Note from CM: In 2015 we will mark five years since the death of Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk. Today, we continue our “Sundays with Michael” series with an excerpt from a post that was originally published in February 2007.
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The Bible not only contains poetry, but it is poetic in its entire vision of reality. Poetic language is frequently Biblical language. The Psalms, Proverbs and prophets are all poetic expressions. Many of the teachings of Jesus, and even some of Paul’s most sublime theological passages, are poetic in form and intent.
The church needs poets to interpret the scripture. Sorry theologians, but most of you have a depressingly poor eye for poetry, poetic meaning and the poet’s worldview. Turning the whole scripture into systematics is fine, but if someone took Shakespeare’s sonnets and turned them into a systematics text, I’d feel like a crime was being committed.
I listen to a lot of uneducated preachers, and some educated ones, that can’t be trusted around any metaphor or simple example of poetic parallelism. When a different word appears, they believe a different doctrine is taught. It’s not a failure of theology or of knowledge of the meaning of words. It’s a failure of poetic appreciation.
A second reason that we need poets is to keep the poetic imagination of God’s people alive. Eugene Peterson has written extensively on this, and I recommend any of his works of Biblical exposition as good examples of the holy and helpful use of the poetic imagination.
The word “imagination” has an impoverished life among today’s evangelicals. “Imagination” seems to mean “lie of the devil,” and “danger to your eternal soul” to many regular believers. Poets, of course, work in the imagination like painters work with color or farmers work with soil. They are not simply “rhymers.” They encourage us to see with the imagination; to live with the intensity of poetic insight and the awareness of poetic reality.
Contemporary evangelicalism tends toward the twin poles of a lecture hall and an entertainment venue. If imagination can find a place in keeping church from being boring, there may be some welcome for the poet, but the true influence and power of the imagination in finding the depth, beauty and holiness of life is rarely part of contemporary evangelicalism. Our poetics must fit into the card section of the local Christian bookstore.
An impoverished imagination manifests itself in all kinds of ways. Evangelicals don’t see the world as poets see it. They tend toward pessimism, materialism and the unquestioning acceptance of the values of the corporation and the capitalist. Imagination is a “troubler of Israel,” asking Christians to see the world as charged with the glory and significance of God.
In his book, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination
Of course, we need the poets to enhance our worship. Not just with more lyrics to more contemporary choruses, but with more words that encourage serious, God-centered, heart-stirring musical and artistic expression. Our churches are devoid of great poetry, and the reason is not only because we have become a banal, shallow generation that cannot appreciate. It is because we seldom, if ever, give the poets any place at all. We are, as Ed Stetzer recently said, quite efficient at convincing many creatives–especially non-musical ones–that we have little use for their offerings and gifts.
I wonder what it would take for the average church to allow a poet regular access to the congregation, in order to write, read, share and facilitate reflection on life via poetry? What kind of church would invite the poets to come and tell us what they see and feel? Could we ever be open enough to the spirit to let the words of the poets come into our communities to describe what our tired rhetoric can no longer communicate? What kind of generous, expectant mindset does it take to realize that the language of the traditional Protestant sermon isn’t always the music of our lives? That sometimes, the poet is the one who has the word or the Word?
We need poets because of their honesty. Evangelicalism isn’t known for authenticity, and that may be a large reason poets haven’t had much of a life in the church. Their voices are often the voices of doubt and pain. They don’t promise us answers in the last stanza. I’m sure many Christians who have the poetic voice would be afraid to let some of their best work be read by their Christian friends. The judgments would be quick and plentiful. We have little mercy on those who break our unwritten “codes” of “what Christians are supposed to say.”
Mostly, I’d like to see the church value and encourage the poet because we suffer from a failure of pastorally, missionally useful language in evangelicalism. Our ambiguity about reading scripture in worship, our preference for the dialect of preachers (from dogmaticians to comedians), our need to put the outline on Powerpoint: all of it betrays a paucity of language.
Poetic language is intense and compact; it is full of experience and comes to us differently than the “heard it all before again and again” language of the typical evangelical sermon.
The church needs its poetry. It needs its Psalms and Song of Solomon. It needs its Donne and Hopkins. It needs to invite the Dickinsons and Frosts to come in out of the cold and into the warm light of faith’s sun. It needs the words of the unknown poets waiting to be heard. But this means confessing that the language of science and exegesis and theological precision are not the language of lament, experience, solitude, celebration or even worship. We may have to confess that the poets, and not the pundits and culture warriors, are the ones with the most power to speak.
