Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Using Poetry to Explicate Scripture

Last year, I attended a poetry seminar at Laity Lodge with poet and teacher Scott Cairns, who led 12 of us on a two-day journey to destinations none of us quite imagined when we started. Our overnight assignment was to write a poem based on a hard or difficult passage in Scripture.

It was something I had not considered before – using poetry to explicate Scripture. Cairns and most of the others in the seminar seemed quite comfortable with the idea and practice. I wasn’t; I was also nervous about the idea of reading a poem I had written to a group of people, something I had never done before. But I plunged ahead, wrote (and rewrote and rewrote) my poem, and actually read it.

It opened up a new world for me, a new way to study and understand Scripture.

To continue reading, please see my post today at The Master’s Artist.

1 comment:

caryjo said...

God has used that prod for me a few times. I always love it when it happens. Sometimes the poems become a song, either written by me or taken over by my husband. I so enjoy that sense of the Lord's creativity planting tiny mustard seeds in us... ALL of us.