A Contest, and the Mary Triptych (Part 1)

Over at Seedlings in Stone, L.L. Barkat is giving away a copy of The Real Mary by Scot McKnight, who makes a Protestant case for Mary with the theological controversies stripped away. Check out what L.L. says about the book and leave a comment here, and you’re automatically in the contest, which will last until next Thursday evening. The winner will also be offered the opportunity to guest post on BeliefNet.

In the meantime, here’s the first of three “Triptych poems” about the mother of Jesus. The second will be posted Monday, and the third next Thursday.

May It Be to Me

Came in a swirl of scented,
Dry wind.
Do not fear, you have found favor.
May it be to me.

The angel did not tell what I would see
Upon my Joseph’s face,
Worse than anger, searing my soul,
Tearing my heart.
Not a rich man, a good man with
Good hands and heart,
He chose me of all Nazareth.
The man every village mother wanted as a son.
Joseph chose me of all in Nazareth.
The Lord chose me of all in Israel.

My Joseph’s eyes.
The angel, I said.
Disbelief on my Joseph’s face,
His hands clenching into fists of pain.
The angel spoke, I said; the Spirit came.

A divorce, my Joseph said.
Quietly; I will not humiliate you,
My Joseph said I love you too much.
He went to weep the hurt
Into the quiet of his mat.

The angel dreamed my Joseph.
Then he knew,
Taking me as wife with joy,
Protecting the child,
Loving the mother.

My Joseph held the baby bathed in blood.
He cut the cord of life to separate life.
He lifted him up.
My tear-stained Joseph set him in my arms
And whispered,
Jeshua.

May it be to me.

Triptych, Bartolomeo Vivarini, 1460s, egg tempera on wood, Metropolitan Museum of New York. The side panels illustrate various scenes in the life of Mary.

Twoem #3: The Orchards of Desire

We had another twoem, or poetry jam, on Twitter last night. I got in a few tweets before I disappeared for a while, but @llbarkat, @arestlessheart, and @poemsandprayers hung in there. And @mhsteger made a cameo appearance.

To frame the twoem, @tspoetry used lines from John Poch’s book Two Men Fighting With a Knife. Below, whenever you see a line in quotations, it’s taken from the Poch book. I’ll take the credit (or the blame) for the title.


The Orchards of Desire

By @llbarkat, @poemsandprayers, @arestlessheart, @mhsteger and a couple of slight things by @gyoung9751

“Pater Noster
What can we learn from a 1913 toaster?”

"Through the sunflower field (the off-yellow
pollen fallen onto, staining my shirt)..."

The texture of toast

Is better now
Than years of 94.
I am drawn to the flavor of serene;
The smock of Van Gogh
In pollenish paint
Mimics the swaying sunflowers.
Pollen toasted,
Roasted to bronze
Would feed my love
For painted days.
Serena was her name,
Her hair a flavor of plums.
Pollen fallen,
Pixie dust staining swaying breeze,
Sunlight scattered.
Summer dies;
Sunflowers,
Serene,
Flavor the plums
With golden light.
Light filters through gold,
Pollen through wafts of scented air.

"...the violet glass that must have once adorned/the windows of their houses..."

She slipped into yellow dress,
Breathing plum-sweet,
And prayed her crimson lover
Home.
My breath hanging in mid air,
I catch myself unaware
And whisper.
Violet pixie
Scatters summer;
Plums fall,
Smash, paint earth.

"Hungry, you call me by your name. Under
Barbed wire and up arroyos I come crawling..."

"When the eggs hatch,
The nymphs drop and crawl through vetch."

Must adieu ,
releasing the call, though hunger
Lingers sweet;
Crawling beneath sheets for little love
And sleep.
I plum smashed them eggs
Like glass;
Go ahead, call me;
I am left hanging by the wings.
Adieu restless heart
Drifting like pollen
Over the face
Of night.
It flows like yellow hot wax from a flame.
If plums had wings,
Would they fly
Past arroyos,
Teasing coyotes
Purpled with hunger?

