Aside

If you were wondering why my writing tends to include so many commas and sentence fragments, it may be because I have spent the last five years reading the complete works of John Owen. I came across this passage the other day and it made me laugh out loud.

"He is mine, I possess him, I have interest in him, as my head and my husband; and I am his, possessed of him, owned by him, given up unto him and that as to my Beloved in a conjugal relation."

I feel I have absorbed somewhat of the rhythm of Owen's writing, if not anywhere near his depth of insight or breadth of knowledge. I am not 100% sure this is a good thing, since Owen was once described in his writing style thus: "Owen travels through it (his subject) with the elephant’s grace and solid step, if sometimes also with his ungainly motion."

Haha, probably I flatter myself. But Owen is dead and can't complain.


(Compare, for example, to this passage: "This was easier to grasp, but I loved to ask it to hear my father pour forth of the love, the faithfulness, the inexpressible delight that comes from nearness, from speaking, from the sheer knowledge of God, the one so inaccessible, so far off from us. These promises bring us near to him! my father would say, his voice rising. To possess him is all, to possess him is all.")