If Thou Could'st Empty All Thyself of Self-by Sir Thomas Browne

My last post reminded me of this poem, one of my favorites.

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, "This is not dead,"
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou are all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says, "This is enow
Unto itself - 'twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for me."

Paradox

Whoever saves his life will lose it, whoever loses his life will save it.
Perfect freedom lies in complete surrender.
The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
I can only be wholly myself when I have lost all sense of self.
We are strongest when we have embraced our weakness.
Etc. (There lots of others.)

The Bible and the Christian faith contains so many examples of paradox, things which always give me food for thought and ideas to which I always seem to return. God seems to deal in these paradoxes. I think that although the pardoxes can be understood partially on an intellectual plane, they can never be understood completely because they reflect a deeper reality of the spiritual world, a reality in which we cannot participate while we are still tied to the physical one. I am sure that learned theologians have written more intelligently and interestingly about this, but I still thought I would share.

(BTW, I think the plural of paradox should be paradoxa, not paradoxes.)