2021 Books: Cross Sections by Matt Schur

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cross Sections is a thought-provoking, passionate collection of poetry aimed squarely at American Protestant Christianity in the early 21st century. This century has been a target-rich environment for critics of the American church, but what makes this volume particularly poignant is that the author offers his critique from within the institution itself, with an eye toward redemption and healing rather than destruction.

Writing in the vein of authors like Anne Lamott, Martin Bell, and Annie Dillard, these poems are filled with humor, rage, anguish, regret, hope, dismay, reflection, and a thematic underpinning that whatever this age is, it is not the beacon on the hill that large parts of the American Christian community believe it is, nor has it ever been. These poems ask big questions, take big swings, and sometimes make for incredibly uncomfortable reading - the kind of reading that shows you the cracks in the foundations of your thinking and makes you consider whether you've assumed too many things were true that just don't have to be, and maybe shouldn't.

If you're uncomfortable with the way things are, Cross Sections might be a collection of poetry that shows you you're not alone, and gives you hope that the moral arc of the universe is still bending toward justice. If you're comfortable with the way things are, this collection might move you into that uncomfortable place, and then show you you're not alone and give you hope as well. Highly recommended for Christian and non-Christian readers alike.

DISCLAIMER: Matt Schur and I have been good friends for almost 30 years, and I was an advance reader who offered some editorial suggestions for Cross Sections prior to publication. That having been said, I wouldn't post a review if it wasn't genuine, not even for a friend, and I did not request or receive any compensation for this review.

View all my reviews

Friday Five: Dreaming

How funny - two posts in a row about dreams. Odd.

Anyway, Sophia at RevGals has the Friday Five today, and it's a good'un. I'll let her bring you in:

With the beginning of my college teaching semester I have been having some unusually intense and memorable dreams lately--especially related to my Women and Religion class. With the beginning of a new calendar year many of us are engaging with dreams of another kind: planning, brainstorming, setting intentions or resolutions, etc. And many churches will celebrate the baptism of Jesus this Sunday, reading the Gospel account of his vision of the Holy Spirit as a dove and the "beloved child" words of [God] that set him off on his mission sharing [God]'s dream for the world. So let's take a few minutes on this (where I am at least) lovely snow-blanketed Friday morning and share about the many different dreams and visions in our lives.

1. Do you tend to daydream?
Oddly enough, not as much as I once did. I am as absent-minded as they come, but my lack of attention to the here and now rarely, if ever, happens due to a flight of fancy. I'm usually thinking about something concrete, whether it's the church, faith, football, books, or something else I'm experiencing/pondering at the moment. When I was a kid, however, I often found myself getting scolded because I wouldn't/couldn't stop daydreaming about anything and everything.

2. Do you usually remember your night dreams? Do you find them symbolic and meaningful or just quirky?
I do remember my night dreams, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are deeply symbolic and meaningful; these dreams come during the stressful times in my life (death of loved ones, during my divorce, moving, trouble with work for myself or Beloved). Sometimes I have nightmares, and for the life of me I can't identify a cause - they just happen and then they're gone. I've shared in the past about dreams (also here) that seem to be the mental equivalent of flushing toxins out of my system. And sometimes my dreams are just plain weird, and no, I can't say anything more than that.

3. Have you ever had a life changing dream which you'll never forget?
Yes. About a month after my Grandpa Johnson died, I dreamed he came and sat on my bed, healthy and much younger than I ever knew him, and we talked about life and how much he loved us. I had similar dreams when my Grandpa Janke and Grandma Johnson died as well, and I've often dreamt entire conversations with Larry Meyer, my campus pastor and mentor. I'm not saying every dream is a message from God, nor am I suggesting everyone dreams their prayers, but I will say this: my faith was strengthened by all of these dreams, because they seemed to be holy moments.

4. Share a long term dream for one or more aspects of your life and work.
I have a few. I'd like to be the campus pastor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln someday (relax, Eric, I'm in no hurry). I'd like to publish a book and sell enough copies to actually make a profit. I'd love to see if I'm up to the challenge of PhD level work on Bonhoeffer. But the dream overriding them all is to be a good husband, father and pastor first, and if that doesn't leave room for the rest, I'll be just fine.

5. Share a dream for 2010....How can we support you in prayer on both the short and long term dreams?
I'd love to see our campus ministry community double in attendance and activity by the end of the calendar year. I'd love to be pushing 100 in worship by December, with small groups meeting nearly ever day of the week in some shape or form. I'd love to have the sense that we're building leaders for the church, not just entertaining students as they pass through their years at Iowa State. I think that ought to be enough to pray on, don't you?

