Teach Me To Die

I don't have much to say today; sometimes, all I have are questions.  As I was asking my standard myriad of questions tonight, pestering God like a two-year old learning to speak, I chanced across a poem by one of my favorite authors, Madeleine L'Engle.  This poem actually shut me up for a few moments (something, I daresay, even God finds difficult).  I offer it to you here for your consideration and contemplation:

If I can learn a little how to die,
To die while body, mind, and spirit still
Move in their triune dance of unity,
To die while living, dying I'll fulfill
The purpose of the finite in infinity.
If God will help me learn to die today,
Today in time I'll touch eternity,
And dying, thus will live within God's Way.
If I can free myself from self's iron bands,
Freed from myself not by myself, but through
Christ's presence in this simple room, in hands
Outstretched in holy friendship, then, born new
In death, truth will outlive the deathly lie,
And in love's light I will be taught to die.

If I can free myself from self's iron bands, freed from myself...through Christ...Amen.