The Internet Monk Archives 
“When the going gets weird, the Weird turn pro.”
— Hunter S Thompson
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Then there are those who end up ruining the KJV experience by insisting “If it ain’t King James, it’s crap!”
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shades of the ‘Dead Poet’s Society’
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It also leads to wannabes:
“I’M Crazy and Self-Destructive! I MUST be a Genius! And I must be DEEP!”
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Found it! (The posting, not the podcast):
https://internetmonk.com/archive/riffs-53107-dan-edelen-and-evangelicalisms-loss-of-glory
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There certainly are enough modern poets who fit the Depressed Alcoholic bill, but even so, there are many who don’t. For instance, Auden and Eliot vs. Dylan Thomas or even Robert Lowell (wwho was apparently bipolar) and Sylvia Plath. I so wish that her mythos didn’t have as much currency as it does, because there are plenty of other women who don’t fit that self-destructive “crazy genius” stereotype.
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Didn’t the original IMonk have a posting or podcast about “MAO Inhibitors”, “MAO” in this case being “Mystery, Awe, and Otherness”?
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I love the KJV. It is one of the most beautiful documents in the English language. Kind of poor as a translation, but great reading.
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Or acid 🙂
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I think Michael was kind of using fancy words to say something like, “The Bible uses stories a lot, and generally fits the non-narratival passages into a larger story.”
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It depends on what gospel they preach – I hear preachers preach a lot of gospels – those who preach the good news of Jesus Christ best are the ones who bring us into mystery, reverence, awe, and joy. That, sadly, does not apply to very many contemporary preachers.
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Just yesterday (or maybe the day before), I was reflecting on how I’ve come to appreciate an aspect of the KJV that I used to rather loathe: the way it gives each verse its own line (like poetry often does) rather than keep the prose in paragraphs. A big part of that was reading it out loud. I found that really helped get a more poetic feel to the text (which is so very appropriate for the bible, as Michael was saying), as well as make public reading easier.
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I didn’t appreciate it very much until I got into Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan in my singer-songwriter days, ‘cuz those guys were songwriters who were also poets. In my own attempts at songwriting, I went through a phase where I mimicked their style and approach, and it was probably some of my best stuff. It’s sad, though, that it took a different medium (music) to get me to appreciate poetry.
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In a college on public speaking we had to attend a poetry reading at the local Barnes and Noble. It was mostly painful, but not completely. Unfortunately the only things I remember from it were the most painful!
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Poetry is tough for us these days, as we just haven’t been immersed in it, other than in song lyrics, which are often poor poetry. I still remember a student teacher when I was in high school trying to make our poetry unit more fun by allowing us to bring in lyrics to our favorite songs. I hate to say it, but looking back the best submissions were from the conform-to-nonconformity crowd that were bringing in stuff by Alanis Morressette (this was the late 90’s).
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You’re probably right. My comment was based on thinking from within the Romantic mythology, and on a few personal experiences I’ve had with depressed poets. You’re probably also right that mental illness is under-reported in the general population.
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In the interest of full disclosure, I’m an “arts type” myself and while not active as a writer, have found myself much happier and free to make music since seeking treatment, which has included a realistic assesdment of my physical limitations (wwas prone to burning the candle at both ends), and some cognitive therapy techniques for my mental toolbox. They work particularly well when I’m confronted with the kinds of fears you mentioned re. writers. Truth is, creativity is cyclical, and sometimes long fallow periods are necessary – ideas tend to germinate during those times, and it can also be good to go for a kind of “crop rotation” approach. Shelve some things, switch to something different, or just take a break. Rest tends to recharge the batteries.
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With all due respect, i think this is largely a myth, fostered by the Romantic movement in the arts, with its ideas of Genius. And very much furthered by writers like Kay Redfield Jamison, who tries very hard to make people believe that creativity and serious mental/emotional problems are inextricably linked. It just burns me, because books like hers perpetuate old wives’tales that scare people. (I know that more than a few jazz musicians have been seriously frightened by her books.)
