its stead we raise a ghost,
And this lifeless shell hiding inner hell is the thing we cherish most!
It’s bitter irony, the living on this earth
Where utter folly can seem wise.
There’ll be no peace until the soul has felt its worth
And we can see with clearer eyes.
For the sky above is higher than we dare to comprehend,
And there’s more to real maturity than seeing childhood end.
We’ve a wealth of information, but a poverty of truth;
It can weigh us down until we drown in the fountain of our youth.
It’s bitter irony, the living on this earth
Where utter folly can seem wise.
There’ll be no peace until the soul has felt its worth
And we can see with clearer eyes.
A portrait is not done when canvas meets with oil.
A race is run until there’s victory for the toil.
And we must not confine our sight to what we’ve seen;
We’ve yet to glimpse what vision means!
In our infancy we’re nurtured, then we learn to stand alone;
But till we transcend the strength of both, we have not truly grown.
There’s a time to ride the current, and a time to plough a course;
And there comes a time to leave the waves and walk upon the shores.
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