A Retreat of Blessing

I spent three days last week at Laity Lodge, some two hours southwest of San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country. The landscape is rugged and rather desolate, but for all that it had a beauty that is striking.

I had been to the lodge twice before, with staff retreats for The High Calling. This time, however, I was there not for The High Calling but because of my work in digital media. Some 60 of us from the United States, Canada and the U.K. had been assembled to discuss digital media, mental health, faith, and leadership, all part of a new leadership initiatives effort by the Foundations for Laity Renewal (the foundation that owns the Laity Lodge property and its camps, and The High Calling as well).  

Music was represented, too, as it always is at a Laity Lodge retreat. This time the music was by the members of Jars of Clay, who played each night, at the Sunday worship service, and at a concert on Saturday night. A Jars of Clay concert for 60 people. And getting to talk with the band members, eat with them, and even spend three hours with two of them in the art studio making block prints.

This may come as a surprise, but they turned out to be real people.

I met and talked with some wonderful people – professors from Duke, Rice, Seattle Pacific University and Kings College. An ebook publisher. The editor of Christianity Today. An architect. A pastor from the inner city in Houston. Marketing people from both academia and the private sector. Non-profit organization leaders. The foundation staff, including chairman David Rogers. Kathryn Aylsford, co-author (with Tim Keller) of Every Good Endeavor. And my friend Marcus Goodyear, editor of The High Calling.

We had a block of free time each afternoon. On Friday, I joined a group of five others to hike the Circle Bluff Trail. I was the only one who had hiked the trail before, so I got to be trail leader. It’s not a long hike, only 2.5 miles roundtrip, but most of it is upward. You have to pay close attention to the trail itself; it’s not difficult to slip down the side, or to trip over a stone. At the top is the view – what crowns the hike itself. You can see for miles. And right at the bottom of the bluff is the Frio River and the new family camp under construction – and getting ready to open in April. I had toured the construction site in November, and it is one impressive facility.

After the hike, the digital media crowd, about 10 of, met in the lodge library, and we talked. We talked about our problems, our issues, about what’s happening with digital media, some of the new things some of us were trying or planning. It was a solid and even inspiring conversation.

We had four or five main presentations in group meetings – on digital media, mental health, leadership, the leadership initiatives, and on faith, including a rather rousing sermon by Marlon Hall, the pastor from Houston.

My three hours in the art studio on Saturday afternoon were spent working on a block print. My goal was to create a concept for a book cover, a non-fiction work that I’ve been contracted with for and is due to be delivered in manuscript form on July 1. We googled images, we drew, we traced, we carefully cut and we painted – many times over. What I walked away with was the sense I had had a delightful time learning to do some I had never done before – and an idea for a book cover. I looked at the prints last night, and they’re rough, but at least the germ of an idea is there.

I’ll likely have more things to write about from the retreat; I’m still absorbing what I heard and learned. But it was a time full of ideas, inspiration, thoughtfulness, and a sense of the sacred. I was blessed.

Top photography: the main building at Laity Lodge. Bottom photograph taken March 1, 2013, from the top of the Circle Bluff Trail at Laity Lodge. The buildings at the bottom left are part of the under-construction family-camp.

An Important Discussion about the Church

Last weekend, I was suffering a combination bad head cold/allergic reaction to the Valentine’s Day flowers I bought for my wife. (No, the lesson was not stop buying flowers for Valentine’s Day. Rather than inflict my sneezing/coughing/hacking/misery on our church, I chose to miss church. Instead, I would watch the livestream of the 9:45 service.

Except the livestream worked for all of about five seconds, and then stopped. The livestreaming system wasn’t working, and I watched the “visitor numbers” fluctuate from five to eight to eleven and then back down as online visitors began to figure out the same thing.

While it would have been nice for someone like me, being sick, or someone who wasn’t able to travel to church, I realized something. Livestreaming, even when it works, is not the next best thing to being there. You can watch a church service, but you can’t participate. This is likely at least one of the issues I have with so-called online churches, and churches that use videostreaming as they embrace the “sites” concept. Something is missing, something important.

Yesterday, Marcus Goodyear posted an article at his blog, Good Word Editing, entitled “The Uncertain Future of Traditional Faith Communities.” And he put his finger on what’s missing – community. But he raises more fundamental issues that the problem the problems of livestreaming.

