Who is your Muse?

Have you ever read any of the great poems, the epics of old? Something like Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, or Homer's Iliad and Oddessy. If you're like me then you have or at least want to eventually. I personally love these poems. They are dripping with imagery, sewn together with metaphors and similes and ripe with vocabulary words that are so uncommonly used you may think they are another language. 

Part of a great epic is the role of the Muse. The muses are the goddesses of literature, science and art. Typically the poet will pray or send his or her condolences to the muse before embarking on their literary journey. It's actually said that Dante (author of Dante's Divine Comedy) put down his pen for years, vowing to never pick it up again until he could write a work worthy of his lover and muse Beatrice. 

That is truly incredible! A love so deep, so great, so fervent, it drives you to put down your greatest pleasure, your very identity for something else. Dante was a poet...his very identity was wrapped up in his pen. His blood was ink, his pulse pentameter, his breath, literature. And yet all for the love of Beatrice he would lay it down, committing years of his life to learning in order to prove his love worthy. 

I know you guys know where this one is going, but come on, I had to say it. 

Who is your muse?

Where do you draw your inspiration from? Who is the one that motivates you more than anything else in this world. Lately I've been thinking about my own life and how I call myself a Christian, and yet, God is the farthest thing from my daily inspiration. What if we started living like Dante? Living every day for the sole purpose of pursing a life worthy of our love. Does our love for God motivate us to lay down everything we love and hold so dearly that we are willing to drop our very identities for Him? It reminds me of the Apostle Paul who wrote, "...for to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain." (Philippians 1:21) Is living really Christ to us? I guess I'm starting to repeat myself but the question begs to be answered, who is your muse?

Oh holy Father and eternal essence of light,

Radiance of true light, and pure divine nature,

Grant favor to your servants fleshly meter,

May my life forever beat, with the rhythms of heaven.

-The Albatross