Not entirely unrelated to my earlier ruminations on time is this poem by the Anglo-Catholic priest, Christian socialist, and pacifist G. A. Studdert Kennedy. I first read it in the preface to Lesslie Newbigin's autobiography and it left a very strong impression on me, particularly the last stanza.

IT IS NOT FINISHED

It is not finished, Lord.
There is not one thing done;
There is no battle of my life
That I have really won.

And now I come to tell thee
How I fought to fail.
My human, all too human, tale
of weakness and futility.

And yet there is a faith in me
That Thou wilt find in it
One word that Thou canst take
And make
The centre of a sentence
In Thy book of poetry.

I cannot read the writing of the years,
My eyes are full of tears,
It gets all blurred and won’t make sense;
It’s full of contradictions
Like the scribblings of a child.

I can but hand it in, and hope
That Thy great mind, which reads
The writings of so many lives,
Will understand this scrawl
And what it strives to say – but leaves unsaid.
I cannot write it over, the stars are coming out,
My body needs its bed.
I have no strength for more,
So it must stand or fall – dear Lord,
That’s all.

(Source: Maggie Dawn)