Bonus: a poem, song, artwork, etc. that deals with dreams in general or one of your dreams.
I've posted this many times before, but it's just so beautiful I keep coming back to it. I first discovered this poem in Garrison Keillior's collection Good Poems, and it always makes me think of those I love who've died, and how much I dream of seeing them again.

Four Poems in One

At six o'clock this morning
I saw the rising sun
Resting on the ground like a boulder
In the thicket back of the school,
A single great ember
About the height of a man.

---

Night has gone like a sickness,
The sky is pure and whole.
Our Lady of Poland spire
Is rosy with first light,
Starlings above it shatter their dark flock.
Notes of the Angelus
Leave their great iron cup
And slowly, three by three
Visit the Polish gardens round about,
Dahlias shaggy with frost
Sheds with their leaning tools
Rosebushes wrapped in burlap
Skiffs upside down on trestles
Like dishes after supper.

---

These are the poems I'd show you
But you're no longer alive.
The cables creaked and shook
Lowering the heavy box.
The rented artificial grass
Still left exposed
That gritty gash of earth
Yellow and mixed with stones
Taking your body
That never in this world
Will we see again, or touch.

---

We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we're within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.

"Four Poems in One," by Anne Porter from An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 (Zalond Books).

Sermon for All Saints' Sunday - The Privilege of Grief

Preaching Texts

"Blessed are those who mourn," Jesus says, and so we must take Him at His word. But grief is not an easy thing to take, and mourning is not a habit we hold dear to our hearts. We remember life as it once was, life as we think it should be, and we grieve as much for the changes in our lives as we do the death of the people we love. Let us pray: Lord Jesus, loving Savior, we who walk by faith sometimes travel hard roads and follow Your light into dark places. You have told us to trust in You, even in the valley of the shadow of death. Help us to fix our eyes on You, and to hope for all the things You have promised us. Amen.

"The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

I remember sitting with my confirmation class in Minnesota, talking about loss and grief and listening to the song "Tears In Heaven" by Eric Clapton. Clapton wrote this song after his son died from injuries sustained in a fall out of a hotel room window. There's a raw, powerful quality to the grief in the song: the questions of a father losing his child at such a tender age, with such shocking suddenness:
Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same if I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on, 'cause I know I don't belong here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand if I saw you in heaven?
I'll find my way through night and day, 'cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven.

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart, have you begging, "please."

Beyond the door, there's peace I'm sure, and I know there'll be no more tears in heaven.

When I hear this song, I'm reminded instantly of our reading today from Revelation 7, and also of Isaiah 25; two chapters in scripture where God promises to wipe away every tear from those who weep. I hope in this more than anything else in my life. I hope that grief will not have the final word, that God will speak divine words that bear the power to comfort, that bring a word of blessing and a word of safety. We all hope that one day we will find ourselves surrounded by all those whom we love and have loved and will love, and we will leave sorrow and grief far behind.

But we do not live where we hope just yet. As much as we may pray to be spared grief, death is the reality that lingers over us, and every time we think we've beaten it back, it will come sneaking into our lives like the fog that covers the earth these cold autumn mornings. Sometimes death comes at the end of a long, hard battle with illness and age; sometimes it comes in the blink of an eye, with no chance to say goodbye because it has come years before we think it is due. Death is the certainty we all must face time and time again, and grief is the way we respond to death: both the death of those we love, and the growing realization that one day, death will come for each and every one of us.

Because of this, it's natural to think that grief is an enemy to be defeated, something against which we must struggle and fight. Edna St. Vincent Millay said as much in her poem "Dirge Without Music:"

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Others see grief as simply something to be experienced – a process through which we move and from which we cannot escape. If you ever go to a funeral in New Orleans you'll see people who grieve with passion and power; a much different reaponse than the traditionally stoic grief of the Midwest. Some, like Clapton, deal with grief through self-expression; others become even less of themselves by shutting down their emotions and withdrawing from life until their broken hearts are healed and they are able to stand alone once more.
And it's not only death that works in us in this way. Loss can come in many forms and can cause grief in many ways: being fired or 'downsized,' divorce and separation, moving far away from home, working hard to achieve a goal without success, missing a great opportunity through simple circumstance or, worse, the mistakes of others. All of these things are losses that can and do cause us to grieve for what once was, or what we think should be. Grief comes for reasons we can explain and reasons we cannot. Loss comes when we expect it and when we do not. Death comes to young and old alike, indiscriminate in its selection and relentlessly claiming the lives of our friends, our family, and we ourselves.

