Poetry Makes Life Last Longer

"The breakers steady crash..."

The end of a year seems a good time to reflect on time: what shortens it, what stretches it. The beginning of this year I eagerly read most of Alan Burdick’s Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation (2017). Though I recommend it, I found the text sometimes contradicted the title as I trudged through scientific studies and jargon.

A similar fate awaited me as I read a book about spirituality toward the end of this year. I felt as if I needed to come up for air, and found my eyes pausing over the text and searching the ravine behind our house from the vantage point of our deck for something more, something inspiring, maybe even God.

Then I remembered J. Barrie Shepherd had sent me a copy of his latest book of poetry, entitled Bench on the Bluff, and I set aside my dutiful reading of the somewhat dry tome on the spirit and sought the poetic wisdom of a writer who had been my spiritual director as a young man, unbeknownst to him, one whose books of daily reflections helped me establish my morning prayer routine and inspired my own desire to provide such reflections for others in my books and now this blog.

The image of a “bench on the bluff,” taken from his Maine retirement village’s cliff overlooking the Atlantic, reminded me of a tranquil spot on the palisades of Santa Monica overlooking the Pacific, where, according to an inscription on a circular stone bench (as I remember it) “in the sunset of his life, John P. Jones used to come here every evening to watch the sun set over the ocean.”

At 81 years of age, that is similar to what Barrie Shepherd is doing in what he calls a “chapbook”: “a small collection of poetry…that often centers on a specific theme.” It is dedicated to his and Mhairi’s Yorkshire Terrier, Iona, and “all her canine neighbors.”

In college I had a double major: English Literature and Religious Studies. So I’ve loved poetry from the start, and used to write poetry regularly, like many a youth. But I had to read so much of it, so quickly for courses, and think too much about what made poetry work that my first love became a source of anxiety and even competition. One of my texts, Understanding Poetry (a good book despite a presumptuous title), made me sympathize with Robin Williams’ character in The Dead Poets’ Society who advised his prep school students to rip out the first chapter of a similar text.

Poetry, like art and scripture and pornography, is something you know when you see it. And poetry, when unhurried and absorbing, stretches time for me.

And so it is with Barrie’s poems, and it was all I could do to restrain my impulse to read them all in a few sittings. I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog that I can’t read anything meaningful without a pen, underlining or marking texts to return to. The problem I’ve faced reading Barrie’s book is that I’ve wanted to underline and mark everything. Writing about it as I’m doing now made me want to quote so much of it that I would be infringing on his copyright!

I will never look the same way at the slender month of February or the shimmering surface of a lap pool. I will find haikus in every aspect of my community. I will look to nature and the seasons to welcome my own life cycle. His encounter with the Perseid meteor shower took me back to my own encounter in the night skies above Santa Barbara’s Mount Calvary Retreat House. I will counter the pains of aging with laughter in the wisdom of an “even-older-than-I-am-now lady” advising “When you wake up in the morning and nothing new hurts…you know you’re dead.”

And did I just call him “Barrie”? A person I’ve encountered less than a dozen times, but whose words befriended me in his books and now, continue to “friend” me in email exchanges about my blog. Yes, I feel like we are chums, and I am sitting with him on that bench missing the latest news “in an age of the absence of angels,” but watching: 

The breakers steady crash

and crumple as they rolled ashore

reporting on the deepest state of things,

reminding me that they will still be singing here

when all my news has fled like so much sea spray

on these stark, primeval rocks.

Copies of Bench on the Bluff are available @ $10 plus $5 shipping from:

The Rev. Dr. J. Barrie Shepherd

Piper Shores Retirement Community

15 Piper Road, Apt. K325

Scarborough, ME 04074

Proceeds are donated to charity.

For my other posts that mention J. Barrie Shepherd, go to:

http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com/search?q=barrie+shepherd

Here’s hoping we all have happy and new years!

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  Photo from visit to Hawai'i, October, 1985.

The Road Not Taken

As a result of an e-mail conversation about something on my blog, poet and preacher J. Barrie Shepherd sent me his delightful book, Whatever Happened to Delight? Preaching the Gospel in Poetry and Parables. It inspired me to reclaim excerpts from a reflection I wrote for a Christian poetry spiritual formation course, which here I blend with thoughts from Barrie's book, properly credited in text.

