Parable

“Virtue! a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills
are gardeners.”

Othello, William Shakespeare

“Virtue! A fig!” We grasp the hoe and dig.
The dirt we turn is taken from ourselves.
We chop the trunk and bough; then clip the twig,
and this way prune the molecule and cell.
The slender stalk, the brown and drooping blooms
obey the will within our working hands.
But evening falls and weariness consumes.
Both self and garden disobey commands.
O faithless workers, wake! The Gardener prays
while you sleep sound as seeds inside this wall.
The weeds take root; the best earth turns to clay.
What dirt-clad Adam sowed becomes our Fall.
We’re the compost, fools; we’re “the fig.”
The time is short. Come grasp the hoe and dig.

—Marjorie Maddox


Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Russia’s Sacrilegious War on Ukraine 

George Weigel

Today’s Russian Orthodox leadership is a theological, moral, and pastoral train wreck. U.S. foreign policy can’t fix…

Mind the Gap

Kit Wilson

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religiousby ross douthatzondervan, 240 pages, $29.99 I grew up in a religiously sympathetic,…

Killing Time

Matthew Rose

On October 29, 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre delivered his lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” a declaration of independence…