"Blessed are those who mourn, says Jesus, and so we must take Him at His word. But what does it mean to be blessed? Are we blessed because we mourn? Should we seek out opportunities to mourn, taking the Beatitudes as a direct commandment and seeking to please God by being the best grievers we can be? No – we cannot earn blessings by grieving any more than we can earn salvation by doing good deeds. But grief is indeed a blessing, and to grieve is indeed a right and honorable experience of Christian life.

Grief is a blessing, a privilege, because as we grieve, we are given a window into the heart and mind of God. "See what love the Father has given us," says John, "that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are…Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this; when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is." To grieve is to see that God suffers, that God mourns, that God thirsts and hungers for righteousness. Genesis tells us that we are created in the image of God, and one image of God that is found time and again in scripture is the image of God's great grief and sorrow at the sins and brokenness of creation. God is grieved by sin, death and everything that separates God from God's children. When we grieve, when we mourn, we know what it means to be children of God, for God's love causes God's grief, and in our own love and grief we see God as God truly is.

Why does God suffer? Why does God grieve? Why has God allowed us to have this privilege of grieving? Because the privilege of grief reminds us that things are not as they should be, that life is indeed precious – more precious than we imagine. Without the privilege of grief, we would never know the hope of the world to come. Eugene Boring says "Matthew here taps into the deep Biblical tradition that one of the characteristics of the true people of God is that they lament the present condition of God's people and God's program in the world…This is the community that does not resign itself to the present condition of the world as final, but laments the fact that God's kingdom has not yet come and that God's will is not yet done."[1]

The privilege of grief is not the only thing left to us from God our Father. The image of the suffering God is only one image of God, and just as we cannot know each other through one glimpse, so we cannot know God only through God's suffering. Without the privilege of grief, we have only an incomplete knowledge of God: we see only the power and majesty of God, the alien, almighty God who cannot be approached and in divine magnificence cannot have any connection with the frail, fragile lives we live. The privilege of grief reminds us where God wants to be found: in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is Christ who comes to us in His body and blood, broken and shed for you, that reminds us there will come a day when the privilege of grief will be finally overwhelmed by the glory of the full and total reign of God, and God's love washing over God's people.

So the privilege of grief opens our hearts to love more completely – to invest more deeply in the lives of our neighbors – to be wounded in our grief and made whole and strong in God's suffering love. The privilege of grief is one part of what it means to be Christ's followers and see that though death may threaten, though the kingdom has not yet fully come and God's will is not yet fully done, God will indeed have the final word, and grief will one day be a privilege we can forsake for something better. What will that day resemble? Something far beyond our imagination, I'm sure. But poet Anne Porter has an idea, I think, and it is her vision I'll offer as a closing prayer this morning:
At six o'clock this morning
I saw the rising sun
Resting on the ground like a boulder
In the thicket back of the school,
A single great ember
About the height of a man.

Night has gone like a sickness,
The sky is pure and whole.
Our Lady of Poland spire
Is rosy with first light,
Starlings above it shatter their dark flock.
Notes of the Angelus
Leave their great iron cup
And slowly, three by three
Visit the Polish gardens round about,
Dahlias shaggy with frost
Sheds with their leaning tools
Rosebushes wrapped in burlap
Skiffs upside down on trestles
Like dishes after supper.

These are the poems I'd show you
But you're no longer alive.
The cables creaked and shook
Lowering the heavy box.
The rented artificial grass
Still left exposed
That gritty gash of earth
Yellow and mixed with stones
Taking your body
That never in this world
Will we see again, or touch.

We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we're within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.

Amen.

---

[1] Boring, Eugene. The New Interpreter's Bible: Matthew. Abingdon Press.

Poetry and the 700th Post

First, a great poem from today's Writer's Almanac:

"Literature in the 21st Century" by Ronald Wallace

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
in its thick, manly wrapping,
the flash of the match between
worn matchbook and stained forefinger,
the cup of the palm at the tip,
the intake of air, and the slow and
luxuriant, potent and pleasurable
exhale. Shall we say also a glass
of claret? Or some sherry with its
dark star, the smoke blown into the bowl
of the glass, like fog on portentous
morning, the rich man-smell of gabardine
and wool, of money it its gold clip?