The road not taken. The poet Robert Frost’s famous line has been used so often, many think of it as a cliché. But it yet carries poetic power, because many, if not most, if not all of us have roads not taken in our lives, roads whose destinations are hidden from us, just as the lion Aslan explains to the children in The Narnia Chronicles that we are not told what might have been.

In college I was a double major: English Literature and Religious Studies. I loved literature but I loved God more, and though literature might have been the safer path for someone who was gay, introverted, and a writer, the devotion, service, and activism of ministry was the higher calling and I went on to seminary and ministry. 

Let us risk the wildest places,
Lest we go down in comfort, and despair. 

Mary Oliver writes this about the explorer Magellan.

I confess literature and religion have never been that far apart for me, nor in reality. Both are at their best when they tell a story. Both are at their best when, even deconstructed or dymythologized, they reveal a better, deeper, and more meaningful story.

Analysis reveals the parts—the bones, the sinews, the surfaces—without breathing life into the whole, without giving it a heart that pumps life through the body, without creating soul. Just as a human skeleton hanging in a medical classroom is far from life as we know it, theology worked out on paper or chalkboard or worse, by church votes, loses its liveliness when it is far from the story, the myth, the Word made flesh.

“If God had wanted to appeal directly to our minds, Mary would have written a book instead of bearing a child,” Barrie quotes The Ironic Christian’s Companion by Patrick Henry.

My youthful poetry expressed my passionate, earnest self. My early prose wanted to tell a story—often my story, disguised. Novelist Saul Bellow has said that “Fiction is the higher autobiography.” The most puzzling comment I received from a reader of my first (unpublished) novel was, “What are you trying to say?” I wasn’t trying to “say” anything so much as tell a story.

Barrie mentions Ruben Alves’ observation “that the verbs ‘to explain’ or ‘to explicate’ come from Latin roots that mean to flatten, to spread out, to make level,” and then quotes Peter Gomes to the effect that at first, in preaching, he felt called to explain, and later to apologize, but only toward the end of his preaching career to celebrate “the holy mysteries of the faith.” Gomes concludes, “We are saved by our metaphors, not our metaphysics.”

My poetry became liturgies and my prose became sermons and subsequently, a dozen published non-fiction books focused on the biblical stories, stories of others, and my own stories. Along the way I’ve written four unpublished novels as well, the last of which is my life revisited, as if I had pursued “the road not taken,” resisting ministry and writing fiction.

Writing is my central spiritual discipline. Kathleen Norris considers writing her form of lectio divina. This is where and when and how I figure out the why and the who. Spiritual pilgrims once meandered here and there on their way to holy sites, and that’s what I do, in words, hoping that I might happen onto a sacred place or two in the process, perhaps encounter God, or the Word made flesh, or the Spirit’s pentecostal gift.

I do not outline beforehand, I do not “plan” the outcome, but “wait for the Lord” and the serendipitous gifts of water from rock, manna from sky, quails overhead, a still, small voice or “the sound of sheer silence,” the providential beauty of lilies, the thrill of promised land, the in-breaking commonwealth of God, the birthpangs of all creation. Like Emily Dickinson, I don’t need to go somewhere to witness these wonders—I experience them in my room, in my case, a tiny office off the garage with windows to see outside.

And, according to Barrie, “Emily Dickinson once wrote in a letter to a friend that ‘consider the lilies of the field’ was the one commandment she had never disobeyed.”

 “We are put on earth a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love,” the mystical poet William Blake wrote.  Oliver includes an homage to Blake in her poem The Swan, declaring, 

The path to heaven

doesn’t lie down in flat miles.

It’s in the imagination

with which you perceive

this world,

and the gestures

with which you honor it.

Thank God for poets and visionaries, artists and children, cooks and gardeners, mystics and musicians, scientists and writers, professors and preachers, mentors and colleagues, contemplatives and activists, who have helped us, who have helped me, see the big picture, the grand scheme, the expanding universe, the enlarging heart—and where I belong.

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Finding Walden Where You Are

I offer an excerpt from my paper for a Christian Poetry weekend course I recently took through the Spiritual Formation program of Columbia Seminary. The paper was to be about one’s own spiritual pilgrimage. 

