MacDonald’s sonnets catapult me to the True. The rose, endowed with beauty and thorns, is a figure of the True: the Christlike accord of gentleness and severity.

My Lord, I find that nothing else will do,
But follow where thou goest, sit at thy feet,
And where I have thee not, still run to meet.
Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,
Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,
If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true:
Thou are my life, O Christ, and nothing else will do.
-Diary of an Old Soul February 4

Painting by Jolyn Canty