Sometimes I wish I had habits
a man wouldn't kick, faults a good man could
be proud of. I'd be an expatriate from
myself, all ink-pen and paper in a Paris café
where the waiters were elegant and surly,
the women relaxed and extravagant
with their bobbed hair and bonbons, their
perfumed Galoises, their oysters and canapés,
and I'd be writing about war and old losses—
man things-and not where I am, in this
pristine and sensitive vessel, all
fizzy water, reticence, and care, all reduced
fat and purified air, behind my deprived
computer, where I can't manage even
a decaf cap, a mild Tiparillo, a glass of
great-taste-less-filling light beer.

Wonderful, huh? Good stuff.

This is just a quick post to ask for a blog favor. I'll soon be blogging my 700th post, and for that I'd like to answer seven questions, posed by the two or three of you who are still reading this blog. If you've got a question, post it in the comments and I'll answer it in post 700. Any question will do, from my middle name to my favorite candy to my take on The Brothers Karamazov (actually, I've done that last, but you get my drift).

As you were.

The Writer's Almanac Gets Hot Under The Collar

GREAT poem in The Writer's Almanac this morning - just had to share:

The Young Watch Us
Donald Hall

The young girls look up
as we walk past the line at the movie,
and go back to examining their fingernails.

Their boyfriends are combing their hair,
and chew gum
as if they meant to insult us.

Today we made love all day.
I look at you. You are smiling at the sidewalk,
dear wrinkled face.

Hospitality

I get The Writer's Almanac in email from American Public Media every day (you should, too - it's got great stuff on a regular basis). Today is poet Billy Collins birthday, and Garrison Keillor celebrated the day with this quote from Mr. Collins:

"Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong."

While this is very true of poetry, the thought occurred to me that it's also very, very true of our work as evangelists and hosts within the church. I don't think those of us who've been raised in the church and are familiar with life in the church know how unbelievably bewildering it can be to those who are coming to a faith community for the first time. Climbing into a canoe is a learned skill: once you've mastered it, it's no problem, but until you've been doing it for a while, it can be terribly difficult to feel comfortable climbing in.

Here's a thought for us: why not take away some of the anxiety by teaching what we do and why we do it in much more open ways? More explanation than is necessary is hardly ever a bad thing - who knows, maybe we'll remember how to keep this ship that is the body of Christ a little more steady as well.

Just thinkin - have a good one.

Peace,
Scott

25th January - A Writer's Almanac Kind of Day

I get The Writer's Almanac from National Public Radio via email every morning. I subscribed in Barrett because radio reception was notoriously poor there - every time we pulled into town most of our favorite stations would go to static. So now I get the WA in my email every morning. It means I don't get to listen to Garrison Keillor read the thing, but I find that's okay; after seven years in Minnesota, you can almost hear him reading it in your head (right up on the mic, breathing through his nose, with his red shoes on, of course).

Today's WA was pretty potent - I had no idea that 25 January was such an important date for writers. The Bard, Robert Burns, the famed Scottish poet; W. Somerset Maugham, a British writer of the early 20th century who is still fairly well-known today, and Virginia Woolf, the great American modernist writer whose classics Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse changed American fiction forever (and doomed her to forever haunt the halls of sophomore level Literature classes, where she is vilified as one of the most unreadable writers in history by college students too busy to take the time to challenge themselves with good literature. Present writer included, natch) were all born today. Huzzah for writers!

Growing Up

I stopped growing up
quite some time ago.
Somehow my body knew when to say,
"That's enough."
and then I no longer had to jump
up
for the potato chips
on top of the fridge -
I could reach them all by myself.

I watch my little one
growing up
and I feel as though I have suddenly
started growing up again.
I am not the unremarkable guy
looking into the eyes of my peers;
I am a colossus who stoops and swoops
a little girl
skyward with squeals of delight.
Together we are a giant -
she, perched on my shoulders and giggling;
me, dancing and praying,
"Don't ever grow up."

The books are climbing the bookcases because
the baby is climbing toward the books.
The inexorable march of
swaddling blankets to
bassinet to
crib to
playset and now
the walker
is pulling me back to my unremarkable self;
until comes the day when I am
no
longer
a
giant
but a man, fallible and balding, paunchy and somewhat embarrassing.

But I will remember these sweet, small days:
the colossus who wrestles with the child until we are both
breathless and giggled out;
the giant who comes in the night
bearing bottles and a fresh diaper;
the king of the house who bends his knee
to serve these ladies whom he adores.