Yes, there are plenty of writers, artists, musicians etc. who strughle with depression, anxiety, substance abuse and more. They are likely a microcosm of the general population, and the truth is that mental illness (from reactive depression all the way through schizophrenia) is severely underdiagnosed and undertreated. Add to that the Woody Allen cliche of the artist as neurotic plus the macho substance-abusing writers of the Beat Generation, the substance abusers of rock, the stereotype of jazz musicians as tortured souls who look to heroin as a means to creativity (plus many more instances of same) and you get a very distorted picture of the incidence of mental illness and substance abuse among creative types.
Truth be told, a whole lot of substance abusers are trying to treat problems by self-medicating. A better solution: thorough medical workups, diagnoses and treatment, both physical and, as needed, in talk therapy.
I know more than a few people who are FAR more productive and creative as a result of ongoing treatment than otherwise. Nobody needs to suffer unnecessarily in order to meet the deeply embedded “ideal” of the tortured genius. I just don’t see that even being much of an isdue prior to the Romantic movement. Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Brahms… i could add so many other names to the list of people who definitely had their quirks and problems but were highly productive.
We have insane *standards* for writers and other arts types. Which is one of the roots of the problems you describe.
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Don’t you think it takes an imagination to write something that is “acid trip weird?”
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Plagiarist(s)!
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I think that line is also in a Madonna song. Or maybe Britney Spears.
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“The best minds of my generation have looked around them and said ‘Life
Is Hell; Death can’t possibly be worse.'”
You’re channeling Allen Ginsberg:
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/howl-parts-i-ii
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The best piece of poetry in the Bible:
“This is my body…”
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If what you are saying is what Spencer meant, I would think he would’ve spoken of the Bible having poetic visions of reality. What I see in the various sections of the Bible you mention are poetic visions, not a poetic vision. To speak about the Bible’s “entire poetic vision of reality” implies the presence of a single unifying vision, akin to, say, Dante’s poetic vision of reality in the three different parts of “The Divine Comedy.”
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My understanding is that there are a lot of puns that come out of Jesus’ mouth, that we don’t get in translation. Puns are not the “lowest form of humor” – they’re actually rather sophisticated language.
May God grant that someday I will be able to read Greek!!!
Dana
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I disagree, Robert. A “poetic vision of reality” doesn’t necessarily say anything about the content or the story being told. There are many scientists who capture the wonders of the material world in their writing while telling a purely materialistic story. This is more about language, and how stories and “truths” and lessons are conveyed. Can you not see a poetic vision in the early (narrative) chapters of Genesis? The stories of the patriarchs? The accounts of David? The Gospels? Even in Paul’s most didactic passages, his use of language and metaphor is stunning. Furthermore, especially in the Old Testament, with a language that did not have a lot of words or complexity (Hebrew), literary devices and features are often the very means by which the story is unified across the canon. See Robert Alter’s work or Meir Sternberg’s Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Check out the commentaries of Brueggemann as well.
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What you say includes even Bob Dylan, about whom the rock press is still so google-eyed, and for whom I have a great fondness and appreciation. His lyrics just don’t stand up alone and away from his musical delivery and his charisma.
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Please believe me when I tell you that it is all too usual for really good poets to be given to extreme pessimism, along with depression. Suicide and self-destructive behaviors are common among the greatest poets, especially when they experience the fear of loss of their creativity and inspiration. If capitalists are pessimists, then this is something they share with many many poets.
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-> “So all that to say that Michael’s lament is good, but I feel like it is a fruit, not a root.”
That’s actually very well put, me-thinks.
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Good comments. One good thing about getting creative types together, such as in a writing group, is to help sharpen each other’s work/art. Reading and critiquing other people’s good (and poor) writing helps me craft my own writing, and I’d like to think my critique has helped their own writing. It’s gratifying to offer a suggestion, “I think if you re-worded this line to x-y-z, it might sound better,” and the author say, “Yes!” Likewise, it’s awesome to have someone tell me, “Rick, move those two lines around,” and see the improvement.
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Yes to your first paragraph, in its entirety.
Can the great variety of different kinds of texts (some of them decidedly non-poetic) that comprise the Bible, written across vast spans of time by many different people with different intentions, be said to have a single “vision of reality”? It seems to me that if this question is answered affirmatively, it’s because one has approached the texts not only expecting to find such a vision, but with the outline for it in hand, ready to be superimposed on the texts.
