The Consolations of Writing

Dimensions

How wide –

Encompassing the earth’s vast circle

scarred yet shining, reaching further

than these nails, from east to west,

wider that the earth’s whole orbit,

wider than the girth of sun,

than solar systems, galaxies –

How long –

Spanning further than the years,

the length of time, the age of sun,

longer than the distance from

His perfect light to our darkness,

no length too far, no distance out

of His love’s stride towards us –

How high –

From deepest depths to heaven’s heights,

further than the sky can tell,

than telescope can reach or gaze,

than every leap of intellect,

higher than the astronaut,

than gravity-defying leaps,

higher than our fears can rise,

than Helium, than Mercury –

How deep –

Plumbing the twilight zone, abyss,

the land of untold darkness where

our heavy spirits all must sink,

deeper than the weighty grave,

the downwards pull of everything,

deeper than our eyes can fathom,

deeper than the spear can pierce,

than apple-fall, than three-day’s-tomb,

deeper than proud Adam fell,

deeper than our sin.

To know this love –

Surpassing all

the heights, the depths, the width, the length,

of all our finest knowledge, and

filling every cavity,

consuming all our entropy,

every way we look and fall –

love beyond it all.

12 Poets #1: Justification (After George Herbert’s “Redemption”)

George Herbert wrote around four hundred years ago, but his poetry is still powerfully immediate today. Perhaps it’s the sometimes shocking honesty of his work, perhaps the incredible confidence with which he moves between poetic forms and makes them altogether his own. This is particularly apparent in the handful of sonnets that he wrote. Herbert rarely wrote sonnets, but when he did they were powerful – so powerful that you often forgot you were even reading a sonnet.

Take “Redemption”, for example, one of my personal favourites. Breaking with a tradition that sees sonnets often being addresses to a beloved or an exposition of a theme, this sonnet is a story and one with an undeniable bite to it at the end. I have used “Redemption” as the starting point for a new poem which I have called “Justification”. Like Herbert’s poem, it tells a story which illustrates a theological concept. I have tried to stick as closely as possible to Herbert’s form without recycling his ideas. Here are both poems for you to read.

Justification

Tired out from night on night awake,

Hurling back and forth these arguments,

Revising who said this, made that mistake,

My head worn out, my body weak and dense,

I set before you my best-argued case,

My final, full summation of the facts.

The spleen I vented then before your face

Fell in the night, the thudding of an axe.

I turned to you, expecting angry flame,

An answer thick with all your wounded pride;

Instead I saw blood flowing from your side.

You smiled in the silence of my shame.

All mine is yours, whispered your last heart beat;

You took my words and nailed them through your feet.

George Herbert – Redemption

Having been tenant long to a rich lord,

Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,

And make a suit unto him, to afford

A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.

In heaven at his manor I him sought;

They told me there that he was lately gone

About some land, which he had dearly bought

Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.

I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,

Sought him accordingly in great resorts;

In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts;

At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth

Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,

Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

The year of apprenticeship begins

Thanks to those of you who responded to my post about my new poetry project – a year of studying and learning from 12 of the best Christian poets, one a month, four poems from each. I’ve received some great suggestions and have also come across some wonderful poets myself as I’ve been searching for the right people to look at. One of the joys of the project already has been seeing that there’s simply too many great Christian poets out there. Sorry to those of you who’ve made suggestions which I won’t be able to include – picking just twelve has been quite a challenge!

Of course, the list might change, so I’m going to reveal each poet as we move through the list rather than announcing the full list now. It’s a great list, though, and I’m really excited to be looking at all of them. It’s also interesting to note some trends which have developed, quite unknowingly, in the list. Most are Catholic or Anglican. A lot of them are Welsh! And, unsurprisingly perhaps, very few of them are my countrymen or women – Australian. I’ll look at the poets in chronological order, so that means that this month we’re going to be starting way back in the seventeenth century, with Welsh-born Anglican minister and poet George Herbert. I can’t wait!

Guarantor

There is no guarantee

Within me

Of righteousness or future glory,

No guarantee

Of how the story

Will resolve. Yet in You in see,

Only in Your pure blood,

O my God,

Does the story have its certainty,

Its final good

And this perfect plea:

Sins pardoned, frailty understood.

The Answer

I am between writing projects at the moment, my liturgical poems on hold for a month until the last day in the calendar that I have yet to write about – Ascension Day at the start of May – and being yet to begin my Christian poets project (which you can expect to see me begin this week). So, in the mean-time, here is another one of the poems I am writing for my memoir project on the Psalms. This one is loosely based on a section of Psalm 119 – the beautiful passage in verses 41-48. It has been a very comforting passage through some dark times in my life, so here is a poem which expresses some of what it means to me.

The Answer

The taunter has his night-time lies

That speak of depths of dark in me

Which I can only vaguely know

Yet sound as nails at night.

And in the day-time he has ways

To catch me with my thoughts, alone,

Amidst the crowd or in my head,

The stillness of deep dread.

And in all my vast stores of words

And arguments I have none left

To say that he does not know me,

That what he says is lies.

