From today's teaching . . . and today's parenting

The Collar

BY GEORGE HERBERT

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;

                         I will abroad!

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free, free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

          Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

          Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

    Before my tears did drown it.

      Is the year only lost to me?

          Have I no bays to crown it,

No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?

                  All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,

            And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute

Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,

             Thy rope of sands,

Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee

Good cable, to enforce and draw,

          And be thy law,

While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

          Away! take heed;

          I will abroad.

Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;

          He that forbears

         To suit and serve his need

          Deserves his load."

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

          At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

          And I replied My Lord.

The poem so beautifully describes a person in the midst of a crisis that he has kind of made for himself, when he realizes that he is spiritually, emotionally, physically, professionally, stuck.  You've seen it, you've felt it.  In the end of the poem, the poet is so overcome with his own fit of spite and anger that he can hardly make sense . . . until he hears a voice saying "child."

"Child."  What a world of emotions and relationships there.  As is the case in so many other parts of life, you don't know something fully until you've been right there, in the circumstance.  I've been there many times in recent days with my beloved Little Red. He gets bent out of shape about so many things--having to wear jeans, having to take a shower, having to go to school, having to eat breakfast, having to wake up, having to go to bed--and he just doesn't know when to stop resisting and realize that we will win either way.  The heartbreaking part, and The Triathlete and I both know it's coming, is when he gets sad because he's made us mad.  And that's the moment for the hug and the reminder:  "Child."

and then of course the hug.