Writing is my central spiritual discipline. Kathleen Norris considers writing her form of lectio divina. This is where and when and how I figure out the why and the who. The word “saunter” is believed to come from the practice of spiritual pilgrims meandering here and there on their way to holy sites, and that’s what I do, in words, hoping that I might happen onto a sacred place or two in the process, perhaps encounter God, or the Word made flesh, or the Spirit’s pentecostal gift.

I do not outline beforehand, I do not “plan” the outcome, but “wait for the Lord” and the serendipitous gifts of water from rock, manna from sky, quails overhead, a still, small voice or “the sound of sheer silence,” the providential beauty of lilies, the promised land and commonwealth of God, the birthpangs of all creation.

Like Emily Dickinson, I don’t need to go somewhere to witness these wonders—I experience them in my room, in my case, a tiny office off the garage with a window to see outside. I identify with Mary Oliver’s reaction to friends suggesting she visit Walden, in her poem of that name.  I checked Mapquest and found she lives just three hours from Thoreau’s paradise, the transcendentalist prophet whom Oliver characterizes:

They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

She resists making the trip, realizing she can do so in her imagination, reminded by his book of that name:

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing

As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult

Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

I understand her resistance to friends’ suggestions she go there, because some of my friends have suggested I visit the monastery in nearby Conyers, when indeed, I live in some ways a more monastic lifestyle than if I had been a monk! Such is the life of the writer, the self-employed, those who work from home. 

And besides, as I tell those attending my workshops and retreats, the “trick” is finding Walden “where you are,” finding the contemplative life within one’s own space and schedule and work.

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Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Why Do We Have to Be Reminded?

In memory of Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, among those killed at the Nairobi mall.

Coming out of the first evening of a weekend poetry course featuring Mary Oliver and Thomas Merton last Thursday, heading toward my car, I heard a loud rustling and looked to see a huge owl half-leaping, half-flying from the pavement to the top of a chain link fence that bordered the parking lot and a small wild area beyond. I could see its eyes, but they were not fixed on me, so I turned to the opposite horizon to see what it was staring at and saw a huge full moon rising, whose light shortly silhouetted a slowly ascending jet.

For those familiar with Mary Oliver’s poetry, attending to the owl and the moon could be considered a “Mary Oliver moment.” Her poetry contains a vast zoo of critters and a lifetime subscription to National Geographic images. But the ascending jet made me think of Merton’s poetic concerns about encroaching “civilization” as well as human vulnerability and glory.

The basic message of the course was that poets remind us to look and to listen. Why do we have to be reminded to look? Well, to see, of course! Why do we have to be reminded to listen? Well, to hear, of course! Or savor or smell or feel! Jesus reminded his students to watch and listen, and the Psalmist reminded worshipers to taste and smell and touch.

Poets and preachers, contemplatives and prophets, mystics and artists and scientists—all urge us: Look! Listen! Pay attention! Be mindful! Be aware—be VERY aware!

One might think that with all the communication devices we have that seeing and hearing would be our least unused senses, but in truth we are flooded with images and sounds, overwhelming the mere sprinkling needed to ensure a harvest in reflection. Thus focus is the key, and a few carefully chosen and crafted words, whether of poetry or scripture or (might I daresay) blog, can prove helpful.

A great example of focus can be found along Atlanta’s BeltLine, which exhibits many temporary outdoor works by artists. Look at the photo at the top of this post. What do you see? Metal and glass debris strewn over more than twenty feet? (That’s our dog Hobbes in the foreground for perspective.)

Yet if you walk up to it and look through the empty frame provided, as below, you will see a face, a portrait of local glass artist Matt Janke. A sign beside the frame explains, “Object of Ma(tt)n challenges the notion that materials, ideas, places and people within Life are disconnected. After gathering together discarded items from all areas of Atlanta, artist William Massey shows that our perspective is our portrait—separate or together, clutter or culture, divided or One.”

That’s pretty much the gist of what the spiritual formation poetry class reminded me this past weekend, from the poetry and professor as well as from fellow participants and our morning and evening prayers.

Related Posts:

Dolphins and Sharks

Seeing Things as if for the First Time

Spiritual Picassos

Related upcoming morning retreat in Dallas, TX, Nov. 9:

Seeing as if for the First Time

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com. 