The American church today is losing both its knowledge and community roles, and what does that mean? Marcus says it’s already lost the knowledge role, and it’s losing the community role.

I left a comment on the post. Before the community role began to change, the church, or a significant and influential part of it, began moving away from the knowledge role and embracing a personal experience role. Like most major changes, it happened incrementally. But at some point, many churches – and I am speaking of those in what we would call the evangelical tradition – began to move away from teaching the Bible. The focus became something else.

This subject needs – demands – a broader and continuing discussion. People are experiencing the problems of the church, and there are a lot of books being written, but the discussion seems to have been largely left to the experts – theologians, pastors, theological academics.

This is one of those subjects too important to be left to the experts. The church itself needs to engage.

Read Marcus’s article, and let me know what you think.

Photograph: Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Another Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday

Once more, it’s that time of the week, when our intrepid leader Duane Scott officiates at Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays.

Yesterday, page visits to a blog post I did earlier this month skyrocketed (well, “skyrocketed” may be too strong a term, but my normal number of page visits quadrupled in a day). I couldn’t figure out why – there didn’t appear to be a single source. And then I found out that High Calling Editor Marcus Goodyear had included that post of mine in a Faith in the Workplace newsletter he does for Christianity Today Magazine (online).

Thank you, Marcus. That was an awfully nice thing to do.

In August, something similar (but smaller) happened when someone took a poem I’d posted and linked it in StumbleUpon. Whoosh went the page visits. Thank you, Someone.

I’m familiar with this stuff, and I know this online stuff, but I still get amazed when it happens.

It’s been two weeks since I went to the High Calling editorial team to Laity Lodge near San Antonio (that’s “near” in Texas terms; it was actually about 140 miles away). Since then, the High Calling web site has merged with the High Calling Blogs web site; the combined site is simply The High Calling. I really like the design; and I’ve successfully maneuvered the Drupal platform and actually posted an article this week: Is God More Pleased with My Work than I Am?

Ann Kroeker, one of our number at Laity Lodge, did a blog post this week on the experiences they had at their lodge house (Lodestar) with scorpions. We didn’t have scorpions at our lodge house (Song Bluff). I did have to get rid of a wandering cricket in my bedroom, though. A couple of people closer to the main lodge had experiences with tarantulas. And I was followed by a couple of vultures while hiking one of the trails. (That was a little unnerving; I think I’m on a hike and they think they’re looking at dinner).

I’ve been reading a lot of good stuff lately:


• Billy Coffey’s novel Snow Day was officially published on Monday. It’s storytelling like only Billy Coffey can do it.

• I finished Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the book we’ve been discussing for The High Calling; my last post on it will be Sunday afternoon.

• I read Three Roads Home, a group of three love story novellas by Travis Thrasher published in 2003.

• I’ve started reading Another Hotel Room: Selected Poems 1988-2008 by Steven Marty Grant.

Thanks to all you who commented on my post yesterday – the one about approaching a tough decision on what to do with our elderly dog. I talked with the vet Wednesday, and we’ve worked out a process for sometime in the next two weeks or so. I was so cool, calm and totally professional with the vet on the phone. I only lost it twice.

Finally, it wouldn't be an official Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday without a new photo of the world’s greatest grandson. My daughter-in-law Stephanie took this picture while trying to fit him for clothes – and she found this hat. So, here’s Cameron in a bear hat.

"Barbies" Giveaway Winner

No, I didn’t forget that we had a free copy of Barbies at Communion: and other poems by Marcus Goodyear to give away. We did the random drawing. I just forget to post who the winner was (although I did let the winner know) (and she's scheduled to receive her copy this week, Amazon says).


In the interests of disclosure, the random drawing worked this way: I took the names of the commenters, wrote them on slips of paper, placed them in a bag, and pulled out one.

And the winner was Megan Willome, who blogs at Sabbath Says. Congratulations to Megan, and my thanks to all who commented.

What I’m Up to At The High Calling Blogs

For several months, I’ve been posting occasional articles at The High Calling Blogs (HCB). The site is owned and operated by Foundations for Laity Renewal, whose mission is to renew society by renewing the church; renew the church by renewing the family; and renewing the family by renewing individuals. In addition to HCB, Laity Renewal also operates The High Calling web site (and I’ve written an article or two for that site as well).

How I got there is one of those “internet stories.”

