On Not Understanding

"If Freud or Whitman or Milton can simply be paraphrased, then why bother reading them - why not stop with the 'very short introduction' series and call it a day?" (Jason Schneiderman in "Notes on Not Writing," American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2009, p. 18.)

Schneiderman's insight was a mini-epiphany for me, one that had not much to do with the topic of his essay which dealt with James Merrill's "The Changing Light at Sandover." In the context of his revisit to Merrill's work, Schneiderman expressed an inability to understand Merrill's inclusion of a formula. As I read Schneiderman's elaboration of this incident of reading and not understanding, I was hooked. He named my experience with reading many contemporary poems. I was reminded that the processes of reading and writing are often not about understanding so much as about discovery. Not understanding offers possiblities for new ways of perceiving and being.

Religion: Believing, Saying, and Doing

Religious columnist Ray Waddle stirred the muddy ponds of my spirit with ideas from the book The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong. In her book, Armstrong identifies the dangers of over-intellectualizing religion with undue focus on defining it at the expense of doing it. Religion at its best offers hope through saying and doing belief. “Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart.” Waddle paraphrases and interprets the sense of Armstrong's thought in his comments: “Religion turns life's bitterness into serenity, courage and justice despite the pain, Armstrong says. Yet we turned religion into brainy debates about the scientific accuracy of Scripture . . . . When winning debate points for doctrinal purity is more important than life's adventure in God – and when belief severs itself from behavior – religion's heart stops beating.” I am reminded that religion and God are not the same thing. Religion is a way of life in which we have the possibility of discovering the presence and vitality of God as we believe, say, and do our faith in God.

With or Without Hope?

With or Without Hope?

This week I read a provocative reflection about hope by Wendell Berry in his group of poems, “Sabbaths 2007,” in The American Poetry Review, Jan-Feb, 2009. He started by asking: "Shall we do without hope? Some days/there will be none . . . . there have been small human acts/ of compassion, acts of care,work/flowerlike in selfless loveliness./ Leaving hope to thedark/and to a better day/ receive these beauties freely/given,and give thanks."

Berry's stream of thought reminds me that, as a Christian, I feel obligated and duty-bound to live in hope, and when hopelessness darkens my spirit, I feel guilty. He humbled me with his perspective and his sense of grace. He reminded me that God's grace does not depend upon my feeling of hope. "Let us see that, without hope,/we are still well. Let hopelessness/shrink us to our proper size."

The Poem as Blessing

I read a brief but profound reflection on poetry that enlivened my hope for making meaningful poems in 2009. "American Poetry Review" featured an excerpt from Stanley Kunitz's 1994 address to St. Mary's College, Maryland, on the back cover of the January/February, 2009 issue. Kunitz articulates the experience of the poem as one of reward and joy that emerges from the difficulties of the art. He finds the gift of poetry to be both life-sustaining and life-enhancing. He says, "The poem comes in the form of a blessing." The following sentences resonated deeply with my own sense of poetry, and they reveal the creative tension or synergy between technical craft and meaning.

"It is somewhat of a paradox that poets should spend a lifetime hunting for the magic that will make the moment stay. Art is that chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence. What is imagination but a reflection of our yearning to belong to eternity as well as to time?"

"Poetry. . . requires a mastery of craft, but it is more than a playground for technicians. The craft that I admire most manifests iself not as an aggregate of linguistic or prosodic skills, but as a form of spiritual testimony, the sign of the inviolable self consolidated against the enemies within and without that would corrupt or destroy human pride and dignity."

As 2009 begins, one of the things I pray for is the blessing of engaging the craft and discovering the poem and its spiritual testimony.

Do I Have to Be Happy?

Do I Have to Be Happy?
Advent candle lighting meditation, UMPH, December 15, 2008

The word for the lighting of the candle for third Sunday of Advent this year was joy. We lit the pink candle, which is used to represent "Gaudete Sunday." Gaudete is Latin for rejoice.

Well, I have a question...do I have to be happy? The reading from Philippinas 4:4 seems to affirm that I DO have to be happy. "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." (Philippians 4:4)

Rejoice. Don t Worry Be Happy. Have a Good Day. I don't know. When I get up in the morning I am grumpy, groggy, and not very nice. If I get on the elevator at work before 9:30 AM and people greet me kindly and tell me "Have a good day," it is all I can do to keep from growling out "Don't tell me what kind of day to have!"

Do I HAVE to be Happy? Research reported in the news in December, 2008, seems to support Paul's command to rejoice. Scientists looked at the social network of people enrolled in the Framingham heart study. They found when a person becomes happy, a friend living within a mile experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. The joy even spread to friends of friends,up to three degrees of separation. Happiness, like a virus,is contgagious! Our happiness infects other people! Looks like I have to be happy or I will diminish the chance that others will be happy.

