I walked every day through the West African town,
Rust-red dirt beneath my feet, green leaves crowding overhead.
The sounds of chickens and of mortars pounding
Marked the houses hiding in the trees along the road.
But one day, at my feet, against the rust-red dirt, I saw
A streak of green – grass-green, glittering emerald.
I bent to look: a tiny mamba, just hatched, innocent
As Adam on his first day in paradise, and poison.
Entranced by its brightness, I crouched
In the rust-red dirt and speckled shade.
I looked at it; it looked back me, unmoved.
“Da SNAKE!” a voice screeched from the end of the road.
How could she even see the tiny creature in the dust?
“You mu’ kill it!”
I stood up and considered the hatchling at my feet.
Beyond its beauty I could see
The barefoot children playing in the yards
Of worried mothers too familiar with death.
I picked up a stone, dropped it on the snake’s head,
And stepped down, hard.
Note from CM: If you’ve read Internet Monk for any length of time, you know that both Michael Spencer and I have benefited immensely from the work of Eugene Peterson. For many, many reasons, not least of which is Peterson’s love for language and his insistence on rich conversation as a main ingredient of pastoral work.
On this Poetry Week, I’d like to set before you this excerpt from an interview he did with Luci Shaw at Image Journal, in which EP talks about his love for art, literature, and, particularly, poetry, and how these have shaped and formed his life as a person and a pastor.
Lots to chew on here.
• • •
Image: It seems you’ve spent much of your life in conversation—through prayer, within your own soul, but also through being a pastor, with the students you teach, with the people you write for.
EP: I’m glad you picked up on the word conversation. I realized at one point that if I was going to be a pastor and was going to write, I would have to find a way to write that was relational. So much writing on religion and spirituality is didactic. There’s no conversation there. I think of a farmer plowing a field. When you get to the end of the row, you turn back again and plow right alongside the work that’s already been done, going back and forth. Language in essence is conversation, dialogue. It’s dialectic. It always requires a response. In that way, everything in scripture is conversation. God does not speak and then walk off. We don’t say something to God and walk off. So many people have questions about difficulty in prayer, and I think most of the misunderstanding takes place because they think they’re the sole speakers. But in a conversation, listening goes on.
Language in conversation is always changing. That’s why the poet is so important. Poets pay attention to the nuances and rhythms and sounds. For them, language is not just words on paper or words dictated. It’s always conversation. That’s why poets are so essential for pastors. They immerse us in conversational language which is making something, which is saying something in relationship.
Image: How does poetry move you, in a way distinct from prose? What are your responses to the poetry of the psalms, the prophets, the preachers in scripture?
EP: One of the reasons that the psalms have been so important to me, and that I’ve spent so much of my time reading and praying them—along with the other great poetic piece in the Bible, the Revelation of John—is that they constantly train me in listening to the rhythms and getting into the nuances, so that I’m not just reading for information or entertainment or inspiration. At least half of the Bible is written in poetry. Why don’t Christians immerse themselves more in poetry so that we can learn how language works? We live in a culture where very few poets get attention. Language is related to information, for getting things done. But the Christian life, the spiritual life, is not about information or getting things done. It’s about living. I want to live. I want to find out how. I want encouragement to live. I need companions in living.
Image: Walter Brueggemann has written about the need for pastoral ministry to include poetic thinking. Do you also see this as an essential part of Christian ministry?
EP: Yes. Walter Brueggemann is one of our finest scholars, and that’s because he’s aware of the poetic dimension of language. I’m grateful to the scholars. I couldn’t live without them, but they’re not enough for me. Brueggemann is a joy because he lets the poet have a strong voice, an essential voice.
Image: I know you are a lover of Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for both of whom nature was a lens for viewing the divine, for discovering transcendence. What worlds does their writing make more vivid for you?
EP: Hopkins and Dickinson have a similar effect upon me. As with all poets, a major part of their work is the use of metaphor. These two are conspicuous in how they pick up the ordinary, natural world and use it as a link between the visible and invisible. Most of existence is invisible and inaudible. How do we make a connection with this huge world? By metaphor. The Bible is lavish with metaphor, but metaphors can very easily become clichés. The poet is a defense against clichés. For me, Dickinson and Hopkins have been primary in taking the ordinary stuff of life and putting it in such a way that you see or hear something other. I love Hopkins’s word “inscape.” It took me a long time to understand what he meant by that, but once I did, I saw it everyplace. Dickinson seems less self-conscious. So much of what she wrote seems to have come out of the blue. She didn’t seem to be writing for publication. I’m sure there was a possibility of it in her mind, but I think the writing was just spontaneous. That’s influenced me as a pastor. Can I do nothing in terms of publication, publicity, or getting a job done, but instead focus on getting this language into myself—written, spoken, prayed—unselfconsciously? If I can, then I’m being honest.