A purely literary reading of the texts cannot yield a single “vision of reality” from them; only a religious reading can. And behind every such religious reading, whether fundamentalist or progressive, there are explicit or implicit presuppositions amounting to a kind of orthodoxy, defining what is a legitimate and authoritative interpretation, and what is not.
When Spencer says that the Bible “is poetic in its entire vision of reality,” he is saying something that an imaginative, literary reading of such disparate texts could never say on its own. He is actually making a religious assertion that assumes there must be such a unity in this particular collection of texts, because he has come to them with a theology, whether nascent or developed, already in place.
“The church needs poets to interpret the scripture.” Will any old poet do? Is it necessary for these poets to already have made commitments to the central affirmations of Christian faith, and to the idea that there is a unifying “vision of reality” in the Biblical texts? Will the game be rigged by having poets with Christian theological presuppositions doing the interpreting? And if so, then how does Spencer’s suggestion escape the criticism he makes against those theologians who reduce the Bible to systematic theologies?
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So true. Sometimes they come like lightning and sound exactly perfect, other times they just sit there like a tepid swamp, never sounding good, no matter how many times you stir them, hoping for perfection.
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As I mention in another comment, Billy Collins is a favorite of mine. This is one reason why.
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What…you mean,
“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah…yeah.”
…isn’t great poetry?
Most songs, when the lyrics are “read/spoken,” sound pretty lame. That’s okay with me. Music shapes the message, sometimes.
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Wonderfully funny, and altogether true!
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“Beauty, then is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element . . ., since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation.”
Benedict XVI
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What you fail to see, Steve, is that the “preaching” in the Bible IS poetic. Poetry is not a “sidelight” — something different. It’s a way of speaking truth that does more than fill the mind with facts or rev up the emotions through motivation. It defines the essence of good preaching. That’s why your dichotomy between poetry and preaching won’t stand.
Jesus himself was poetic, awakening the spirit and stimulating the imagination. The biblical preachers were the furthest thing from “just the facts, ma’am” which is so characteristic of much of what we call preaching today.
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Oscar — well put. I agree that not everyone will be moved by poetry,but I do wish that real poetry was poetically taught. An early and good introduction to poetry (and to good fiction) can develop that imaginative understanding that you’re talking about, as well as training people in the equivalent of the Marines bootcamp of language. Part of the problem is that poetry is taught unimaginatively. If I may, let me quote a short poem by Billy Collins — he puts this well, although he is objecting to the students’ attitude, not the teacher’s.
Introduction to Poetry
BY BILLY COLLINS
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
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To give the man his due, there are portions of the Institutes that are actually very poetic and profound. Try not to lay blame on Calvin for the excesses that his English Puritan disciples foisted upon his system. 😉
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This is pretty good, but it sort of skims the surface issue in my mind. For starters, the Bible is a library and contains all kinds of writing – much of it is anything but poetic or imaginative. Other parts are almost acid-trip weird. Most of it is in the middle. The mismatch between approach and text usually comes down to one of three things in my experience, related here in order of frequency:
1) Confirmation bias. As I have said before, I have yet to hear one single “expositional” sermon that ended up changing a preacher’s mind about something of any great import. On the other end of the spectrum you have people trying to prove that Jesus and John were gay. We go looking for what we want to see.
2) Lack of reading skill. Mortimer Adler wrote a whole book on how to read a book, and he did so for a reason – careful reading, especially of non-fiction, is hard work. When we fail to come to terms with ourselves and fail to come to terms with the author – on his terms – we are mishandling the anything written.
3) Lack of education in philosophy, argumentation, and critical thinking. A great deal of this issue has to do with epistemology. For example, we sometimes discuss the CSBI on this site. I have no trouble admitting that the document is epistemological suicide, and no one with an education in epistemology probably takes it seriously. But some people do because (1) and (3) meet in the text of the document.
So all that to say that Michael’s lament is good, but I feel like it is a fruit, not a root.
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Maybe so.
But i sort of get the feeling sometimes here that a greater importance is placed on all manner of side lights, rather than the job #1 of the Church.
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Absolutely.
I have often wondered how much of Music is failed poetry; they couldn’t cut it so they became musicians. Their words could not carry what they had to say or where they wanted to take me, so they need to add melody, instrumentation, even smoke machines to manipulate me into feeling what they say is profound.