"...our fathers gone,
our mothers scrubbing through a collar stain..."

"...MADE IN JAPAN
with wood shipped from the USA and back
again, the lamp is worn with years of smoke..."

There is hunger at every turn; the sheets will burn and swim.
Life worn like wood/steals labels to explain:
Made in Japan,
Made in the USA,
Preshrunk,
Keep out.
A change of mind;
The room spins like a long, long tale.

"Her purblind eyes the pearls of memory"

Whad'ya mean
"Made in Japan?"
I never heard 'a
Such 'a thing;
Plum, ain't all sheets
Made in China?
Pearls spin
Past pain,
Burn my eyes
With sheeted
Memories.

"... the doubt
of history extinguished with a mirror..."

The luxury of clear thought of blue marbles in glass jars,
To be aware of sunflowers touching the sky
And not care why.
Blue pearls
Smashed like glass;
My thoughts
Careen and
Flee.
Smoke and wood,
Haze and sun.
If sunflowers
Touched us lightly
As pollen on a
Blue day,
Would we not
Care, again dream?
Lamps to light the night.

"An unscathed apple under the pines like a cone
Stopped me. Buoyant in my hand, it shone..."

Apple, plum,
Pine.
What would it
Take to rouse
Your heart again?
Taken from the shrine,
It shone like pebbles on the beach

"The screens were torn--we woke to insect needles..."

Build the shrine,
I told him.
Build it with apples,
Plums, pebbles.
Light a flame
Torn from the
Flowers of my
Heart;
Replace the falling star in the blue of night.

"I leapt at the walls like Mars in love with Venus."

What is night?
Mars, Venus,
The promise of torn stars,
Falling.

"We need nectar: this orange tree, this jasmine-
hung patio. Look how an orange has veered..."

Jasmine, orange,
Plum,
The bowl tips
And I stain my fingers
With nectar-scented
love.
Collect the scent of the burning leaves,
Paint a picture of the stars looking through the trees

"Imagine me applauding
Your skirt and loving the suspense”

Trees embrace
Cobalt night,
Drink starshine
As if from
Burning bowls.
Imagine
The scent,
Your skirt burning
Jasmine
Like flowered
Stars.

"crackling the whistle of a darker darling,/beak yellow as cucumber flowers"

Wrap around me your warm soft jacket with the scent of autumn.
Jasmine would not
Crackle; it is too soft for that.
Whistle it might,
A sweet song of
Goodnight.
Bring to me the gift of time upon a sapphire pillow.
Life is a thief;
Its victims defy number.
Scotland Yard and FBI miss their mark.
You mustn't slumber.
The wind whistles above the pine as the fire crackles and burns;
Toward the east, the poems are silent within a dream.
The words travel west and swirl around in the dusk and land at the foot of the pine.
The apple drops to the ground; the words no longer make a sound.

Edward Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning" (1930)

Horizontal
Paint, seven
Layers of color
Stacked in Sunday
Clean.

Morning blue
Sky; then
Shadowed eaves,
Then becurtained,
Ledged windows
Facing from
The yet asleep,
The almost awakened;
Yellow. Black, white
On red, perhaps brick;
They still used
Brick in 1930.

Then layer of floor
And ceiling, bottom
And top
To separate the
Sleeping from
Empty stores, all
Commerce ceased.
They still closed stores
On 1930 Sundays.

Sand-colored sidewalk,
Divided
From sand-colored street
By thinnest of
Shaded rises.

And what of
Pudgy hydrant,
Fat with ready
Flow,
And ribboned pole
Of barbers?
Vertical incongruities
Amid the horizontal,
The exceptions
To suggest a rule,
Perhaps.
They, too, cast
Their horizontal
Shadows, the rule
Flowing even
From the exceptions.
Or do the shadows,
Transparent stains
On sidewalks,
Cast hydrant and pole?