Long before I was on Twitter or Facebook, I had been following a blog called Inside Work, which focuses on the integration of faith and business. I would occasionally comment on a post, especially those written either by editor Jim Hancock or a business executive named Bradley Moore. One day, I followed Bradley’s link to his blog site, Shrinking the Camel. And enjoyed it so much I started following that blog as well. A regular commenter on Bradley’s book was a guy named Marcus Goodyear, and one day I followed the link to his blog, Good Word Editing. That’s where I discovered The High Calling and HCB, because Marcus is senior editor for these sites. About the same time, I found another blog I liked – New Breed of Advertisers – by a guy named Sam Van Eman whom I didn’t immediately connect to HCB – but he’s one of the editors there, too.

Looking at my RSS reader, I can see that Inside Work, Shrinking the Camel, Good Word Editing and New Breed of Advertisers are among the very earliest blogs I followed. (One day, in a post or a comment at HCB, Sam – and I remember distinctly it was Sam – mentioned a book he really liked called Stone Crossings by L.L. Barkat. His comment led me to her book, which led me to her three blogs, which eventually led to me becoming a co-editor with L.L. and Eric Swalberg for TweetSpeak Poetry.)

So what was it that attracted me to these bloggers and sites like The High Calling Blogs?

Obviously, we shared a common faith – different backgrounds and affiliations but a common faith nonetheless.

We shared an intense interest in how faith does – and doesn’t – function in the workplace.

Even more significant (for me, at least) was the sense of community. People from all over the country and even outside the United States come together in the spaces called The High Calling and HCB. And they share their community by writing about life and work and culture and family and art and a lot of other things.

Earlier this year, I received a direct message on Twitter from HCB, saying they had a proposal for me. I didn’t hear anything else for a few days, but soon enough L.L. (the HCB managing editor) asked if I would be interested in being a contributing editor. I didn’t have to think about it. I said yes – a big fat enthusiastic yes.

What a contributing editor does is write posts or articles on a regular basis (mine generally fall into the category of “work”), participate in commenting and discussions about posts, and help build the community. On my posts, I work directly with Brad Moore, who’s an HCB content editor in addition to his day job as a senior business executive and (most recently) a poet, with his own poetry blog. Brad is one of the best editors I’ve ever had. This is a heretical confession for any writer to make – but I don’t mind being edited by Brad because he helps me be a better writer. (And my next post is scheduled for Tuesday.)

That’s what this community is about as well – encouragement.

If you haven’t been to HCB, you should visit. If you’re looking for community, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for good writing, it’s right there. If you’re looking to stretch and challenge your faith, you’ll find it there as well.

It’s a cool place to be a part of.

Giving Away "Barbies"

I’m an unabashed fan of Barbies at Communion: and other poems by Marcus Goodyear. I’ve got the book’s badge over on the supper right of this site, and I’ve now posted an interview with the poet himself over at TweetSpeak Poetry. He talks in detail about how he come to love and write poetry, some of his own background, and how he sees the poetry in the everyday.

And here’s an example of that “poetry in the everyday:"

"Epiphany" by Marcus Goodyear

We put our Jesus in the attic
after Christmas, buried in boxes
between plastic wreaths and cheap lights.
I rarely think about the idle figure
when I fetch luggage for business trips.
Near the boxes, the space is a maze
of pipes wrapped in thin foam, too thin
for January freezes when water reminds us
who is in charge. So here I am,
my breath like a pillar of cloud.
When the pipes crack, the water sprays.
There is no controlling this flood
and the damage it causes, soaking
through our Christmas, baptizing Santas,
Rudolphs, wreaths and every single Jesus.

I like this poetry so much that I’m giving away a copy (the print version). All you need to do is drop a comment – your name, a say-hey, anything you’d like – in the comment box by Wednesday, July 21 at 8 p.m. A name will be selected at random (I ask my wife to pick a number) (if she’s read the comments, then I’ll ask my next-door neighbor) and then posted/contacted next Wednesday night. That’s all you need to do.

And if your name isn’t selected, you should buy this book of poems. (I’ve never said that in a review before, but I’m saying it now.)

The Song Has Not Been Heard

The song has not been heard in the
street or the market, nor sung in the
village or on the highway, nor flown
across the courthouse square since
before the time people remember.

The farmer in the field mourns a way
to end his day; the mother grieves
the absence of what quiets the child.
The singer stands mute, impotent; the
poet despairs with a shriveled soul.