Deconstruct most lyrics and prepare to be very disappointed.
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Michael said it well. Imagination (and it’s close cousin feeling) are bad words. That’s two giant losses that hollow things out considerably. How on earth can we “become as little children” without them? How can we keep our “first love” without them? How can we see the unseeable without them? What’s left is a stolid army of mathematicians calculating the next great Kingdom event and dictating what is and is not allowed within the parameters of the age. That goes for what God is allowed to do as well lest predictability should become jeopardized. How unfortunate.
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My dad wasn’t a poet, but he wrote love poems to my mom. One was read at her funeral. They meant something to her; to him; and in the end, to us.
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And “Preach Gospel” Jesus Juke.
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As someone who’s done some writing himself, I can attest that titles are often the hardest things to get right.
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I thought that was called Calvin’s Institutes?
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And that was BEFORE the Napster Generation and “Just upload it to the Web so I can get it for FREE! Information Yearns to be FREEEEEEEE!!!!”
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Over at Rob Bell’s Tumblr blog, he has an essay about “Poem Truth” vs “Math Truth”, and how we read a Bible written in Poem Truth as if it were a Math Truth checklist of FACT, FACT, FACT.
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False dichotomy.
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Interesting thoughts, and I definitely agree on the problems of being a creative in the modern church. I’m a writer, myself, and I’ve tended to stay away from ‘Christian’ writing, just because the unspoken (but no less constraining) rules of it kill a lot of the desire to write it, and definitely doesn’t tally with what I’ve experienced.
The only thing I’d add is a bit of an answer to those who talk about bad poetry. That’s true up to a point, but I’d also point out that creative writing of any sort is like any other field of endeavor. Most people start out badly, and they get better as they practice, get feedback, connect with others, and find new ways to express and perfect themselves. A good comparison in the church life is that of singing. No one starts out with a wonderful ability of singing. They practice- often by singing in the church themselves- and get better and better as time goes on. Sometimes it seems ‘natural,’ sometimes it requires the choir meeting and practicing regularly, but that’s what happens.
If we want to have more of a creative bent, then we’d need to arrange something for creatives that we do for singers. One bit of irony is that my local writer’s group has a lot of people who go to the church I used to go to. It’s by no means ‘great’ poetry, or ‘great’ writing, but we’re all young writers and we have time to grow. I start to feel like there’s an unusual burden on non-singing creatives, to produce ‘great’ art, and if it’s bad, then it’s significantly worse than a bad singing special or the like. That’s not how this can work- if we want great art, we have to be willing to put up with mediocre art. If we want talented and polished works, we have to encourage the acquiring of talent and to endure the incredibly messy process of polishing. Bluntly, though, I think most Christian worship-goers aren’t willing to do so, and so we will continue to see things continue as they are. A few bright, truly unusual spots, a sea of mediocrity that has no real incentive to improve, and a continued dearth of the kind of poetic expression the IM called for.
…hah, see? We creatives can tend toward pessimism, too.
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Good thoughts to ponder
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Poetry is great (sometimes). Poets are great (sometimes).
But preachers who preach the gospel are better.
“How can they hear if they do not have a poet?”
Doesn’t quite have the same ring…
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No, there’s not a huge market for poetry. (And that’s an understatement of the century.) And trying to “sell” a poem…? Ugh, talk about “it’ll either hit the reader or it won’t”.
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And often times it means “not trying to force it into being ‘poetic.'” Some of my favorite poems are pretty straightforward, where the poetic-ness of it is very sublte.
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-> “…but poor poetry, like so many other poorly done things, just inoculates people against excellence.”
Yes. I’m in a poetry group and every now and then we explore writing various poetry forms. One form we tried was so bizarre and nonsensical that I wrote a poem basically saying, “This poetry form needs to be eradicated, because it is spreading a disease amongst people that will make them never want to read a poem ever again.”
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Mary Oliver is wonderful.
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Good one. There’s an element to this that reminds me of U2’s song “Moment of Surrender.”
