Onions

The Traveling Onion, by Naomi Nye, was by far the most interesting poem I have ever read. I would first like to start off by saying that I loved the fact that the author gave us a bit of history of the onion before she started her poem, because it allowed me to read the poem with some background knowledge in mind. (Side note: I could not help but think of the movie Shrek and the conversation about ogers being like onions.) Despite this distraction of I was able to read the poem and find a sentimental and meaning. Whether or not this is the meaning of the entire poem, it is something that made me think after reading it and listening to others' response.

In class someone said, "You can't cry until your opened up", as they related this to the section of an onion causing people to cry once you cut into one. Then for some reason I thought about what I prayed for last night. I specifically asked God to take old habits and old ways of thinking out of my life, but in order to do this He must "dissect" me internally before I act out externally. I must allow Christ to make an incision on my body so that He may pull back the insidious layers that are causing damage to my life. As I sat there, contemplating in my thoughts, I realized that if I want God to truly take away, uproot, the undesired things in my life, then I am going to have to surrender and allow the layers of my life to be revealed. It is in that moment of surrendering my life to Christ where I feel the most vulnerable to cry and I find it relevant that when you cut into an onion, it isn't until you start pulling back and cutting into the layers that you start to cry as well. There is definitely a connection with vulnerability and revealing the layers of your life, which I feel is a healthy process that people should actually go through when asking for healing in certain areas.

Even though I do not feel like the author was trying to get that across to the reader it is what I thought about when my classmate read aloud his thoughts on the poem.