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Chapter One
Living by Poetry
The Creative Process of
Spiritual Growth
Every man will be a poet if he can.
Henry David Thoreau
We live in a culture hard-driven by the need for answers.
Daily we encounter bright-yellow road signs that promise to point us toward spiritual and emotional success, clearly mapped routes that can be easily marked and measured and, ultimately, graded. We're guaranteed tangible results right now, on freshly laid blacktop, with crisp, white center lines.
We're offered Ferrari-fast solutions. And sometimes they work.
But why do "ten easy steps to (fill in the blank)" rarely orchestrate the richer, fuller soul-symphonies we long to live? And why does the surround sound of "how to" rarely attune us to a frequency higher than ourselves?
Maybe it's time to put the brakes on our drive toward answers. Time to turn off the dull, throbbing, high-powered stereo of pragmatism. Time to hop out of this car headed fast toward spiritual nowhere--and start break dancing to some different music. Kick off those ill-fitting corrective shoes ... and begin dancing to the heartbeat of redemption.
After all, we read in Scripture that "we are God's workmanship"--God's creative artwork, his poetry (a concept we'll examine later). Throughout his Word he hints that we're fashioned for more than just fixing our marriages or troubleshooting our businesses. More than even achieving a successful spiritual life. God the Poet invites us to his passionate opera of faith, hope and love; his exquisite, delicate ballet of both pleasure and suffering; his moody, prophetic jazz wafting through the world.
Living as God's poetry is countercultural in a society that largely neglects the mission of loveliness, of being. "The heavens declare the glory of God," the psalmist exults (Ps 19:1 NIV). The stars in the sky are glory, he tells us. Simple enough. They perform no duties except the work of being beautiful for the enjoyment and glory of the Creator.
That poetic beauty is, in itself, a calling. As the poet e. e. cummings says, "Poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling ... you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being." This "house of being" cummings sets before us is a broad, inviting space of visionary living. Poetry isn't a way of saying things--it's a way of seeing things.
That's why entering the creative house of being cummings describes won't cause us to stop all our activities and do nothing. (Imagine what would have happened if Jesus had decided just to sit tight in his snug world and "be.") Rather, the energy of being God's poetry empowers us to do more than we ever dreamed possible. It means, simply, that we see everything--including what we do --differently, because we're becoming different people.
This sort of being--and becoming--is living by poetry.
Living by Poetry
Judith, an attractive, brown-haired twenty-five-year-old, called me to see if we could talk about our mutual interests of poetry and faith. When we met, I noticed immediately that my new friend was--as she still is--a woman of enormous passion and conviction. She had immersed herself in missions work in Guatemala and El Salvador. She had also been actively involved with impoverished communities in inner-city Washington, D.C.
Yet, strangely, Judith's eyes were flat, lifeless--a woman struggling on the razor's edge of depression. I grew curious about this paradox of a woman sitting cross-legged in front of me.
As she tucked her feet underneath her on the couch, Judith told me more about her creative interests. Together, she and a friend had recently read several books that challenged them to connect their spiritual lives with their artistic interests. Before she'd departed on a visit to Guatemala, Judith and her friend had committed to writing each other once a week for the full twelve weeks of the trip. The result was more than she could have hoped for: their mutual forays into fun word play had whetted her creative appetite. Soon after she returned home, Judith's writing slowly began to take a poetic form.
Yet there were obstacles to this new writing passion. One had to do with the conviction Judith felt to work with the poor. In her latest ministry venture she'd come face to face with a hard truth: she wasn't able to claim her experiences with the poor as her own. She felt that she needed an even deeper sense of conviction--that there were even more alive parts of her soul that remained unexplored, untapped. For this reason, she felt, not only did she not have an authentic voice with the poor, but she was also afraid that she didn't have a voice of her own--one that was connected both to God and to the world, one that contributed to the larger good. Now, Judith wondered, was her new desire to "have a voice" prideful? After all, who was she to pursue a different spiritual life than the one she'd alway known?
Another of Judith's obstacles was a typical one for budding writers. When she first started keeping a journal, all her entries began with "Dear Lord" or "Dear God"--a safe sort of piety. But as she continued, she committed herself to gut-honest writing--the kind that didn't see God as an editor peering over her shoulder--and her imagination had begun to flow. Soon she awakened to a new and much more complex Judith. But now she had to wrestle with some very unsettling questions: Was God pleased by her new honesty, or was he upset by it? If he was upset, could she bring herself to abandon the writing? (She knew she couldn't.) Or could she abandon God? (Never.) She wasn't finding answers, only more difficult questions.
On that day we met, we talked about journeying together into the unknown territory in Judith's spiritual life. One possibility, we concluded, was that poetry might serve as a vehicle for the journey. Neither of us knew where poetry might take her, but it seemed clear this was a creative pilgrimage she was meant to make.
Judith took the first step on that journey by showing me some of the poems she'd written before we met. Here is one of those earlier works:
Dancing with God
Imagine a man and woman
famous for their passionate tango--
experts in rhythm,
partners in grace--
locked immobile
in a fierce embrace
as each one whispers
"let me lead!"
It was a simple poem, but it stated in a fresh way our common, lifelong, ballroom struggle to let God lead.