The task of preaching, as the task of poetry, is to say the old thing in a new way. Some expository preaching is just a repetition of what’s in the Bible: a listing of texts, proving things by a text. Instead, as a pastor you should think about what you want to say, re-say it, live into it, and then you’ll be able to say it in language that’s alive. I think one of the primary motives behind The Message was an attempt to find new metaphors for metaphors than had become clichés. I translated “mustard seed” as “pine nut.” You wouldn’t believe how much objection I got to that. “It’s not what the Bible says,” people said. I’ve never seen a mustard seed, but I’ve seen a lot of pine nuts.
Image: What poets do you read and benefit from? What theologians?
EP: W.H. Auden has meant a lot to me. I learned more about prosody from Auden than anyone else. Some of his poems seem to me so probing of the human condition and the culture in which we live. He was very much aware of the nature of the culture, and had a clear sense of how the gospel and redemption work in it.
At one point in my life T.S. Eliot was the poet who was most important to me. The contrast between The Waste Land and Four Quartetsseems to me such a stark illustration of what happens when a sharply attentive non-Christian mind becomes a sharply attentive Christian mind. As a pastor, it’s easy to find out what’s wrong with the world and condemn it and preach to it. It’s a very different thing to look at that same world and pray it. That’s what I wanted to do, and Eliot was primary in my learning how. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.
The two writers who’ve most influenced the way I use language and the way I developed vocationally as a pastor are Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Theologically I was brought up on Calvin and Luther and later on Barth. They’re all magnificent theologians, and not without imagination. They care about words, but I think of them as mountain climbers. They go to the heights. They see the whole thing. But five or ten years into being a pastor, I was introduced by a friend to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. They are theologians of a very different kind. I think of them as theologians of the valley, where people live. Teresa is a storyteller. Everything she writes is storied. John is a poet. Much of his writing is explication of his poetry, but all of it is rooted in the poetry, which has its basis in the Song of Songs. I realized that as a pastor I need Teresa and John right alongside Luther and Calvin and Barth. My job is not just announcing the truth of God; it’s getting people into the country where the truth is lived. Teresa and John do that magnificently. While Luther and Calvin and Barth are proclaiming the truth from the mountain, Teresa and John are down in the valley plowing the fields, sowing the seeds, pulling the weeds. That’s what pastors do. That’s also what poets and novelists do. I couldn’t live without the mountain climbers, but I couldn’t do my work without the farmers.
I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don’t think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither
young nor old, but simply new, always
counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds
— no mere measure or geometry, no cubism,
can account for clouds or, satisfactorily, for bodies.
There is no science for this, or art either.
Even the old body is new — who has known it
before? — and no sooner new than gone, to be
replaced by a body yet older and again new.
The clouds are rarely absent from our sky
over this humid valley, and there is a sycamore
that I watch as, growing on the riverbank,
it forecloses the horizon, like the years
of an old man. And you, who are as old
almost as I am, I love as I loved you
young, except that, old, I am astonished
at such a possibility, and am duly grateful.
With Ford and Howard, Boyer, Kubek
Richardson, and Skowron,
Berra, Mantle, Maris in the field
the boys of summer ’61
were powerful and glamorous,
unrivaled in the thrills that they could yield.
A five year-old lefty I was then
When Roger broke the unbreakable mark
and somehow opened an unseen door
through which we walked into a new age
of shining possibility —
we had no clue what the sixties had in store.
And nor do I and nor do you,
nor can we know when epochs change.
It’s not as though it’s written in the sky!
At 61, now more than ever,
I know there is no storyboard,
no guarantee on which we can rely —
at least not unambiguous,
or painless, or self-evident —
which answers every doubt and makes it clear
that all is well and all is well
and all manner of things will all be well,
despite the breathless claims I often hear.
We turn and turn, and turn and turn —
to everything a season.
We rise and fall, and heal and rise again.
From this small vantage
every moment’s present and inscrutable,
its purpose, goal, and motion beyond ken.
I look back on six decades
of stories left unfinished;
remnants floating, washing up on shore:
a patchwork map to guide me?
or fuel to build my beach fire?
I know not what the sixties have in store.
Note from CM: We feature two Easter poems today. The first is by one of my favorite devotional poets, Christina Rossetti. We featured her during Advent in 2014, and today we offer one of her delightful Easter carols. As in her Advent poems, which mirrored the “bleak midwinter” climate in which she lived, so too her Easter poetry dances with the music and color of springtime.
❀
Spring bursts to-day,
For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.
Flash forth, thou Sun,
The rain is over and gone, its work is done.