Locked within the white tower, the
song has become a fictional shadow, a
parody of itself, preoccupied with its
form, its structure, its notes, its lack of
notes, its own self and none other.

It sits within its assigned cage, failing to
entertain a priestly few, a few deaf
priests, priests with bony fingers and
hearts of stone who poke and prod with
sticks but hear no music.


The poem above describes what I believe one of the ideas behind “Barbies at Communion” – to help celebrate the poetic in everyday life and in so doing help return poetry to people.

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry, we are helping Marcus Goodyear celebrate the publication of Barbies at Communion: and other poems. I reviewed the book of poems last week; we devoted a TweetSpeak poetry jam to Barbies on Tuesday. Check out how to win a signed copy of Barbies.

You can order the Kindle edition at Amazon, and the print edition at CreateSpace. You can also order a signed copy via the book’s web page through PayPal.

Marcus Goodyear’s “Barbies at Communion: and other poems”

You’re sitting in church, the communion plate is passing down the pew, and as you reach for the little cup of grape juice you notice your young daughter playing with her Barbie dolls.

You’re coaching your first boys’ soccer game, and you err on the side of bending the rules so the kids can have a little fun.

An old resort hotel is abandoned to collapse in on itself. Or you cut your grass too short and here come the weeds. Or a water pipe breaks in the attic, ruining the stored Christmas decorations. A puppy dies when it catches the motorcycle it’s chasing. Two friends build a bookshelf. Deer show up in the negihborhood to eat your plants. Piano practice.

This is the stuff of poetry? This ordinary, everyday living stuff?

In Barbies at Communion: and other poems, poet Marcus Goodyear (editor of the High Calling Blogs) answers with a resounding yes, because something profound is found in this ordinary living.

Consider “Epiphany:”

We put our Jesus in the attic
after Christmas, buried in boxes
between plastic wreaths and cheap lights.
I rarely think about the idle figure
when I fetch luggage for business trips.
Near the boxes, the space is a maze
of pipes wrapped in thin foam, too thin
for January freezes when water reminds us
who is in charge. So here I am,
my breath like a pillar of cloud.
When the pipes crack, the water sprays.
There is no controlling this flood
and the damage it causes, soaking
through our Christmas, baptizing Santas,
Rudolphs, wreaths and every single Jesus.

Like many of Goodyear’s poems, “Epiphany” is full of Biblical allusions, and not only the direct reference to Jesus. Consider the flood, the breath like a “pillar of cloud,” the reminder of “who is in charge and the water from the broken pipe as a kind of baptism. On one level, “Epiphany” is a poem about nothing more than a broken pipe. But he massages it into a richly layered meditation on faith and God, using the commonality of Christmas decorations – how we understand faith – and how that understanding drowns in the reality of what faith is really about.

What Goodyear has done in this collection of “poetry in the everyday” is to demonstrate that poetry can be accessible, understandable, and real to people who long ago turned their backs when it came to be dominated by the academy.

This is about the poetry in life, about poetry as life, the life we all know.

Reading these poems was like reading some of my own personal history. Like when I was 5 and my dog was hit by a car. And the three days after Christmas we spent in a motel when the pipes burst in our house in New Orleans after a hard freeze. And cutting the grass too short. And cutting the grass on a Sunday. And riding my bike up to Tastee Donuts on Sunday mornings to get breakfast for the family. And the time when I worked with a carpenter friend who made me a typing table and a bookshelf out of yellow pine. That’s the stuff of Barbies at communion.

It speaks to the depth and insight of the poems that they become and reflect our own experiences.

Monsters, Too (Two)

L.L. Barkat posed a monstrous challenge for this week's Random Act of Poetry at the High Calling Blogs -- write a poem from a monster's point-of-view.

I couldn't write one poem from a monster's perspective. But I could write two.

A Good Year to be a Zombie

Appearances deceive.
And it hurts.
Yes, I lurch a little when
I walk. A bit ungainly.
It’s the arthritis, common
to the undead,
especially the long undead.
My skin, well, yes, there’s
that I suppose. Yes, I
know it has a greenish-purplish
tinge and a few splotches, and
some pieces fall off now and
then (shaking hands is always
problematic: “let me give you
a hand”). Then, the clothes.
Sure, I could be more stylish,
a kind of Coffin Chic,
but even if I didn’t
scare the clerks at Brooks Brothers
just by walking in the door, I’d have
trouble with my stiff
arms (arthritis again).
And no Visa card.
The undead can’t get credit cards
but they do let us vote
in Chicago.
But I hear there’s this guy
In Texas,
who’s good for a cup
of coffee,
and maybe he’ll buy me a
venti non-fat latte; if I find him,
it will be a good year for a zombie.
And no iced latte, please;
I can’t shake the chill.



