Artistic Jealousy

I wish my heart

had borne such thoughts!

What tender joy

to have penned those words

and sat with them in stillness,

in their infant breaths,

before they were ever clutched

by the possessive eyes of the world

and were swallowed up

by the crowd’s clamoring noise.

But what short-lived jealousy -

I love the words too much

to swim in murky waters long.

The warm flow

of beauty’s savoring

thaws and revives

whatever bitter cold seeks to destroy

the gentle influence

of Truth’s whisperings through human voice.

Background:

Back in February of this year, I heard/read “My Love Has Gone Across the Sea” by Andrew Peterson in his Wingfeather Saga.

*If you haven’t read the series, it has many Biblical references, which are fun to look for.

**If you haven’t read the poem/listened to the song, now is a great time.

Lines like, “I’ll watch for you the winter long/and sing for you a summer song” and especially “rejoice, my love, and call me blessed/in death, my love, I loved you best” resonated with me, made me appreciate for the thousandth time the depth that so many writers reach for in children’s literature, and also made me wish I had written them!

How often have you felt that?

“I wish I made that!”

“I wish I wrote that!”

“I wish I could do that!”

I have felt it too often and had a side of guilt with it! But it doesn’t have to be this way. This can be one of the many, many ways we stir each other up to love and good works - if their art or writing or project or cooking or article inspired you to be better, love better, create better, is that not a good work? And won’t your projects count as the same if they can do the same for even one person?

May you and I bless ourselves by celebrating the projects of others, receiving inspiration from their work that prompts the growth of our own projects, and extolling the virtues of the One Who made us all.

Wishing you goodness without end,

Jess