You awaken your True spirit by way of the broken heart: ragged, vulnerable, fierce and finally compassionate. Chris trod this rough way and shows honestly how it can be done.
Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.
You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was "the scourge of God. "
Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish, Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire, Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow.
Who that hath ever been Could bear to be no more? Yet who would tread again the scene He trod through life before?
One day through the primeval wood A calf walked home as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. . . . . And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
But let the good old corn adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God!
I long to set foot where no man has trod before.
Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need; And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod, They have left unstained, what there they found,- Freedom to worship God.
And Burns--though brief the race he ran, Though rough and dark the paths he trod, Lived--died--in form and soul a man, The image of his God.
The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest - who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came.
I won a noble fame; But with a sudden frown, The people snatched my crown, And, in the mire, trod down My lofty name.
If we want the advantages of love, then we must be willing to take the risks of love. And that requires vulnerability. Of course, we can refuse this path and trod another one devoid of openness. But the toll on such a road is extremely high.
I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