Twice Paul tells the church at Philippi to rejoice, but do we have to put on a happy face when we are in the middle of difficult, unhappy situations? when we see injustice, oppression, and horror? Being happy can be a very inappropriate response to many contemporary situations: The troubled economy, war, suicide bombings,scandal, dishonesty, mass murder, atrocities, genocide,earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. And on a more personal level: depression, divorce, life-threatening illness, loss of a loved one. You can name other situations in which being happy is just not appropriate. It is inappropriate and pathological to be happy when people hurt.

We fall into the abyss between Paul's instructions and real life when we think of happiness only as an emotional state. All people, including Christians, experience a broad range of feelings. If happiness is only about how we feel, then we cannot hear the hope in Paul's words.

God's salvation and love do not depend upon human emotions or actions. So what is Paul saying? In Philippians, we find a better word than happiness, the word we translate as joy. The Greek Word for rejoice in Paul's letter means: calmly happy or well-off, be well, farewell, may things go well with you. It was used as both a greeting and a goodbye. It carries within it a wish for the good of the other, not unlike our contemporary phrase, "Have a good day."

Paul was in prison. He was worried about the people at the Philippian chuch, a church he loved deeply, in a personal way. He feared for their safety and survival due to the real possibility of persecution and to the possibility of internal conflict. Because he worried about and desired the well-being of this community of believers, he witnessed to the deep, inner joy, the sense of well-being that he experienced in the grace and presence of God in Jesus Christ in spite of his imprisonment and hardship. This is the joy that he offered to the church at Philippi and that he offers to us.

God who is just and merciful loves us, saves us, and is with us no matter what no matter what is happening all around us and no matter how we feel.

The Bible rings with this good news during Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. God hates oppression. God Saves. God is with us in Jesus Christ. God brings good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed. We can accept and experience God's gift of joy as we acknowledge this good news. Joy happens when we put our troubles in God's hands, when we live a God-centered life, when we practice God's ways of peace, justice, fairness, wisdom, mercy, love.

Do I have to be happy? Maybe not. But I think I will listen to Paul . . .

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice."

The Paradoxical Nature of Human Beings

I have been reading a classic by Georgia Harkness called PRAYER AND THE COMMON LIFE. In the first chapter, she presents some foundations for prayer that include definitions of prayer, of the Christian view of humans, and of the Christian view of God. Of her several definitions of prayer, I particularly resonated with the phrase "opening of the soul" to God, because it presupposes the existence of a God who cares and the possibility of relationship with God. She points to Buber's "I-Thou" and Brunner's "divine-human encounter" as ways of thinking about a relationship with God in prayer.

The most intriguing thought in the first chapter, however, was her presentation of the Christian view of human nature as five paradoxes. Humans are nature and spirit, free and bound, sinner and created in the divine image, individual and a member of society, and made for this world and for another. A statement that is a paradox seems contradictory. If one part is true, how can the contradiction be true? Yet, the sense of a paradox is that it may well point to a larger truth that embraces the contradictions. In these five statements, we have "both-and" rather than "either-or" descriptions. I like the potential for human wholeness in her views.

Poem-in-Progress

If a person wants to be a poet, he or she needs to sit down and make poems. A no-brainer, right? Well, I recognized this foundational truth for the millionth time a couple of weeks ago. Once again I am taking time everyday, even if only half an hour, to read, write, and edit poems. Making a poem requires more than inspiration. The craft requires persistent attention, and more often than not, revision and editing. In my case, the poem that lands in my binder is not exactly the same as it was when it started. Anyhow, I offer this poem-in-progress about the juxtapositions of daily life, history, nature, and world events.

Here it is in its most recent manifestation:

Taking Note

Wind blasts potted plants from the porch,
knocks soil from their pots and tangled roots.
I push the plants back into their pots,
clean the spilled soil, take note
of purple clouds above the hackberry trees,
the gray cat sleeping in the side window.
CNN Headline News offers notes
about the campaign for president, the latest killing
in Iraq, abductions, trials, investigations.
I wonder what taking note means.
Francis of Assisi stands in a flower bed.
Hydrangea and daylilies nod and lean
in rising wind. A storm blows in.
I move the potted plants against the wall.

Here is an early version:

Note Taking

Wind blasts potted plants from the porch,
knocks soil out from their roots
I push the plants back into their pots
clean the spilled soil and wonder whether
events and images have an order of being
or whether life is simply note taking.
I note the purple clouds above the trees,
for instance, and the white cat purring at my side
and the gray one gazing out the side window.
The CNN Headline News offers notes
about the campaign for president, the latest killings
in Iraq, abductions, trials, investigations,
and hundreds of other noteworthy events
begging national and international attention.
St. Francis of Assisi stands in the flower beds
in a neighbor’s yard. Hydrangea blossoms droop.
Orange daylilies nod in rising wind.
A summer storm blows in.
I move the potted plants
against the wall.