"Being not unlovable but strange and light..."

To celebrate the release of Deathbed Conversions: Finding Faith at the Finish Line, I'm sharing a poem I included in the book.

As an adult convert, there are so many lines here that I love:

the whole world turned over and came upright 
...
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
...
Old riddles and new creeds 
...
And all these things are less than dust to me/Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

The Convert
by G.K. Chesterton

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

(from The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton)

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is being hosted today by the inimitable Jama Rattigan, at Jama's Alphabet Soup.