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Seems like this article has led to an attack on and defense of poetry. I’ll throw in my 2 cents…
I didn’t understand poetry for the longest time. I thought “good poetry” had to rhyme, and often “not make sense.” Then I read a couple of poems that were free-form and funny, and realized, “Hey, THIS is poetry, too!” Totally freed me to write in my own voice, my own style, feel like I could say what I wanted to say without having to put it in obtuse metaphors and such.
Perhaps my greatest A-ha poetry moment came when I stumbled across this one, “Loading a Boar” by David Lee. THIS is poetry? I remember thinking. Well, I’ll be…
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/loading-boar
My favorite poet is Billy Collins. If you struggle with “poetry,” check these out:
Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House
http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/another-reason-why-i-don-t-keep-a-gun-in-the-hou/
Forgetfulness
http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/forgetfulness/
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Being “poetic” so much more than writing poetry.
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“An impoverished imagination manifests itself in all kinds of ways. Evangelicals don’t see the world as poets see it. They tend toward pessimism, materialism and the unquestioning acceptance of the values of the corporation and the capitalist.”
Wow; “nailed it”, is all I can say. I do bot believe I ever read this one of his posts before.
It is brilliant and gets right to the bone.
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+++! I GET it!
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Damaris, what I have observed over the years, in respect to “the soul of poetry” is that some people “get it” and others just do not. I am in the latter category. Poetry itself is lost on me, although a poetic turn of phrase, or an imaginative explanation/comparison/description can ALL hit home on occasion. I, myself, have been known to pen one, accidentally, of course. If THAT is what Michael is speaking of, and I believe that he IS, then it is much more accessible than poetry, strictly speaking, which often can be discrete in meaning or, worse yet, enigmatic.
There is so much in scripture, New Testament included, that makes more sense when viewed through the eyes of the imaginative. Whenever I stumble in my understanding of a thought, phase or passage I always ask myself if the writer means EXACTLY what he is saying or if he is trying to explain something in a non-linear manner. The book of Hebrews is like that, using imagery and comparison to make it’s points.
The problem with this is that it is hard to teach to others. It is sort of like staring at clouds and imagining shapes that do not really exist. Some see it, others cannot. I have found that most people, especially in my Sunday School class, want hard answers, DEMAND, really, and are disappointed when none can reasonably be given. But, then, how can you describe an indescribable God whose thoughts arre unimaginable? You cannot. And THAT can be a problem.
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Robert F,
Funny, I feel like we had essentially this same conversation a day ago, so I’ll just make one comment and move on. I don’t see the point being that we need some sort of church law that haiku is read on Thursday nights, that all church members most enroll in sort kind of art class so that they are able to either sculpt, paint or write poetry, or that everyone must “get in touch with the art within them” or some nonsense like that. No need to bring in jugglers for Jesus. Nor is art just a synonym for “better entertainment” – that strikes me as how some might view it. Contemporary Christian Music is pretty awful in many cases – I know, I’m headed out to play it here in about 15 minutes – but I don’t think that being more artistic really just means “do it better” or “force more art into everything.”
Michael’s post just really said it well for me:
“The word “imagination” has an impoverished life among today’s evangelicals.”
“Of course, we need the poets to enhance our worship. Not just with more lyrics to more contemporary choruses, but with more words that encourage serious, God-centered, heart-stirring musical and artistic expression. Our churches are devoid of great poetry, and the reason is not only because we have become a banal, shallow generation that cannot appreciate. It is because we seldom, if ever, give the poets any place at all”
“Studying Revelation with evangelicals these days is like examining a schematic with engineers.”
If the sacred book of the Christian faith is indeed little more than a record of timeless theological propositional truth in ALL it’s forms, than we’d best just get on with that. And in my evangelical experience, that’s exactly what it’s been. The point is often to systemize the propositions and/or to harvest propositions from any and all texts. It’s absolutely no surprise to me, given that paradigm, that we suck at naturally integrating any sort of creative or imaginative expression into spiritual life. What else would we expect? It seems forced and contrived, so it ends up being a distraction. It’s unnatural, so it’s hard. But, if there is poetic imagery and imagination present at the heart of the Christian faith, it seems like a better approach would not be to abandon it as being secular, as being simply entertainment, or as something that distracts from the gospel. It seems that it’d be better to instead value it and figure out how we might do it well. This isn’t a law. It doesn’t need to be a little segment in the service – “okay about half way thru the service we’re going to do some art stuff.” I see it more as something that permeates the way that the Christian faith is approached.
