Imagine

By Lucy Wall

The words and format of this poem were inspired by the song also entitled "Imagine" which was written by the late John Lennon. Although his death was now many years ago, the song is still very popular today and I hear it used a lot on T.V. The 2012 Olympic closing ceremony being a prime example! Whatever Lennon had in mind for the song when he wrote it, it certainly seems to have become the "atheist's anthem" in society today.

I have a huge respect for John Lennon and I share and appreciate his desire for peace and unity in the world. At the time of writing this song however, he seems to come from the view point that if mankind can "erase" God then we can achieve this unity. I find this and some other ideas expressed in his lyrics to be extremely flawed.

For example, his first two lines read, "Imagine there's no Heaven. It's easy if you try." This statement makes no sense to me. "Imagine there's no Heaven? It's easy if you try?" Why would anyone want to imagine there's no Heaven when Heaven is a place of peace, comfort, love, encouragement and where people can dwell in happiness and contentment? A place that is the embodiment of all things good, where unity reigns and loved ones are reunited. Considering unity is what Lennon longed for so much, it seems very contradictory to want to try and erase the existence of such a place.

Wave Upon The Sand

By Lucy Wall

By Lucy Wall

Lucy Wall from Calvary London on Vimeo.

A singer/song writer friend of mine named Harold sent me an e-mail one day in late 2012 and in his message he said that he'd been having a chat with a neighbour of his the day before. As his neighbour departed to go his way he'd called over his shoulder to my friend and said, "See Harold, there's just too much to do before I die!" Harold told me that he thought his neighbour's words were interesting and that if I could write him a poem in relation to this statement he would like to turn it into a song.

After thinking about his neighbour's comment my thoughts went towards how fast time goes by and how short life is when we look at it with an eternal perspective. When I try to consider eternity (which can be a challenging thing to do considering eternity is infinite and I have a finite mind!) I find myself trying to picture what it would feel like to have spent the earthly equivalent of 500,000 years in Heaven and yet have no less time to go again and again and again!

Bottle Of Tears

By Lucy Wall

My inspiration for this poem came from Psalm 56:8 which reads,

"You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?"

This verse popped into my mind one day and for some reason the image really took root in my imagination. I started to think about what a bottle of tears would look like and not just any tears, tears from an entire lifetime! I started to think things like, "How big does the bottle need to be? Will it be the same size for everyone or according to how many tears they cried in life? I wonder if we'll remember what we were crying about and whether it was worth shedding tears over?"

Part of being alive means we go through a variety of experiences and a whole host of emotions. This led me on to the think about the countless different reasons why we might find ourselves crying.