Busy Two Weeks Ahead

Events erupt into best laid plans, as the poet Robert Burns once noted. The next two weeks are going to be wild, for at least two reasons.

One is a good one – the grandbaby is scheduled to arrive, officially on March 16 but possibly earlier; the signs are that the baby will be of a good size. The grandparents-to-be can barely stand the waiting. The mother-to-be is long past the point of standing the waiting, but she is hanging in there.

The other reason is work – a mega-project will be occurring for the next two weeks and I’ll likely be buried.

So, I’ve actually been trying to plan and get some work done ahead of time – several posts for here; two poetry book reviews; the final installment of contributions to the “Why Poetry Matters” series over at TweetSpeak Poetry; a book review of Watch Over Me, a novel by Christa Parrish; two articles for The High Calling Blogs; and a blog post about an Edouard Manet painting for Christian Manifesto. We also have a poetry jam on Twitter scheduled for this Tuesday, March 2, at 9:30 eastern time.

I also got everything together for our tax filings. I know it's "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," but there has to be a better way to do that than the Missouri state income tax forms.

It’s been a productive time for writing. In addition to what I mentioned above, I’ve also been working on two writing projects for others, one on the author Athol Dickson and one on Wendell Berry’s poetry volume entitled Leavings: Poems (Berry, by the way, also had a new short story in a recent issue of Oxford American magazine). I’ve also got an idea in my head for a writing project about the Mississippi River – using old and new memoirs, travelogues and novels to show how the river helps frame an understanding of ourselves. (The only question is where should it find a home.) And I’ve been doing considerable blogging for work, both for the official corporate blog and our employee intranet.

Someone asked me what’s sitting on the nightstand, waiting to be read. I’m in the throes of River Rising by Athol Dickson (connected to that writing project). Right behind it are a slender volume called Roualt/Fujimura: Soliloquies by Thomas Hibbs (and a “refraction” by Makoto Fujimura); a book of poems called Pencil Drawn and Paper Grown by Heather Truett, who’s joined us on our Twitter poetry jams; two love story collections by author Travis Thrasher (one of which was not easy to find); and three books about either the environment, technology or both: Eric Brende’s Better Off, Pete Dunne’s Prairie Spring, and Eagle Pond by Donald Hall.

So much to read,
so much to write,
so little time.
And then there’s that
grandbaby coming. Did I
mention that?

In Defense of Poetry

In January, Laura Boggess posted an article at The High Calling Blogs about poetry, and picked up quite a number of comments, including one that said the writer "didn't get" poetry, even though he was often told his writing was poetic. (I follow his blog, and his writing his poetic.) I responded with a longer-than-usual comment, and for some reason it's been on my mind, possibly because of the postings I've been doing at TweetSpeak Poetry on "Why Poetry Matters."

Here's what I said. I'd be interested to hear what you think.


Children seem to understand poetry better than adults. Somewhere along the line, maybe in high school English, we guys somehow got it into our heads that, at best, poetry was for pointy-head intellectuals, or really something that just girls read. I can even remember the audible groans in my high school senior English class (all boys) when the teacher informed us that we had to memorize — and recite in front of the class — a soliloquy from Shakespeare. And recite it like we were acting it! Oh, the horror, the humiliation. It was awful. We were seared with shame, but since the alternative was an F, we all did it. (I did Hamlet’s dagger speech — and I still remember it.)

I read poetry a lot more than I used to, and now I’m occasionally writing it (or trying to). And here’s why, I think: all good writing inherently contains poetry. All good writing (and speaking, too) contains rhythm, flow, and artful and purposeful use of language. It makes you think in a different way, understand something for the first time, or deepen your understanding. The poetic elements of all good writing are, I think, the essence, often hidden or disguised, of what makes the writing good.

A good poet extracts that essence, and shapes it, translates it, describes it, reveals it.

The Bible is filled with poetry. The Psalms are the most obvious, but also consider Mary’s song to the angel, or the Sermon on the Mount which sounds like a poem. Ecclesiastes. Song of Solomon. Or the Ten Commandments, which sound like poetic thunder (granted, that could be attributable to the Cecil B. DeMille movie). And the words of Jesus on the cross, taken together, comprise the most heartfelt, tragic poem in any language, a poem of horror, rejection, death — and even love.