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“A poetic perspective”– that words can be chords and not just notes, and that there is truth beyond fact.
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The last poem I wrote when I was young was the poet died. It happened after Christ had whispered in my ear He loved me after almost dying in a car accident. Pounds of pot and beer and coke in the car and I was mad at Him for doing this to me when He whispered He saved me from it and He loved me. Never got arrested and the rest just got fined they figured I suffered enough. It was the 70’s. No one knew what to do with me and I was on my own. It wasn’t long and the world crushed me again with all of its pain. The same pain I had always known and cried myself to sleep growing up. Who says an enemy won’t reinforce a wound. I went back to what I thought made me feel good only knowing God really loved me. I wanted to stop feeling. I wanted to stop crying. So the poet had to die. 30 years later at the bottom of a hole he met me there again. I had lots of clean time and tried many times in the church.
It was here met me again only this time there was nothing for me to hide behind anymore because I had seen to much and done to much and there was nothing here that could ever fill me. I started to feel again. I wept and I wept. I wept so hard I thought I would die many times. I cried out to Him daily and He met me. Even now as I write the tears roll down my cheek. A month or two into this I started writing again. I rediscovered what it was like to write again. He was speaking to me through the words in the line and the spaces in between. First it started in just one verse and then to three a days. I have poems to fill the size of major telephone books. I don’t know how good they are. I am rhythm and rhyme and it is the way it comes through.
I watch the programs very little about the major talent in our country. The reason why is because if I compare myself with it I would never do anything. The question of good is that it is good for me. I come to the keyboard every morning for going on 7 years now and it has been the greatest blessing to me.
Two days ago…….
Looking through the window pane
Those little eyes in wonder much
A world that just suddenly came
To see, hear, smell, taste and touch
A light comes in awakening
A smack says welcome here
Many things are shaking me
I learn what I must fear
Looking through the window pane
A life in living is passing by
Being grateful that You came
Anxious relieving in a sigh
A light comes in awakening
A whisper the shout of love
Completion in the making me
Showers down from up above
Looking through the window pane
There is a world that I must leave
Are those teardrops or just rain
It doesn’t matter for I believe
When I was young my eyes looked through the glass
I remember the snowflakes passing by the streetlight
I would get up all night long and hope it was still snowing so I could get off school
I guess some things you never forget and who would want to?
What is it you see?
I have no title for it only the next day there was a follow up in a title “What I see” sometimes aren’t finished just yet.
Sit down grberry you aren’t done. You’re just getting started. You got to live to write
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Sturgeon’s law/revelation applies. He was a professional science fiction writer. The statement has been shortened from how he said it to “90% of science fiction is crap. But then, 90% of everything is crap.” There is a lot of bad poetry out there. And I’ll say that 90% of what I’ve written is crap, most of which will never see the light of day again (if it ever did).
Re: Eeyore, the supply of poetry far outstrips the demand. And much of the demand is non-paying or negligible paying.
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My sister was a wonderful poet. We read Mary Oliver , “A Summer’s Day” at her funeral, along with others. Her favorite T-shirt said “Bad Poetry? Oh Noetry! God bless all poets.
..
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Hear hear to both Michael Spencer and Robert F. Poetry is essential food for the human soul and human mind, but poor poetry, like so many other poorly done things, just inoculates people against excellence.
Our church has an occasional “Theology Night Out” on a week night. Recently a retired professor did a short lesson on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and on the Comfort of the Resurrection” — worst title and best poem ever. I found the evening more conducive to spiritual renewal than any number of pick-apart-the-Bible meetings.
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Its not just poetry per se that Michael is commending here, but a poetic perspective — one which values and uses metaphor and imagination rather than simply explanation and analysis. Think Buechner, Berry, Marilynne Robinson, Wangerin, Peterson, Dillard, et al. All prose writers but thoroughly poetic.
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The evangelical church is already flooded with poor poetry. It is called “Contemporary Christian Music”.
But seriously, though, how much do Americans in general care for poetry, really? I recall hating the stuff in high school. And for most forms of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, all they care about is the Propositional Truths of Scripture, and the poetry is just the literary husk to be stripped away to get at that Truth. That’s what my attitude was at any rate…
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Actually, I misspoke: I think being a good poet is much harder than being a good rock musician.