Early Sunday morning
Of angled sun and
Horizontal emptiness.
Empty street, devoid
Of movement;
Empty sidewalk,
Devoid of feet;
Empty doorway,
Devoid of welcoming
Proprietor;
Empty windows,
Devoid of faces
Welcoming the day.
Empty sky, devoid
Of clouds or birds.

Only the shadows
Break the silence.

Early Sunday Morning (1930) by Edward Hopper; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The Wisdom of Wilderness and a Little RAP

Starting Monday, Oct. 5 over at The High Calling Blogs, author Laura Boggess will be leading an 11-week discussion of The Wisdom of Wilderness by Gerald May. First published in 2006, the year after May’s death from cancer, the book is about the idea of experiencing the healing power of nature – and seeing the wilderness and wildness that is in each of us. I decided to read the book and follow, possibly join in, the discussion. More details from Laura are here.

Boggess recalls visiting her father before she left for graduate school and, learning he wasn’t at home, went for a walk in the woods. And what she found in the stillness was the presence of God.

It’s been longer than I care to think since I went hiking at Shaw's Arboretum, a 2400-acre preserve some 35 miles west of St. Louis. (Okay, the Arboretum is the old name; it’s now officially "Shaw Nature Preserve" but we St. Louisans don’t give up familiar names that easily.) The arboretum has a number of trails, one of which takes you down to the Meramec River. There are some old, old trees there; the trunk of one is wider than three of us touching fingers to fingers could fit around.

The most remarkable thing about the place is, as Boggess found in her own stretch of woods, the stillness. There are many places to sit and think in the Arboretum, and many places just to sit. It’s where you can “empty out” and just listen.

I’m looking forward to the discussion, I know that nAncY over at the Just Say the Word blog is participating, too.

And I may have to find a way to take another hike. Soon.

A Little RAP

For L.L. Barkat's Random Act of Poetry this week, we've been asked to write a short poem based on something from a poet we've been reading. I've been reading Wendell Berry's A Timbered Choir, which, oddly enough, does relate to the themes and ideas of The Wisdom of Wilderness. So, here's my submission for the RAP:

Walking in Mr. Berry's Woods

I walk within woods,
At river's edge,
Seeking my talisman,
My trunked
And branched guide,
Pointing a way forward,
Signaling a way back,
Stopping time and
Enveloping my heart
In a sweet moment
Of solitude and
Sabbath stillness.

John Blase's "Touching Wonder"

It’s been told so many times, in so many books, movies, plays, in so many sermons, that it’s fallen into almost the status of cliché. So is it possible to tell the story of the birth of Jesus in a way that’s fresh and compelling, that might even recapture the original meaning, which just might take our closed eyes and jaded hearts and open them to the incredible thing that happened in Bethlehem?

The answer is yes. John Blasé does exactly that in “Touching Wonder” (published by David C. Cook; 128 pages; $12.99).

Blasé combines the verses of Luke 1 and 2, Psalm 29 and John, with fictional accounts by Zachariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds to breathe life into our understanding of what happened at the birth of Jesus. He then adds his own handwritten pleas and prayers.

And the result? We’re there. We’re there when Zachariah is struck mute, and Elizabeth goes off by herself to relish her pregnancy of John the Baptist. We’re there with Mary when she hears the angel tell her what is to happen, and she says, “Let it be so with me.” We share Joseph’s frantic desperation as he pounds door to door in Bethlehem, trying to find a place for Mary to give birth. We’re there with the shepherds, who hear the angels singing and do something shepherds would never do – abandon their sheep to see what has happened. We’re there when the baby Jesus is presented to Simeon and Anna in the temple, and Simeon knows he can now die and Anna, old Anna, suddenly sings with the joy of a young girl. And we’re there when the author unburdens his heart in simple prayer letters to God.

It is a Christmas book, the kind you see piled on the tables at Barnes & Noble beginning int helate fall. But it's also more than that, a kind of devotional from a writer who felt compelled to tell the story of Christmas in a different way, a writer who sees himself as part of the story. And that's what we often miss -- we are part of the Christmas story.

