Hey friends,

I have a new author to tell you about….You know I love reading, so I thought I’d share a new discovery!

“Thomas Stearns Eliot” lived from 26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965. He was a poet, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot did the opposite of me – he was born in the United States, and moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25). He said: “[My poetry] wouldn’t be what it is if I’d been born in England, and it wouldn’t be what it is if I’d stayed in America. It’s a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.”

I like that he lived in both the countries that I’ve lived in, and that he found inspiration in both, as I have done. I think he and I would have had a lot to chat about over a cup of Earl Grey tea!

Anyways…  All credit for me discovering this new writer goes to Daley Hake, who shared some thoughts about Eliot’s poetry when he came to visit a few days ago. If you haven’t read Daley’s blog or seen his photography, click on his photo below and it will take you to his website…

Here are a few of the T.S.Eliot quotes I’ve found and am loving:

“All dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with roads and settled nowhere” (Hmmm..I know that feeling!)

“O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word”

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Pretty deep stuff!!

So I encourage you to check out his works… I’m just scraping the surface as I’ve only read a couple of quotes on Wikipedia! But I’m about to dive into one of his poems called “The Rock” and really think about how his writings apply to the church of today. Here’s my favorite Eliot quote so far:

“The Church must be forever building,
For it is forever decaying within and attacked from without”

When I hear him say that the church must “be forever building” I think he means that we can never sit down and get into a rut as the Body of Christ. We must keep asking “are we truly living out the Gospel? And do we as ‘the Church’ look anything like Jesus intended and dreamed we would?”

How can we as a generation impact and build the Church increasingly into something that reflects Jesus and His heart? What would that look like?

How do we keep the Gospel true and pure, and yet make our expression and presentation of ‘church’ accessible and relevant to the culture of today?

Is our expression of church today something that pleases God’s heart, and something that embodies the Gospel? Or have we missed the boat?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Love,

Vicky