My Daddy once bought a case of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and kept it in his pickup so he would have extra copies handy to give out to friends and acquaintances when opportunities arose. He was particularly fond of Gibran’s poem “On Children,” the last verse of which says:

Hank Wilson pulling us along (with my sister Miriam and me, Grayson, AL)

“You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

I thought of this when I was rejoicing during my prayers this morning, rejoicing because, with the publishing here of yesterday’s overlong post, “Uncut Diamonds,” I have completed the hard work – the pulling back of the bowstring, if you will – that will now allow me to release the arrow of this blog and let it fly without further heavy lifting and long-winded pontification.

If I were a Southern Baptist, or a Roman Catholic, or a Jehovah’s Witness, for that matter, I could have started a blog about my faith without any concern that others might not know what I believe or where on the faith-spectrum I stand. But my faith, distilled over decades, is my own, and while it rests solidly on my friendship with Jesus as well as my reverence for His Example, for the work of the Holy Mother Spirit, and for our Heavenly Father’s constant companionship, the thimble of truth-grains I have collected in my life includes some unique perspectives, so it was important to me to share with you as best I could at the beginning – to lay a solid foundation for anyone who cares to understand the basics of my beliefs – a job that, I am thrilled to say, is now complete. If you’re just now joining our conversation, these three foundational posts are:

“I. Uncle Jesus:” https://inpraiseofangels.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/uncle-jesus/
“II. The Living Water Boson:” https://inpraiseofangels.wordpress.com/2014/03/09/the-living-water-boson/
and “III. Uncut Diamonds:” https://inpraiseofangels.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/uncut-diamonds/

They are long for blog posts, but hopefully not difficult, and I invite you to read them as you can.

Now, with that said, today inaugurates something new: my daily posts, which will be much, much shorter and, I hope, both fun and worthwhile. There will be a loose structure in the days to come, with poetry on Mondays (mine and others), Pope Francis quotes on Tuesdays, Angel stories on Wednesdays, etc., and I invite any and or all of you to comment and or contribute, particularly if you have any angel stories to share with the rest of us. Please bare with me as I continue to refine my technique for posting on wordpress (and, secondarily, Facebook), which remains a learning curve (it would help if FB would stop changing its settings every other day), but I look forward to getting it right soon enough.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to thank my Heavenly Father for His loving inspiration and willingness to let me do this my way. Or, as I said a few years ago in this short poem – our first Monday Morning Poem:

Slack

The perfect proof of a
Benevolent God
Is our astonishing
Facility for wondering
Why.
No king so kind
Will come to mind
Who’d welcome analytics,
Nor president
Of such a bent
That questioning
Of his intent would
Ever be good politics.
And yet, the very Source of life,
The Center of this field of strife,
Is so secure about His plan,
So loving,
When it comes to man,
That He, alone, among the vast
Array of leaders, now or past,
Has said to all his subjects here:
I AM not going to make it clear,
For wisdom’s more than simply knowing.
It only glows within the growing.
–GTW