poetry
A little poetry for Monday night
I’ve done a lot of reading so far this year. Tonight I started My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. I’m not too far in but the writing (prose, punctuated with poetry) is dense and profound.
In the opening chapter he drops this little poem that resounds with truth in my ears. I leave it here for you as a gift.
Into the instant’s bliss never came one soul
Whose soul was not possessed by Christ,
Even in the eons Christ was not.
And still: some who cry the name of Christ
Live more remote from love
Than some who cry to a void they cannot name.
– ‘After Dante’, Christian Wiman
Entirely resilient
If outside it’s all gone mad
In Christian ways or not
Still is the world, this gorgeous world
Entirely resilient
-- stanza attributed to “Storm”, quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in one of his late letters from prison.
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places...
A book by this title was given to my by my pastor last week; we are “kindred readers” with an affinity for Eugene Peterson’s practical written wisdom. I got no further than the introduction last night. This was partly due to my early morning and long day; but moreso due to my captivation with the poem from which the title came. It is an untitled sonnet written by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 19th century poet and priest.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying “What I do is me: for that I came”.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is – Christ.
For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
This poem intrigues and delights me in ways I haven’t yet been able to describe very well. But I think that it captures the essence of living out our lives in the Spirit every day. Christ “plays” throughout each of us as we live in Him. I am challenged this morning to meditate on Christ, and see how He might play out even more through my life.
I’ll try to provide updates as I work my way through Peterson’s book.
