I found a rusty horseshoe buried at the bottom of a storage box on the second floor. It once was nailed on the north wall of the long dining room. Perhaps it came from the days when this Inn/Hotel needed stables or once cars arrived, it might have been used for a game of horseshoes. What I remember is that it was nailed up wrong, with all the luck running out. Perhaps that’s why it was relegated to obscurity. Somebody lacked horsesense, and lack of horse sense can serve to remind us of our human failings on this frozen Ash Wednesday. As Luther writes: “So man’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills: as the Psalm says, ‘I am become as a beast before thee, and I am ever with thee.”
On the Slavery of the Will
I suffer from nostalgia
for a horse drawn age
when human hearts
could count
on being mounted.
Divinity driven
thoroughly bred
outlaws once
could be corralled.
By the light
of the medieval moon
God or the Devil
would croon,
“Back in the saddle again.”
Better to be spurred
by absolutes,
than harnessed by ambition
or made to chaff at bits
without a destiny in hand.
Ghost ridden by our godless state
our head strong heart less age
stampedes toward the sunset
where four tall horseman wait.
And yet and yet
along the way
a change of mount is tied.
A bared back rider waits
to draw us with the spirit’s tether
and harness hearts to holy need.
Light is the reign
and firm the seat
to mount such change
in metaphor in deed.