Winter is past,
Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.
Bud, Fig and Vine,
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.
Break forth this morn
In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.
Uplift thy head,
O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.
Beside your dams
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.
All Herds and Flocks
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.
Sing, Creatures, sing,
Angels and Men and Birds and everything.
All notes of Doves
Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.
Picture a car, speeding along a highway in the morning.
A voice on the radio is gabbling about some crisis.
The driver’s cell phone is on, lying on the console next to her;
She’s shouting at someone. In her hand is fast food,
Wrapped in greasy yellow paper.
A coffee cup in its holder develops waves
As the car swings onto a street slick with tar –
A tunnel through skyscrapers, smog,
Car horns, wires, and metal signs.
Picture behind the car, miles away, then closer, then closer still,
A wall of water surging faster than a car can drive.
Trying to change lanes, swearing at the traffic,
The driver looks in the mirror.
Like Pharaoh on the Red Sea floor, like Noah’s neighbors,
She sees the future become her present.
A rush of water through the city canyons,
A jumble of cars stirred into foam –
The wall moves on.
Picture: on the surface of a silent sea, oil spreads its peacock tail.
Cars, a couch, bottles, bags, one purple Croc, a paper diaper
Bob, briefly.
Like snags in a river, like compound fractures,
Office buildings, phone poles, and billboards break the surface.
The car sinks, releasing one last gasp of air;
The couch subsides. The garbage drifts on.
Slowly the snags tip, then crumble,
Splashing briefly as they succumb.
Unbroken surface;
Unbroken silence.
Note from CM: I know this may not draw as many comments as some of our regular discussion posts, but I have wanted to have a “Poetry Week” here for a long time. So this will be the week.
Each day, we will publish two poems, one just after midnight, the other after noon. Hopefully, this will give us all a chance to move out of our left brain for a few days and into our right, to focus not on analysis and argumentation, but to practice contemplation as we immerse ourselves in imagery, metaphor, and beauty.
We begin today with our Poet Laureate, Damaris Zehner, a true lover of poetry, and, as you will see, a very able practitioner.
• • •
The Beginning of the Anthropocene By Damaris Zehner
What daring our ancestor had, to face a wolf –
The teeth, the yellow eyes, the slow circling –
And see beyond the snarl
A warm-coated companion
Curled around his sleeping children.
What courage, to contemplate the aurochs
With horns like tree branches, heavy hooves,
Its back as humped and massive as the hills,
And feel, beyond a proper terror,
His cheek pressed against a hay-scented flank
And his hands tugging uncontested at rubbery udders.
What ambition rose in him to hear the stallion
Rallying his herd and see the flying manes and tails
Vanish over the steppe; to picture wagons, chariots,
Speed and conquest, and himself a centaur
Scattering people with his hooves.
What hubris filled him as, beside the hut
Of mammoth hides, he stared obliquely
At the orange ball sinking; he crouched and struck
The sun out of a rock, caught it in strands of grass,
And blew until bright worms crawled through the kindling.
Night fell, but the small sun on his hearth glowed with power,
And he gazed at it and dreamed.
Psalm 23 is perhaps the most loved text in the Hebrew Bible. For this Sunday in Easter, Bach wrote three cantatas on the theme of the Good Shepherd, including BWV 112, “Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt“ (The Lord is my faithful shepherd), his setting of the 23rd Psalm. Today, we feature samples of three central movements in this cantata.
Here is the lovely alto aria, “He leads me to pure water.”
A darker bass recitative follows: “And though I wander in the dark valley.”
This leads to a triumphant statement of trust in the penultimate duet:
You prepare for me a table before my enemies on all sides, you make my heart undismayed and fresh, you anoint my head for me and you pour out fully in my soul your spiritual joy.
Here is the entire English text of this wonderful cantata:
The Lord is my faithful shepherd
he holds me in his protection,
where there is nothing lacking to me
at all of any goodness,
he puts me out to pasture continually
where grows the sweet-tasting grass
of his holy word.
He leads me to pure water
that brings me refreshment.
It is his holy spirit
that makes me cheerful.
He guides me on the right road
of his commandments without ceasing
on account of his name’s sake.
And though I wander in the dark valley
I fear no misfortune
in persecution, suffering, sorrow
and the spiteful malice of this world,
for you are with me constantly
your rod and staff comfort me,
I rely on your word.
You prepare for me a table
before my enemies on all sides,
you make my heart undismayed and fresh,
you anoint my head for me
and you pour out fully in my soul
your spiritual joy.
Goodness and mercy
follow me through my life
and I shall remain forever
in the house of the Lord,
on earth in Christian company
and after my death I shall be there
with Christ my Lord.
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