[R. S. Gwynn]

After Great Things
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Let us go home, where righteousness abides.
The homes are ours, the righteousness as well,
And once we are securely locked inside
Ours is the pride that comes and gently swells
Our breasts with air that soon must be expelled
Like the gas of balloons. When we have sighed,
Let us inspire so as not to burst our sides
Or bulge against the censure of tight belts.

Now we have conquered pride, time comes to turn
Our full attention to humility;
If not humility (which none can learn)
Then faith or hope, perhaps, or charity,
Or something in-between no one can see
Or, leaning closer, still cannot discern.


Revised

After Great Things
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Let us go home, where righteousness abides.
The homes are ours, the righteousness as well,
And once we are securely locked inside
Ours is the pride that comes and gently swells
Our breasts with air that soon must be expelled
Like the gas of balloons. When we have sighed,
Let us inspire so as not to strain our sides
Or heave against the censure of tight belts.

Now we have conquered pride, time comes to turn
Our full attention to humility;
If not humility (which none can learn)
Then faith or hope, perhaps, or charity,
Or something in-between once cannot see
Or, seen but dimly, cannot quite discern.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Sam—

Nice spoof of the fuzzy, triumphalist brand of Christianity that tries to hide the pea of self-interest and tribalism in a shell game of righteous-sounding abstractions.

Glenn

[Yves S L]

Hello Gwynn,

This is one of those preaching to the choir type things. It gives an opportunity for people who already think or feel or certain to have the thoughts and feelings echoed in social settings. Obviously, you have technique. It seems to me to have the same old flavour of typical polarising political discourse. Do I really want to see that rhymed and metered? You can do what you want, obviously.

For me, personally, this essay was more productive: https://www.georgekoch.com/Jesus-Out-of-the-Box

[Carl Copeland]

I particularly like the first two lines and the last two. I also like the title and how it can be read as part of the first sentence, but it looked to me as if you took it from Corinthians. I guess the celebrated passage you cite tells what some of those great things might be, but I wonder if the epigraph is more distracting than anything else. Love (charity) is mentioned later in passing, but doesn’t seem central to the poem.

The last two lines of the octave lost me at first. “Burst our sides” sounded like laughter, and the “censure of tight belts” didn’t seem very beneficial, but I guess it’s a tool for controlling pride.

No one can fault you for not having a volta, but can pride be utterly vanquished in Christianity? Just wondering.

[Paula Fernandez]

Hi R.S. --

First, well done with the rhyme and meter, which seems quite skillful to my ears. Personally, I adore lines 3-8 of this in which pride is released like gas, and then we "inspire" to not overfill ourselves going forward. That's quite clever!

I'm a little fuddled by the theology, perhaps because the verses you reference (1 Cor 13:1-3) don't really deal directly with pride, but rather say that love is even better than spiritual gifts (which are pretty good). The last two lines of the poem seem to reference "now we see through a glass darkly, but then we will see face to face" (1 Cor 13:12) which is referencing the return of Jesus I think. I'm not sure that reference is working with your theme (if I understood it, which is a big IF), of how we deceive ourselves about our own virtue.

I was way over-churched as a child, so I may be overthinking the theology here. I do really love the last two lines, by the way, which seem quite beautiful to me. But if I've got the joke of the octave, then I'm not sure that the sestet quite goes with it.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I guess "cannot" in the last line constitutes a double negative. Right?

[Carl Copeland]

Yes, but devilishly well hidden. You could fix it in L13 with “in between we cannot see” (no hyphen needed) or in L14 with something like “Or, seen as yet but dimly, quite discern.”