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."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
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.
"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."
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."
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