Sometimes, I think, maybe more than sometimes, poetry is “God language.”

The 20th Day of Community: Kathleen Overby

Some time ago, a comment left here on a blog post took me to the commenter’s web site. And I discovered someone who, seeing that newbies like me were writing poetry and posting it online, decided to make the leap. I sent an email to L.L. Barkat, who with Eric Swalberg is my co-conspirator in publishing TweetSpeak Poetry, and said, “I think we’ve done a good thing here.”

The commenter was Kathleen Overby, who lives in Washington State and somehow manages two blogs – Neoteny and Almost Paradisical.

At Neoteny, she says that her purpose is about play: “One of my passions as a wife, parent, friend and woman, is to invite others -- to play. Let's not forget how to lie on our stomachs in the dirt, have water fights, lay on our backs and watch cloud pictures, laugh till we wet our pants and cry with cheek cramps. Deep play takes many forms. I want to explore this with you. Let's hold hands and skip.” And that’s where she invites fellow bloggers to guest post about what they do in their lives to play. In her most recent post, she reviewed Sex, Lies and Religion by Randy Elrod; read the review to see some of her thinking.

At Almost Paradisical, she publishes her poetry and what I would call her “prose musings.” I love to read her poems. There is a childlike innocence about them, like when a young heart creates something just for you, and rather shyly opens a hand to show you. Look at her poems and you’ll see for yourself -- poems like “Pile of Rocks,” “Sugar Words,” and “Rock Salt.” An example of her “prose musings” is “Twenty Camels?” – a love story about two people who fell in love on a trip to Israel and Jordan, and couldn’t be together on Valentine’s Day.

And to top all of this off, two of her favorite movies are “Babette’s Feast” and “Enchanted April” – which happen to be two of the favorite movies of my wife and me.

Check out her blogs. You can also follow her on Twitter. And you’re in for a real treat with her poetry.


(In December, a number of us participating in the “Twelve Days of Community” - see the button at the top right - sponsored by The High Calling Blogs. The purpose was to highlight the blog or web site of someone other than ourselves during the season of Advent and Christmas. I liked the idea so much that I’m continuing to do that each week -- highlight a blog or web site of a person whose thoughts and writing have had an impact on me and others.)

A Running Descent into Kindness

It was cool, and the view spectacular, as they hiked down from the summit, but Maggie was miserable. She hadn’t wanted to come on this youth trip, she didn’t like the youth group, she didn’t want to be part of this group activity, she hated what she looked like, she couldn’t stand her frizzy hair or her weight that stayed pudgy no matter how little she ate, and all she had around her were slim, confident girls with their straight hair and lilting voices and confident, flirty laughs and sideways glances at her frumpy clothes. And her hair.

Her parents had made her come. This was a rite of passage in the church youth group, this nightmare of a camp in the mountains. Everyone played nice, of course, because it was a church group, after all, and you didn’t want Jesus to think you thought yourself better than someone even if you knew you were. And all the girls were like that. Maggie wanted to scream sometimes, but she only cried when no one was around. She didn’t say much, because she was afraid of sounding stupid. The group leader tried to encourage her and get the other girls to include her in activities but it was hopeless. Maggie was all of 15 and felt either four or 40.

The trail down was wide but steep. Suddenly two boys at the front of the line broke into a run, yelling “Race ya!” as they took off. The rest of the group, 34 strong, followed, and Maggie suddenly found herself running downward, knowing at any moment she was going to trip.

Which she did. A half-buried rock caught her foot, and she tried to stay upright as she stumbled wildly across the trail, finally hitting a fallen tree and landing across it with a thud. It knocked the wind out of her, and she just lay there on the trunk, like a slug, not moving. She heard the laughter, and she felt the hot flush of shame and humiliation.

Then she felt hands on her shoulders, and his voice, the voice of the boy new to the group because he was dating one of the girls; he wasn’t even a member of their church. He was nice looking enough but not one of the handsome jocks; he’d been immediately accepted by the in-crowd because of his girlfriend. Maggie, are you okay? Are you hurt? Does anything feel broken? Take a deep breath. His voice was gentle, coaxing, soft. She was shocked that he knew her name. He pulled her back from the tree as she coughed and caught her breath. Does anything hurt? She shook her head. He stared into her eyes. Did you hit your head? She shook her head again.