Judith's questions continued. Even as her verse flourished, she wondered, Is poetry useful? Isn't it wasteful to spend time writing poems in a world filled with starving, hopeless people? I encouraged her to keep exploring, keep asking questions, and continue trying to find a voice for her struggles. During this time she showed the following poem to me, a story about one of her missions ventures:
Refugees
We wait
dusty and hot in Comalapa
til the battered Ford truck lumbers up.
"Get a seat,"
someone says to thegringa, so I
slurp up my Orange Crush and clamber on.
Fifteen or more
Guatemalans pack in, shoving
bags of beans, rice, cabbage, soap on the flatbed.
Swaying, half-perched
on a board, I wrap my arm
round a little girl whose name, she says, is Maricielo.
Soon she slides
down to sleep on the floor,
her body filling the small space like water.
The older bodies stand stiff
against the roughness of the ride. We are silent,
for what words can speed the journey,
or make home
the destination? A road has been cut
through the jungle, but not by these travelers.
And Maricielo sleeps
easily there on the rattling floor.
Like Jesus in his tossing boat.
Judith's poem offers a startling image of faith: the ease of a child's sleep in the midst of harsh circumstances. She compares it to Christ's ease when he spoke to the storm, "Peace, be still." By this time Judith's use of imagery and rhythm was growing dearer, more precise, as evidenced in lines such as "bags of beans, rice, cabbage, soap on the flatbed." We lurch alongside her in the truck and stiffen ourselves for the ride.
As she continued to create, Judith realized that the poems themselves weren't answering her deep questions. But they were plunging her beneath the surface of the people around her, helping her to return to a sense of wonder at common, everyday events.
For example, Judith used poetry to begin remembering and redeeming the stories of her family. In the following poem she beautifully portrays her father's music as his means to escape poverty, heat, ignorance and his brothers' tragic deaths:
Texas Prelude
I watch my father, age sixteen,
lie down each night on some new bed
in Kilgore, Lubbock, Goliad
and steer his neon radio
through static waves in search of friends:
Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms. And then
begin to swing his arms, conduct
with glowing cigarette baton
some allemande or fugue, as if
such music can beat back the sun,
drown out the scream of junebugs, halt
the death of one more brother or
push up beneath those flapping arms
in measured gust until you rise,
you fly, you leave it all behind.
This reflection of her musician father's youth reveals Judith's sense of wonder in the ordinary, as well as the unconditionally loving eye of the poet. She imaginatively enters into her father's story and captures an intimate moment in time. She also experiments with new poetic forms: she imitates the precise, ordered beats of her father's musical conducting through a poem written entirely in iambic tetrameter.
As she did with this poem, Judith happily experimented with various forms and styles of writing. She played with language, shuffling words and ideas like playing cards in a variety of combinations. At the same time her soul stretched and played as well. She pursued her relationships--and her faith--with more passion.
As Judith's love for poetry grew, she took a risky step: she applied to an M.F.A. program to study poetry full-time, and she was accepted. Her decision was a bold one. She uprooted her life to pursue a vision both creative and spiritual, one that gave her no solid guarantee of life direction or income. While immersing herself in this new, other world of poetry, she wrote of a revelation: "Through reading poetry in church coffeehouses, I've discovered I have a much more effective and provocative opportunity to share my concerns about political and social justice issues.... Poetry seems to reach people, while dialogues where `buzzwords' like injustice, conservative, etc. are used just seem to close people's minds."
Judith had discovered a common ground for her passions of poetry and social justice. Yet poetry was--and is--too beautiful and mysterious to allow her to land in one place for too long. The following poem is a glimpse into a foreign tragedy that transported her to even deeper questions:
The Boat
Local ferry
drowned off the coast:
at least 300 people are dead.
Commuters to the capital from the island,
none of the passengers knew how to swim.
Write the poem
like you're building a boat:
hollowed out, planked together, pitched with tar.
100 yards from shore,
passengers rushed the ship's bow,
overwhelming the men paid to carry them
on their shoulders to shore.
Balance the hull and raise the mast,
let the mainsail curve to the wind. Go beautiful and swift my boat.
A woman set off the stampede
when her infant son started choking.
The mother tried to push to the front
but the others refused
to let her through.
Steer straight into the gale--
don't let the rigging slack--
lean hard against the boom--
Three times the Ministry of Transport
has built a dock for the ferry--
each time hacked up and burned
by the carriers, whose income depends
on the off-shore landings.
The U.S. Ambassador cites the tragedy
as another example of the country's
inability to govern itself.
My boat my perfect boat you are too late.
You are not strong enough
to carry the dead.
And I cannot swim in these waters.
The poem concludes with Judith's sense that her poetry drowns in the face of such tangled suffering. The sinking of the boat, the choking infant and desperate mother, the rich country's judgment of the poor country's inability to govern itself--all lead her to a difficult place: how inadequate poetry--her "boat"--seems in the wake of human misery. Judith finds herself at sea, adrift as to how her writing can respond to such sorrow and injustice in the world.
Judith hasn't found clear answers for her questions through poetry. She has simply let the questions take her by the hand and lead her into a richer, more creative--and perhaps more devout--spiritual life. Writing poetry has helped her venture into more expansive countries in her heart, beyond the restrictive borders of barbed-wire, how-to answers. She's allowed poetry to teach her what it means to love both God and people from even deeper parts of her soul.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dancing to the Heartbeat of Redemption by Joy Sawyer. Copyright © 2000 by Joy Sawyer. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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