All this begun by one tiny breath,
one blessed wail,
a hand to clutch my fingers
and eyes to melt my heart.
We are growing up together,
my little one and I;
and we shall never,
ever
stop.

Thanks to Milton for the post that inspired this poem.

Baby Ainsley 365: My Daughter's Morning

My Daughter's Morning

My daughter's morning streams
over me like a gang of butterflies
as I, sour-mouthed and not ready
for the accidents I expect

of my day, greet her early:
her sparkle is as the edge of new
ice on leafed pools, while I
am soggy, tepid; old toast.

Yet I am the first version
of later princes; for all my blear
and bluish jowl I am welcomed
as though the plastic bottle

I hold were a torch and
my robe not balding terry.
For her I bring the day; warm
milk, new diaper, escapades;

she lowers all bridges and
sings to me most beautifully
in her own language while
I fumble with safety pins.

I am not made young
by my daughter's mornings;
I age relentlessly.

Yet I am made to marvel
at the durability of newness
and the beauty of my new one.


"My Daughter's Morning" by David Swanger from Wayne's College of Beauty. © BkMk Press, 2006.

Passionate Poetry Post

Milton at don't eat alone is a wonderful writer, a former ordained minister and an excellent chef (at least, he talks like one, which is the closest a guy can come without actually eating his food).

He is also a poet, and last Thursday's poem was a doozy. Here it is.

Good Poetry

From today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

Take Care

When a man dies, it's not only of his disease;
he dies of his whole life. -Charles Péguy

Our neighbor Laura Foley used to love
to tell us, every spring when we returned
from work in richer provinces, the season's
roster of disease, bereavement, loss. And all
her stars were ill, and all her ailments worth
detailing. We were young, and getting up
into the world; we feigned a gracious
interest when she spoke, but did
a wicked slew of imitations, out
of earshot. Finally her bitterness drove off
even such listeners as we, and one by one the winters nailed
more cold into her house, until the decade crippled her,
and she was dead. Her presence had been
tiresome, cheerless, negative, and there was little
range or generosity in anything she said. But now that I

have lost my certainty, and spent my spirit in a waste
of one romance, I think enumerations have their place,
descriptive of what keeps on
keeping on. For dying's nothing
simple, single. And the records of the odd
demises (stone inside an organ, obstacles to brook,
a pump that stops, some cells that won't,
the fevers making mockeries of lust)
are signatures of lively
interest: they presuppose
the life to lose. And if the love of life's
an art, and art is difficult, then we
were less than laymen at it (easy come
is all the layman knows). I mean that maybe
Laura Foley loved life more, who kept
so keen an eye on how it goes.

"Take Care" by Heather McHugh, from Hinge & Sign I Prefer © Wesleyan University Press.

"Handyman"

Milton has been posting poems from The Writer's Almanac this week. I enjoyed today's poem so much I thought I'd do the same. Here it is:

"Handyman" by Barton Sutter, from Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey. © BOA Editions, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Handyman

The morning brought such a lashing rain
I decided I might as well stay inside
And tackle those jobs that had multiplied
Like an old man's minor aches and pains.
I found a screw for the strikerplate,
Tightened the handle on the bathroom door,
Cleared the drain in the basement floor,
And straightened the hinge for the backyard gate.
Each task had been a nagging distraction,
An itch in the mind, a dangling thread;
Knocking a tiny brass brad on the head,
I felt an insane sense of satisfaction.
Then I heard a great crash in the yard.
The maple had fallen and smashed our car.

Note: I loved this poem for its use of language and the surprise at the end. As I was pasting this thing into my blog I realized this is a sonnet: the rhyme scheme is abba abba abba cc. How cool is that!

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. Click on the poster below to receive a poem-a-day email from poets.org

Meanwhile, here is today's selected poem.

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
by Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

Baby Ainsley 365: Wow!

We took this picture just after AJ accidentally slurped down a bit of my morning coffee. TWEEK!

;-)

The Time Complete: Ash Wednesday to Good Friday

T.S. Eliot - "Ash Wednesday"

V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.

Saturday Poetry Post

I was pointed to this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins by a friend's preaching blog. Pay close attention to the second stanza.

34. As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame"

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Thoughts on John for tomorrow: Sweet Excess

"A Wedding Toast" by Richard Wilbur

St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding-feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
there were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That the world's fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana's wine.

Thanks to Magdalene for sharing this beautiful poem.