For when I answer, thoughts like vines

Arise and tangle me in me,

And when the word of truth is near

The vines snatch it away.

So only this can I reply:

That there is love, unfailing, rich,

And promises of salvation

Surer than my fears.

When it comes, and it is near,

Then I shall answer him who taunts

And will hold firmly to the word

Which holds me in its plans.

Rise (Saturday in Easter Week)

And He did;

though it breaks our minds,

He did.

The tomb is empty,

Peter’s face

white like linen;

Mary smiles

and hearts are soon on fire; there’s

no reason why

the broken, wounded,

disappointed ones

should laugh

and leap

and heal the sick

unless

He burst forth from the tomb

and said,

I am always with you,

and breathed

His spirit into them;

unless

some cosmic shift took place

within

all that we know is true,

unless

He showed His hands and feet

and said,

Now be my hands and feet,

unless

the fiery risen Christ

met them

in their homes and said

Don’t fear,

unless He rose

up from the grave

and conquered death –

He did.

Stone Hearts (Friday in Easter Week)

It seems to cut against all logic,

What we claim that we have seen:

Dead men do not rise, the lame

Do not stand up and walk.

And though we shout and scream a name

It has no power from the tomb;

And yet His name made these bowed legs

Straighten out and move.

The Sadducees come, much annoyed,

For they know what all school-kids know:

That bodies once the breath’s expired

Cannot move, do not eat fish.

But in their minds, where they refuse

To listen, lies the knowledge that

If anyone could raise the dead,

He must surely be God.

And we know, as we always knew,

That dead men do not rise nor eat

The fish that they sent to our nets,

And know that our dull, stony hearts

Cannot be made to roll away

And send forth hearts of truth and flesh

Unless the one who made the heart

Bursts out forth from the grave.

Author of Life (Thursday in Easter Week)

“It’s true: the Author of life lay dead,

Lay three days inside death’s tomb,

The Righteous and the Holy One

Made Himself an offering to

Ignorant, unrighteous men

Who knew not what they did.

It’s true, for we are witnesses;

We saw Him breathe and saw Him die

And saw Him rise again and eat

Fish and bread among us, He

Who made the fish swim, made grain grow

And lay dead on a tree.

Look: the one who makes bones live

And opens blinded eyes has made

The lame man walk along with us,

And you too must receive

The gift of faith, the gift of life,

The gift of utter joy.”

The lame man clinging onto them

Saw the stares of men who knew

Everything yet nothing too.

“Times of refreshing may come to you,”

Peter said, the tail’s sting

Hanging in the wind:

For everything was done for them

And nothing they could give,

Every debt was paid and all

Faith was theirs to take,

Yet some there were who still would not

Die that they might live.

Breaking Bread, Mending Bones (Wednesday in Easter Week)

We had seen him do the same as this –

men on mats, lame from their birth,

men born blind,

women who bled,

rubbing mud into their eyes,

ordering their legs,

“Now walk!”

And always we saw this response:

the broken ones arising,

healed,

the order of their bones arranged

to be now as it should,

that way

he had of taking atoms and

changing their whole course.

And yet we had not understood,

until we saw Him breaking bread –

an action so domestic,

yet

unexpected, being dead,

and then, I think, we understood,

how every promise of the Word

was somehow in His nail-scarred hands

so bodies must respond to Him

as clay in potters’ hands.

And slowly there dawned in our minds

the knowledge that just as He said

“Get up and walk”, he could too say

“Your sins are now forgiven”, and

“Arise now from the grave.”

A new project and an invitation

Those of you who have been following The Consolations of Writing for a while now will be aware that for the last year I have been working on a poetry project involving writing a poem for each day in the Anglican liturgical calendar. It’s been a mammoth task, but, with over 200 poems written, the project is coming to a close, with a few more Easter poems left this week and then one straggler of a poem for Ascension Day in May.

Naturally, it will be with some degree of relief that I’ll finish the project. But…I’ve kind of enjoyed having a big creative task to work on. It’s helped ensure that I write something almost every day of the week, and everyone will tell you that regular writing is the main way to keep developing artistically.

So – I’ve decided to start a new project, beginning next week. And I’d like your support with it.

I’m tentatively calling it “The 12 Poets Project”, and this is what it will involve: for each of the next 12 months I’m going to read and explore the work of one Christian poet. I will pick four of their poems which particularly interest me and will use these as the basis for four of my own poems. The poems I write will be in response to the original: I might borrow a feature of the original poem – the form, the a key image – or respond to the poet’s ideas. And each month I will also write a reflection on the work of that poet.

Why would I do this? Because I figure that studying some of the masters of the craft has to be a good thing. Because I want to learn as much as I can about the craft of writing poetry and I want to see how other poets have used their poetry to represent and explore matters of faith.

Of course, a project like this is much more fun when it involves other people. So – I’m inviting all of you to join me with it. You can join in a few ways:

– By suggesting poets you think I might like to include in the project.

– By reading the poets with me and offering your own thoughts, insights, poems etc. in response.

– By spreading the word and seeing who else we can get on board.

Please let me know any thoughts you have. I’d love to hear from as many of you as possible. Let the suggestions for poets start now…