Jesus: Introvert or Extrovert?

Reading Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, was like coming up for air! Or eating an entire box of See’s chocolates at one sitting, enjoying every morsel! As one friend said to me on Facebook, reading the book was her own “coming out” experience.

You see, I am an introvert who nonetheless manages to play the extrovert—I do enjoy people, after all—but then needs a rest, alone, in quiet, probably why I’m a promoter of contemplation. Throughout my life, however, I have felt constantly compared to what Cain calls “The Extrovert Ideal,” sometimes by my own hand, and sometimes at the hands of others, including American culture and the church. For example, I realize now that preaching or even speaking from a manuscript is not deficient, as I have been told, but my strength. Oh, for President Obama’s teleprompters!

Acknowledging the need for both extroverts and introverts, Cain, an introvert, strikes a blow (though that’s usually an extrovert’s temperament) for the necessity of introverts. Studies suggest that introverts are usually “high-reactives” to stimuli, and thus need to limit our exposure. Another word that is used is “sensitive.” We need time to observe, reflect, and consider situations, people, and events prior to speaking or taking action.

That’s why I insist on a “monastic moment” of silence when I pose a question to people in a workshop or retreat, a moment to turn inward, consult one’s own experience and feelings and thoughts, before opening general discussion. My experience has been that others are quick to express their thoughts before I have had a chance to consult my own experience. I thought Sir Thomas More’s Utopia had it right when its legislature vigorously debated a concern but waited till the next day to take action! Cain writes, “Congress…is made up of some of the least sensitive people in the country” because to get elected and re-elected virtually requires an extrovert’s temperament.

That’s also why I wrote a post two weeks ago about experiencing spiritual community outside of church, what I had thought of calling “spirituality for loners.” Several pastors took me to task on Facebook, though in previous posts I have acknowledged that church and worship are worthy spiritual disciplines.  But as I have discovered the need for silence in my own spiritual practices, I have looked for more silence in worship, and when it is interrupted or when worship gets raucous it sounds to me like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. And I reclaim words I found appealing in college, words from Alfred North Whitehead, “Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.”

The post opened me to pleasant conversation with Sam Troxal, a young and gifted blogger, and with a role model pastor and author, J. Barrie Shepherd. Barrie, a regular reader of this blog (I am proud to say), has written many books of poetry whose daily rhythms encouraged me to pray regularly long ago. I appreciate the fact that in poetry, pauses are as vital as words, and an economy of words are carefully, thoughtfully selected to convey exactly what is intended. In my book of “secular” poetic meditations, Communion of Life, I called poets “secular mystics.”

Barrie sent me his recent book, Between Mirage and Miracle: Selected Poems for Seasons, Festivals, and the Occasional Revelation, urging me to read his poem about church, “Why I Still Go,” which meaningfully concludes: 

For all my weary, reasoned doubt,

the continuing disillusion and despair

of this already blood-drenched century,

for all my anger at her blind echoing

of the worst that hides in all of us,

come Sunday morning, somehow,

I still find myself in church.

I have questioned whether it is the church’s “blind echoing” of prejudice against LGBT people that prompts me to seek other counsel and other forms of worship. But it is also true that the expected conformity and the lack of silence and gentle voices are also factors. And what presents itself as teamwork, collaboration, or democratic process is too often an opportunity for extroverts—sometimes with less experience and expertise, or worse, less compassion and wisdom—to outtalk and occasionally bully others! 

So I’ve been wondering about whether Jesus was an introvert or an extrovert. Obviously I may be projecting, but I believe he was an introvert. He was certainly a “high reactive” to religious hypocrisy and “sensitive” to religious outcasts. When tempted in his solitary sojourn in the wilderness by relevance, sensationalism, and power, he resisted. Though followed by multitudes seeking healings and teachings, he found lonely places to pray or a boat from which to preach. He called 12 disciples, and taught them privately. Perhaps it was the temperament of being introverts that Jesus shared with “the disciple whom Jesus (especially) loved” who gave us the most mystical gospel. But without extroverts like Peter and Paul, the world may not have been evangelized.

That may be the power of the Spirit, that gives even introverts the gift of speech. Yet it is also the Spirit’s gift to hear God’s voice in “the sound of sheer silence” that follows the storm, the earthquake, and the fire.

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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