(Photo by someone obviously not Marcus Goodyear; used with impunity.)

It’s a Long Time Between Gigs

Hey! Another pina colada, and don’t
forget the umbrella!
So it may look cool, hanging here by
the pool, but it’s work. You have to
be seen, baby, and it can be a long
time between gigs. I was huge, man,
back then, big time. Walk down the
street, show up at the Brown Derby,
no reservation, people noticed, man.

It was 30 years, three decades, from
Fay to those Japanese send-ups. I
parodied myself in a language I
couldn’t speak; pitiful but you have to
eat. But Fay, ah, now there was a real
sweetheart, always watching out for her
leading man. The planes buzzing the
Empire scared her more than me, but
I knew it was OK, man.

All that fame; I loved it. They asked me
to concrete my prints at Graumann’s,
you know. But we had to do it out back
in the parking lot. That’s a joke, son.
Yeah, I know the Japanese movies
were embarrassing but look, I needed
the money and all I had to do was knock
down a few buildings and power lines and
beat up Godzilla. And it paid good.

But those Japanese, no romance. No Fay.
And sure I wanted to do Othello or Hamlet
but even Olivier had trouble getting work.
I really thought the remake in ’76 would be
my meal ticket. I even wrote a book, you
know, the old movie-book tie-in. It even
sold OK. And then what? Nothing. My
publicist blew it and I had to fire that
thieving no-good wastrel but don’t quote me.

So I keep up appearances, hang around
Beverly Hills, loiter on Rodeo, do the
premieres and some charity stuff. Tried
out for a few movies, too, do you know that?
Costner got Dances with Wolves after I
stepped on the wolf pack. Accidents happen,
man. That role was written for me. They wanted
me to be an orc in Lord of the Rings but I said no,
I like characters with empathy, know what I mean?

And I miss Fay. She was the best. One of a
kind. Real people, she was.
Hey! Where’s that pina colada?

Sacred Sand

On Thursday at his Good Word Editing blog, Marcus Goodyear posted a poem entitled “Yet Another Heresy,” that had to do with Moses. Inspired by the poem, L.L. Barkat posted “Note to the Shepherd,” about the burning bush, at her Love Notes to Yahweh blog. As soon as I read L.L.’s poem, I knew I had to to write one on the sacred sand.

With no planning or coordination aforethought, we’re telling the story of the Book of Exodus, Chapter 3.

Sacred Sand

I stand upon holy
ground, sacred sand
that burns my soles,
my soul, sand burning
hot and holy, holy
where you are, purifying
with the inferno’s roar.
Fiery needles of silicon
scorch my feet, pierce my
soles, my soul, but like the
bush leave them flaming,
not consumed.
I hide my face in the
cleft of the rock.
The sand reflects the
cloaked face I cannot hide.

Update: Phoenix Karenee adds a fourth poem, "Not Me. I AM."

The Sixth Day of Christmas: Marcus Goodyear

An editor, a poet and a philosopher/thinker about the workplace. That’s a lot, but even collectively it doesn’t quite do Marcus Goodyear justice.

Marcus is senior editor for The High Calling, the High Calling Blogs and Faith in the Workplace. I connected to him in blogs and blog comments via L.L. Barkat, a managing editor at the High Calling Blogs (and author of Stone Crossings and the recently published book of poems InsideOut).

He takes editing seriously. Here’s what he says on his web site: “When I agree to edit a work, I take such a commitment very seriously. I am a tough editor. I will not hesitate to change verbs, cut sentences and paragraphs, and work on issues of style like pacing. I do not attempt to usurp a writer’s style, but too often writers are simply avoiding the work of revision and editing under the guise of defending their stylistic integrity.”

Marcus was my editor for an article I wrote for High Calling. Marcus takes editing seriously. Trust me.

