History vs. Literature

While reading this week's passages, I have realized that literature, poetry, and art can help us relate to people in the past so much more than just what we learn in our history classes. Through these forms, we can understand what these people living years before us felt. We can know that no matter the time, people always feel many emotions, ranging from loneliness to heartbreak to curiosity. Writing is an outlet that is timeless. No matter the time, place, person, or situation, everything can be expressed simply by putting words together. Letters and words and sentences can make you feel worlds closer to someone that you will never meet.
Because of these writings, and the honesty of their authors, we can know that no matter what situations we are in, someone has gone through that too. They felt the same emotions you did, whether it was pure bliss or utter devastation. History lessons could never convey these things. Dates and historical figures teach us nothing about the true lives of people that lived before us. Diaries, poems, articles, and letters let us see more into the past than monuments or presidential portraits.
As a student, I know the lack of appreciation towards literature, but in all reality, it gives us so much more than we could expect if we simply take the time to read, understand, and relate.

Religion vs. Freedom

This week one of our required readings was "The Garden of Love" by William Blake. In this poem, Blake is describing a church scene that he has come across. This church is built on land where children used to roam free and play happily. The doors to the church were shut and above them was the phrase "Thou shalt not." He noticed that where there should be flowers, there were graves, and his joys and desires were "binding with briars."

This poem is a great piece about the church and how cold and legalistic the church can be. Many people feel this way even today and that is not how the church was meant to be, both to those inside and to outsiders looking in. God did not intend for the church to exclude or push away people, but to invite all to dine at the Lord's supper. God did not intend for the church to be constitutionalized and made into one long list of rules, but to be a community of people supporting one another in their walk of faith. God did not intend for anyone to give up freedom to follow Him, but to find freedom through living in Him.

Blake's writing is a timeless idea. The church has never understood God's true desires because they didn't desire Him with surrendered hearts. The more the church aligns itself with God's heart and way of life, the less that people like William Blake will feel uninvited and unloved by the church.