Evangeline is a name that I have always loved. It has acquired layers of meaning for me over many years. It has signified the idea of steadfastness, the idea of prompt answering of a call, the idea of calm courage, and the idea of good tidings of victory. This poem is sort of about having the courage to check out of the anxiety/anger factory we live with nowadays. We can’t seek peace if we don’t leave room to let it in. So that’s what this poem is about. Do what you do, live your days in the present, and look to eternity. I’m just as susceptible to all this worry and anger as anyone, but in the end, worry gets you nowhere. It just leaves you stuck. So this poem is written to myself as much as to anyone else. We are allowed to not be caught up. We are allowed to not take worry as some sort of proof that we are virtuous human beings. Indeed, we are encouraged to look to the lilies! If we believe that God keeps (in the older sense of takes care of) what He has made, then all our worrying avails us nothing. We can and must act, live, be in the world, but we don’t have to paralyze ourselves with worry, especially for things over which we have absolutely no control. I think this poem just gives us permission.
Evangeline
Why wait when once the call has come?
Why waver on the edge of eternal joy?
The clarion cry of "victory!" has sounded,
Sung lustily by saints with word, deed and death,
Flung far across time’s chasm and beyond,
Bidding us to bound as deer upon the mountain!
Why worry for the woes of all the world?
Why stoop beneath what only God could bear
By being clothed in crownless clay,
Cross-crushed, entombed by tear-stained hands,
That He might free the fullness of our finitude
From fallen fealty to the frailty of death?
Let us not hault till others catch us up,
But let us send the call to them with joy!
“Be of good courage! Follow fast!
Run well while yet your feet are on the ground!
Trust to the spark that speeds you on,
The fire of love freed finally from fear,
Whose light will live to drown death’s darkest dream!”
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