Written for the kids, one of them at least, many moons ago (more than I will reveal) when said kid was maybe seven or eight, and in response to one of those pain-in-the-ass questions they keep coming up with, like, "Daddy, who's Satan?" Just try telling a seven year old that Satan is an evil spirit at least partly to blame for all mankind's problems, that he was once an angel in heaven who disobeyed God and now has to live in the spiritual equivalent of a toxic waste dump, and whose idea of a vacation is to catch the nearest volcanic eruption to the surface and then run around the earth trying to trick people into making fools of themselves. "Did God make Satan?" "Uh, yeah." "Why?" "Uh..."

I'm not good at playing the exegete with children (nor with adults for that matter), but I got pretty good at distracting them for a while, hopefully until they got to an age when Satan could trick them into thinking they already knew everything. But he was never successful. They did ask questions later and, no matter how pathetic my answer or eye-glazing its length, still manage to keep their faith. In fact, judging from their expressions, I am one of the few people I know who can make a teenager wish he were young again. I carry an instinctual conviction that what you do with them in infancy bears a lasting imprint, may even be of eternal significance.

God, I used to have fun. There seemed to be time for it. Where'd the time go?

          Deep River

Down where the river of sin runs deep
Virtue languishes, fast asleep,
Where hearts, like willows, moan and weep,
   And I have lost my way
Among the lusts, like roots of trees,
Gnarled and flourishing at their ease,
I beg the first-born Liar, "Please,
   Is this night or day?"

Here I cannot find my Lord,
Deep down my earthly treasure's stored,
Where hearts are tossed like ships unmoored -
   "There is no day," he seethes.
"I am the Lord of Light," says he,
"Light and darkness join in me,
Becoming one, yet, still you see -
   Come, share the air I breathe."

Oh, if virtue once would rise
From rest and lift her sleepy eyes
Up, up where the Ghost of heaven flies
   aloft on patient wings;
If virtue once would lock her limbs
Round sin in battle, the Seraphim
Would fly me light that never dims,
   Whereon no darkness clings.

Its brightness burns the Liar blind;
Crawling low he gropes to find
The passage down and drags behind
   A shred of virtue's gown,
Clutched in triumph, stolen away,
Down to the deep bereft of day,
Down, down where the seas run thick like clay:
   Men die but cannot drown.

This shred of man he's given to keep,
Here where the river of sin runs deep,
Here lies virtue fast asleep -
   Slain in the human heart.
To man it shall return once more
When down the Ghost of heaven pours
His grace where Christ stands at the door
   And claims our deepest part.

I long to see my Lord again;
He need not spare me want or pain
(In dreams I've on His bosom lain,
   My heart too still to roam);
Swooping low He'll lift me light,
Like birds we'll brush our wings in flight!
In Him no dread nor dark of night -
   He's come to bring me home.