The Bone that Has No Marrow

            [originally untitled]

Posting this for Lent, though it does not have specifically Lenten language.  Lent, besides reflecting on our personal sinfulness, is often a time of renewal, of seeking a new path. This poem hints at the need to do that, lest we flounder with no good purpose.      

                        #127

The Bone that has no Marrow,
What Ultimate for that?
It is not fit for Table
For Beggar or for Cat.

A Bone has obligations —
A Being has the same —
A Marrowless Assembly
Is culpabler than shame.*

Nicodemus Visiting Christ
  Henry Ossawa Taylor, 1899

But how shall finished Creatures
A function fresh obtain?
Old Nicodemus’ Phantom
Confronting us again**!

--Emily Dickinson, 1830s.  Part One:  Life

                                        
*A bone without marrow leaves nothing for a creature to eat.  A bone without marrow cannot fulfill its obligations of holding up the body.  A person who similarly can't hold up their obligations is shameful.

**The poet asks how creatures (people) without this structure can remake themselves. She revisits John chapter 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that a person must be "reborn" of the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God.  Nicodemus is puzzled.  Jesus says the Holy Spirit has to do the transforming. Sometimes John chapter 3 is read during Lent.