Sweet Questionings

Methinks this blog has gone too long without a definitive, imaginative, evocative name. I don't know what to do about it. Every time I come over to post something, I get distracted by the title dilemma. My apologies to Juliet, but a rose by any other name is not as sweet.

You might have seen us trying on "Sweet Questionings" for size. I like it, and I don't. Do you? Does it make you think immediately of Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning"? Because it should:

She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?

I don't want something so melancholy as "Sunday Morning." I love Stevens. I love this poem. It strikes some deep chord in me, but without fail, it makes me weep myself into a puddle every time I read it. I don't want that to happen to you when you read my blog. I want to consider the questions of human experience. But I also want to help keep hope warm in each of us. Our Father who sees when the sparrow falls certainly knows each of our frailties and loves us still.

Hope was but a timid friend.
Hope is thing with feathers.

Yet Robin sings thro’ Winter’s rest,
When bushes put their berries on;
While they their ruddy jewels don,
He sings out of a ruddy breast;
The hips and haws and ruddy breast
Make one spot warm where snowflakes lie,
They break and cheer the unlovely rest
Of Winter’s pause—and why not I?*

*Lines borrowed from E. Bronte, E. Dickinson, & C. Rossetti