Left-handed writing
Several days ago I broke my right hand–the hand that I write with. Since then I’ve tried to learn how to write with my left hand. I have found it to be a chore as well as a window into wisdom that can come only from depending on something we’ve neglected or ignored. How does the Body of Christ honor the need we have to embrace what seems like our weaker parts? What happens when some parts are so neglected that they atrophy and can’t be heard because they speak a language we do not understand? And what if that kind of mistaken incompetence is exactly what we need to be revitalized? Questions for a people waiting for resurrection.
“On the contrary,
we cannot do without the parts of the body
that seem to be weaker” –I Corinthians 12:22
Left-handed Writing– A Poem from the Side that Hasn’t had Its Say
Left handed writing
slow deliberate
and scarcely respectable
strange incompetence
uncontrollable hieroglyphes
and doomed to be dismissed.
I encounter each letter
a familiar acquaintance
so I thought
then when I touch I bump
into a stranger instead
too taxed to figure some
other expression that
waits for its day
Marcia – So sorry to hear about your broken hand. But God is already using you to provoke thought in readers. Your poem made me think of how often in our everyday lives we encounter strangers, like weird hieroglyphes, bumping into them, not knowing what to say, not sure how to share Christ. And that perhaps our sufferings and tragedies in this life enable us to slow down to see how impossible it is to make it through this life on our own, without God’s Spirit. Thank you for your wisdom.