“Touching Wonder,” all 128 pages of it, is a treasure. Well done, Mr. Blasé.

Photo of book cover courtesy David C. Cook Publishing.

Edward Hopper’s Blackhead, Monhegan (1916-1919)

Late summer
Sun, declining,
Scatters rays
On hills rounded
And worn,
Suggesting
Another place,
The hot-cool

Blue-gold hues
Of Provence.
It is something
In the French style,
After all, yes?
Not quite
Post-impressionistic
Nor closeted cubist;
More like
Cezanne arguing
Mont Sainte-Victoire
On to canvas
Repeatedly, never
Quite succeeding.

The mountains
Slip Into golds
And oranges
Against a front
Drop of blue.

Dying colors wash
Across an ocean,
Thrusting against
An island broken
From mainland.
Fading blue held
Back at shore’s edge,
Cutting itself on
Jagged rock,
Bleeding white.
Fading orange
Paling into
Sunset yellows.
If only it had been
Before the war;
Colors were
Stronger then.
Now they disappear
Into the power
Of the western sun.

Dark shade divides;
Always a division.
The waves still
Pound
A beach of stones.

Blackhead, Monhegan (1916-1919), Edward Hopper, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Robin Parrish's "Offworld"

It's fascinating to read a novel, a science fiction novel like this one, and be able to follow the geography because you yourself have lived it.

It’s 2033, and four U.S. astronauts are returning from the first expedition to Mars. They’ve been gone almost three years. The exploration went well, except for the time when the commander, Chris Burke, was lost and should have died from lack of oxygen. But he remembers little of what happened.

As the team of four approaches Earth, they find they’ve lost contact with Johnson Space Center in Houston. Then the ship’s systems fail, and the ship crashes at the Kennedy Center in Florida. The four survive, but then find the center devoid of people. Accessing a laptop, they begin to check for the rest of the area. And learn that people have disappeared. All people. Worldwide. Ten billion people are gone. And so are the animals and insects. And whatever happened, it was sudden, as if in a single moment. The team can also see that an incredibly bright light emanates from Houston, and it is to Houston they decide to go.

It doesn’t take long for them to learn they are not alone, after all.

Robin Parrish could have chosen any number of possibilities for what happens in his novel Offworld. He chose what is likely the most challenging one, and then framed the story in one wild, action-packed, the tension-never-lets-up narrative that sweeps the reader along the top of a giant wave of suspense.

Offworld could be a movie. No, it should be a movie. The writing is that descriptive and vivid. The reader is there, with the astronaut team, every step of the way. That takes some skill, and Mr. Parrish pulls it off.

The geography of the novel arcs from central Florida to Houston. When I was a baby, my family lived in Florida, but then returned to New Orleans. The four astronauts of Offworld travel from the Orlando/Kennedy Center area to the Florida Panhandle, through Mobile and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Beaumont and then Houston. I have lived, played, vacationed and/or visited every single one of those places. I nearly came out my chair when the author mentions North 11th Street in Beaumont (my first job out of college was in Beaumont, and I lived in an apartment on N. 14th St.) and Beaumont's Parkdale Mall (I edited a lot of stories about Parkdale Mall for the Beaumont Enterprise; I was there when it opened).

And the big bridge on Interstate 10 in Lake Charles, where a major development in the novel occurs? Well, if you've been on that bridge, you know exactly what's happening. And the Medical Center and Rice University in Houston, two more of the action scenes in Offworld? I lived near there as well, and commuted through the Medical Center to reach work in downtown Houston. I went to college in Baton Rouge, lived in New Orleans, and spent a lot of time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The geography of Offworld rings true. If Robin Parrish didn't travel that geography in writing his novel, I'll be shocked. It's that close.

Photo of front cover of "Offworld" courtesy of Bethany House Publishers.