His girlfriend stood behind him, staring. He smiled. We’ll walk you down the rest of the way. You need to be checked by the nurse. The youth group leader finally caught up with them, and together they finished the descent.

She spent the night in the infirmary, and was discharged in time to join the group in the large cafeteria for breakfast. She was sore and bruised, but nothing was broken or damaged. She found the group, and there he was. He looked up and smiled. “Maggie, how are you doing? Is everything OK? Guys, make some room here.”

She never saw him again after the trip; he and his girlfriend broke up and he went back to his family’s church.

But she never forgot him.


This is one of the contributions to the One Word Blog Carnival on kindness over at Bridget Chumbley’s place, One Word at a Time. This story, by the way, is true, or mostly true. It actually happened in the summer of 1968. “Maggie” is not the real name of the girl. What that young man did that day taught the entire youth group something about kindness.

A World Split in Two

Ideas have consequences. But I didn’t know that a question I was asked when I was teaching an adult Sunday School class had its roots in the Pietism movement in the 17th century.

For two years, I attended a lecture and study course called Salt and Light taught by Jerram Barrs of Covenant Theological Seminary. Barrs, who had studied with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri, was teaching about culture and faith, and that the gospel was the transformational message for all of life, and all of creation, including the arts, education, the environment, the public sphere, work – everything that is the world we live in.

When I finished the series, a pastor at our church asked me to teach the material in an adult Sunday School class, and I readily agreed. The class was well attended, and things went fine until we hit the lesson on work, and I repeated what Barrs had emphasized again and again, that God saw work as another area to be redeemed, that we were to live and be our faith in the work place, that God saw all work as holy, and there was no difference between a pastor’s work, a missionary’s work, an accountant’s work, a salesman’s work, a writer’s work – it was all work in God’s eyes.

You would have thought I had just lobbed a live and very angry skunk into the middle of the room. The reaction was surprise. I was asked if I meant what I said. The reaction went to shock when I said yes.

Everyone was polite, but some people did not come back to the class.

The idea that full-time ministry or missionary work is “higher” than any other work came from, among other ideas, the Pietism movement in the 1600s, which, as we find out in John D. Beckett’s Loving Mondays: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul, started a good thing but evolved into the kind of two-tiered reality envisioned by Plato. This was a division between the material and spiritual world, with the “spiritual” being on a higher plane than the “material.”

And that was what prompted the question in the class – what was thought to be Biblical turned out to be Platonist, or cultural. And it’s defined a lot about how Christians view the world they live in.

Ideas have consequences.


Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’re discussing Beckett’s Loving Mondays. The discussion is led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on chapters 8 through 11 (the chapters are short and easy to read), covering the cultural and philosophical background of a Biblical understanding of work. Check here for last week’s discussion.

Related posts:

Lyla Lyndquist at A Different Story: Just Another Piece of Pie
L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone: Chocolate Bread and Stripey Cookies
Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God: Jesus Was More Than Hands On

Update: Jerram Barrs' newest book, Learning Evangelism from Jesus, was today named by Outreach Magazine as book of the year in the evangelism category.

There Was a Barn Raising, Once

There was a barn
raising, once;
horses and cows
snorted and
jostled, once;
hay was baled and
lifted, once;
my father carried me
up the ladder to
the hayloft, once;
I lay on the floor
to fix the oil
leak on the
John Deere, once;
the we regret to
inform you
telegram came to
me there, once;
I lay dying while
they stored my
coffin there, once.


This poem was first (and mostly) published over at nAncY’s Just Say the Word in January. She posted a photograph of an old, dilapidated barn and invited comments in the forms of poems. I added two or three lines to the version above, essentially to round out the idea of encapsulating a man’s life.

Why Poetry Matters

Last month, I had a poetry-and-wine giveaway here for L.L. Barkat’s InsideOut: Poems. One copy of the poems would be given away at random to one person who simply entered a comment. The winner of the more challenging assignment – write in 100 words or less on “why poetry matters,” would receive a copy of the Poems and a bottle of Sineann wine.

The entries were stunning. Some were poems themselves; others short pieces of prose. All were good. Too good not to acknowledge.

Some were posted on the individual writer’s web or blog site; others were entered directly into the comment section of my blog post. All of them need to be shared.

I’ve started posting the entries, one a day, over at TweetSpeak Poetry. We have three up so far. Take a look.