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I’ll be the contrarian: I fear the prospect of poor poets taking to pulpits with poor poetry. If there is anything worse than having to listen to a poor sermon, it’s having to listen to a poor poem. Sincerity is not enough to make poetry good or listenable. If a sermon has a breath of poetry, that’s a fine thing; if a theologian has a little poetry in her theology, that’s a fine thing. But consistent poetic creativity of a high order is relatively rare, and a calling; as a rule, I don’t think Christians, whether leaders or rank-and-file, can be expected to be good poets anymore than they can be expected to be good rock musicians. God save us from an army of Christian Rod McKuens thinking they’re Denise Levertovs or Mark Jarmans!
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Good timing with this article. I’ve been asked to help craft three poems for use during our Easter service this year, from the viewpoints of the woman at the well, Saul/Paul, and the child who Jesus asks to be allowed to come to Him.
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I agree. It’s tough if your muse isn’t there, but I’d encourage you to seek her again.
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You should start writing poetry again.
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Good timing for this – seems to relate well to Friday’s post on worship.
I wasn’t familiar with IM when Michael wrote this. His thinking really blows me away.
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Tough one for me here. I tend to appreciate and agree with everything he said, yet I wrote poems before I became a Christian and while seeking – but haven’t started a new one since I was saved.
Here is one I wrote back in the March-April 1997 timeframe that still moves me to tears when I read it, titled “Lament”:
Lord, what do you do with these souls who have come to you,
seeking early admission to Heaven’s Gate?
Have you let them in?
Or is suicide really a mortal sin?
‘Boomers, why do you react with sorrow and incomprehension?
Look at the world you built!
The real question is why so few take the easy way out.
The best minds of my generation have looked around them and said “Life
Is Hell; Death can’t possibly be worse.”
For they have attended public school, and taught to conform, and taught
to regurgitate received wisdom, and taught never, never! to think.
For they have studied history, and been taught about wars, slavery, and
the Holocaust and have learned of evil.
For they have looked around them and said “I already know evil.”
For they have seen their cousins and brothers slain by the violence of the streets.
For they have seen and been the target of hatred based on nothing more
than skin color, hair style, or the sound of their voice.
Because they have not been, will not be, taught of good and how to be good.
Because patriarchical religion is misogynistic and hierarchical, we must
not expose children to it.
Because discipline is painful, and we can not inflict pain ourselves, they
will never learn how not to inflict pain themselves.
Because parents are too busy to actually spend time with their children,
they do not know what love is.
Because they have been taught revisionist history, where the Emancipation
Proclamation is just a cynical gesture to keep the United Kingdom out of the
Civil War.
Because all who show a spark of ability or genius have it snuffed out by
being forced to teach others.
Because they cannot seek peace in nature, for the parks are too crowded
in the day and are not safe at night.
For they are called cynical for describing the world as it really is.
For they suffer the lash of government “solutions” that only make the situation worse.
For they see adults who care only about getting theirs, and why should
they be any different?
For they see activists and social workers more concerned about their job
security than the problem or their cause.
For they see politicians who lie to the public, sell the influence of their office,
and excuse it as standard operating procedure.
For they see a public which accepts such behavior.
For they see a press which claims to be objective and unbiased, but doesn’t
bother to even pretend to be when assembling and selecting stories.
For they see corporations which treat employees and consumers as inter-
changeable emotionless goods from which to extract maximum value
at minimum cost and then to discard without concern.
For they see union leaders who only bother with the highly paid sectors
of the economy, because that’s where the money is.
For they see a legal system devoted to trampling upon victims in order to
protect the accused.
For they see televised bible thumpers who are only seeking wealth and
personal gratification.
For they see prophets of global warming doom, so called scientists, who
use their models to correct the data.
For they see that terrorism is an acceptable means of political expression
as it achieves its objectives.
For they see that rioting and looting will be excused, as long as you can
blame the system.
For they see that computers actually serve to curtail human contact and
further depersonification.
For they see our generation castigated for mirroring the faults of this
society that our hypocritical elders built.
For they know, Lord, what your judgement would be on the world today.
And who can blame them for wanting to escape?
For taking the shorter path to Heaven’s Gate?
While I’ve not followed on their less taken route,
That there are good reasons for doing it I cannot doubt.
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