He writes poetry, including one we republished at TweetSpeak Poetry called “Sometimes I Cannot Always Be There,” which he called a poem for All Saints Day. He’s written poems about Eve’s garden, the risen Christ, zombies, mowing dead grass after church on Sunday, and the Large Hadon Collider (he may be the only person in the history of the planet who’s written a poem about the Large Hadon Collider, not to mention the fact that it was about motherhood and the Large Hadon Collider).

And his writing about work, well, you have to read it for yourself: an interview with Michael Card on freedom and slavery; the work and faith movement; and “why I don’t go to church.” He actually does go to church but the title certainly pulls you into the article.

Marcus is a husband and a father, too.

Explore his blog, goodwordediting.com. Follow him on Twitter. Enjoy his writing and his poetry – and in the process you’ll learn that he edits himself harder than he edits anyone else.

(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)

The Poetry Closet

Yesterday, one of the best writers I've run across -- both print and online -- posted this on one of her three blogs, Seedlings in Stone. When I read it, my ears burned.

I've talked before about L.L. Barkat's book, Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. This is the one I read straight through during the night I spent in the hospital after learning the results of my bike crash -- three broken ribs, a fractured fourth rib and a partially collapsed lung. Since hospitals are no places for rest, I abandoned all hope of sleep and instead read this wonderful book. And she has a new book coming in 2010 from InterVarsity Press, God in the Yard: Tending the Soul in Small Places.

Yesterday, I had an email exchange with L.L. about how I got into this "poetry thing." I've read a lot of poetry over the years but would never have called myself a major poetry reader or even a minor fan. In high school, I liked the English poets of World War I, like Rupert Brooke, possibly because of the Vietnam War going on at the time. I liked the modern poets the best -- T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas -- and have also read a number of contemporary poets -- Richard Wilbur, Billy Collins, John Ashberry and Brendan Galvin. I learned that just about anything written by Wendell Berry sounded like poetry. And my background, training and experience and experience as a speechwriter had required me to be as mindful of words sounds, rhythm, cadence, language -- all the proper domains of the poet. But me thinking about writing poetry? Not.

I can actually pinpoint when this poetry "thing" started: Sunday, July 5. Okay, so it's confession time. I was sitting in church, listening to our senior pastor's sermon on John 3 -- the scene with Jesus and Nicodemus when Jesus speaks to being born again. What caught my attention was one of the overlooked parts of the story: Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. As I listened to the pastor, my mind wouldn't let go of that. It was at night. Nicodemus came at night because he didn't want anyone to see him talking to Jesus.

I started taking what looked like notes (my wife was pleased I wasn't nodding off) but were really images and thoughts and ideas. I listened to what the pastor was saying and let what he said form images in my mind that somehow changed into something else when I wrote (the order-of-worship sheet soon looked like a mess). During the next two weeks, interrupted by my bike crash and hospital stay, I worked on what eventually became this.

Then, a month later, came this, based on the story of the crippled man by the pool who's not fast enough to make it into the water when it ripples. That was inspired by another sermon -- same pastor, same situation, similar scribbles all over the order-of-worship sheet. When I posted the first poem, no one had noticed or at least commented. This second one, though, prompted some comments, including one by L.L., welcoming me to the poetry closet.

Was I in the poetry closet?

I'd been following L.L.'s weekly RAP (Random Act of Poetry) on The High Calling Blogs site. This is a weekly invitation for poets to right about a particular topic, and L.L. had been doing a series on rooms in a house. The final room in the series was the closet, and I decided to try it. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done -- 20 or 30 drafts, constant reworking and fiddling with words, most of the drafts written in long hand until I finally typed it and then kept working over individual words. And this poem is SHORT.

The result was "Testimony (in the closet)." It prompted a number of responses and reactions. I had some comments on the blog, but also emails from people, including at work. Perhaps the best response was from my wife. Just as I was falling asleep, she came in the bedroom with tears in her eyes. "It's my wedding dress," she said.

I've done two more since then, "Knows" and "Summer Light." I'm reading more poetry online, from poets like Marcus Goodyear (see "Eve's Second Garden") and Jim Schmotzer. Marcus and L.L. have "introduced" me (electronically) to another whole group of poets who particpate in the weekly RAP. And then I'm finding incredibly good writers and poets like {this restless heart}.

I suppose this means I am indeed in that poetry closet.

Poetry on the Web

Without looking for it, I've been finding poetry on the web.

I read poetry, but not on a regular basis. Last year, I wandered over to a book fair in a nearby suburb and found myself having an extended conversation with Walter Bargen, the state of Missouri's poet laureate. He was standing at his booth, trying not to look occupied, and I walked up and introduced myself. (If nothing else, I thought, I'd make a good prop for the booth.) (I was right.)

Bargen was delightful to talk with -- and eminently approachable. And when I told him I had actually read a book of his poems, he got downright voluble. I bought two more of his books; he signed both and did a special drawing/autograph in one called Feast. It was the coolest thing. Our conversation attracted others, and by the time I left, his booth traffic had ballooned from one to quite a few.

I've read a lot of poetry over the years -- Frost, Dickenson, the English Romantics, Rupert Brooke, Longellow, Whitman, Eliot, Yeats, Wallace Stevens -- all the standards. But I don't really visit the web to find poetry. Until the last month or so.

I'm not sure if I found poetry or it found me. I was looking at a site called The High Calling Blogs, and discovered that it had a Friday feature called Random Acts of Poetry -- poems on a stated topic with links to others also writing on the featured topic. Well, you know the web. Before long, I was looking all over the place at poetry that was really good stuff. I found poems by L.L. Barkat, Jim Schmotzer, Marcus Goodyear and many others -- and it was poetry I connected to on several levels.

We live in a time that's not exactly conducive to the reading of poetry. And yet, in a way, we live in a time when we desperately need to be reading poetry.

A recent post in The Evangelical Outpost by a writer and thinker named Hayden Butler cited three reasons for reading poetry: it breaks us out of our linguistic ruts; it can make us speak more precisely; and it shows we can create beauty in our speech. None of these is necessarily critical for political sound bites or 140-character microblogging, but they are vitally important for expanding our hearts and nurturing our souls.

Shrinking the Camel and Inside Work

I’ve written before about a blog called Shrinking the Camel that I follow closely. It’s done by a business executive named Bradley Moore, who lives and works “somewhere in the northeast U.S.” In addition to his own blog, he also posts on a site called Inside Work, which is all about the practice of faith in the workplace. And yes, I follow that site closely as well, and not only for Bradley’s posts. There is a whole group of terrific writers and thinkers – and they write about faith and business. They don't write about the application of business practices to the church -- an affliction in the church in America for more than two decades. Instead, the writers at Inside Work look at the practice of faith in the workplace.

Yesterday on Inside Work, Bradley posted an article called “How God Saved My Life through Writing.” And he talks about how he came to start writing the Shrinking the Camel blog in 2008. It’s honest writing, writing from the heart.

How I happened across Bradley’s blog, as well as the Inside Work site, is one of those stories about how the web works. I was reading a blog post on a writing web site, and saw an interesting comment by a guy named Marcus Goodyear, an editor and poet who's actually written a poem for his wife about the Large Hadron Collider -- and had it published. I clicked on his name, and landed at his web site, Goodwordediting.com. One of the things he does is serve as an editor at a site called HighCallingBlogs.com, a collection of blogs that look at the entire world as a place to practice faith, including the culture (a shocking notion, I know). One of those links took me to Inside Work, where I found an article written by Bradley – and I clicked through to Shrinking the Camel (cool name for a blog, by the way).

And this process continues. At the High Calling site, I read a post about poetry by a writer named L.L. Barkat -- clicked through to her blogs (there are three, including Seedlings in Stone), and am now getting ready to start her book Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places.

In his latest article at Inside Work, Bradley writes about how he began writing – disillusionment with evangelical Christianity, a sudden skepticism about the Bible, angst and burnout with his career – and he discovered that God was creating a new work in him through the whole process (my words, not Bradley’s). Reading those words evoked a powerful sense of identification. I’ve gone through a long period of skepticism, not about the Bible, but about the contemporary American church. Having gone through a disastrous experience with a church that embraced every business fad found on the bestseller list, and wrecked anything in its path that might stop its quest for cultural relevance, I pulled back, and pulled back hard. And angst and burnout with my career? Yes, I've known that, too, a couple of times at least.

About three years ago, I started writing a novel, and actually finished it, along with a sequel and a plan for a series. Some of the partially completed “volumes” in the series have as many as 40,000 words or more. And I learned something, the same thing that Bradley has. Writing has been a means for me to begin coming to grips with what happened to my church, and what happened to my faith. In an odd way, writing is like having a conversation with God.

I’m still on that road. Finding the Bradley Moores of this world is like having a fellow pilgrim come alongside.