Creation! Evolution!

On Sunday, CNN published a post on its Belief Blog by Karl Giberson, vice president of the BioLogos Foundation. The title of the post was “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you.” The post (as of the time I’m writing this) has received almost 3,000 comments, ranging from the thoughtful and provocative to the outraged.

I’ve never been able to get myself excited about the creation vs. evolution debate. I’m aware of it; I’ve read a lot about it and studied it. I know enough about it to spot the flaws in Giberson’s argument. But I can’t get excited about it. (I can’t get excited about all the “New Atheists” either.)

This week’s chapter discussion for Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis ("What Lies Behind the Law") anticipates Giberson and his argument. Lewis says there are essentially two views (with minor variations) of what the universe really is and how it came to be there. The materialist view aligns with the belief in evolution. The religious view aligns with creation. Because we don’t have all the answers and proof we would like to have, and likely never will have, both require some measure of faith.

When I was younger, the questions around evolution and creation were of greater concern. But I know when the “creation versus evolution” argument stopped being so worrisome for me.

As part of a masters program, I took a course called “Science, Creation Science and Pseudo-Science,” taught by a professor of astronomy at Washington University in St. Louis. His position was unequivocally materialist, yet he acknowledged the issues inherent in the theory of evolution. (I admired him so much that I took another course with him and chose him to be one of the three professors for my final oral examination.)

Part of the course was a study of the definition of science, and we examined several different approaches. The one that the professor (and apparently most scientists) was most comfortable with was this: “Science is what scientists say it is.” That idea permeated many of the books we read that semester, including The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

That understanding was what eliminated any concern I had about “creation vs. evolution.” Science was just as fallible as any other part of humanity.

My professor would be upset with that last statement, but he would also have understood why I made it.

Our discussion of Mere Christianity is being hosted by Sarah Salter and Jason Stayszen. To see the links posted for this week’s discussion, please visit Jason’s site, Connecting to Impact.

How to Deal with a Difficult Colleague

There are times at work I feel like flypaper. I attract difficult colleagues.

You know what I’m talking about. They were hired because someone knew someone. Or they were expert at interviewing, but not actually doing work. Or they’re in over their heads. Or they know that some organizations prize political skills over getting actual work done.

They are the ones whose promotions get announced, and people ask, “What are the bosses smoking?”

Please continue reading at The High Calling.

Prayers of Kierkegaard

Walking down halls of stones
arched with time
chanting high walls of tones
white and gold
a song unknown
a hymn unspoken
a voice unheeded
swirls of dust disturbed
by darkened robes in motion
chanting singing intoning
voice rise
slicing sharply into air
voices rise atonal
silences singing spare
unvoiced prayers atonal
emerging then merging
creating lifting, hovering
pulled into hands
hands holding whispers
hands holding sighs.

Photograph: Fountains Abbey by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The first draft of this poem was written during the intermission of a concert by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony Chorus, April 9, 2011, that included Samuel Barber’s “Prayers of Kierkegaard” and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection.”



This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday sponsored by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems submitted, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.n. Central time.

You can read about Soren Kierkegaard here.

City of Refuge

 

I wander in a city
of refuge, a city affording
a certain security,
a certain protection
one of the three in Canaan
Hebron, Shechem, Kedesh
One of the three outside
Golan Bezer Ramoth
Only six, I thought,
why not 12, I thought,
one for each tribe?

This city, one of six
is cold, chill creeping
around houses, corners.
It offers refuge, yes,
but it does not provide hope.
It provides safety, yes,
but offers no sustenance.
It provides a bulwark
against death, yes,
but it does not provide
life, or beauty.

This city’s name breathes
hard, unkind consonants.
The prudent live here;
the simple stay here.

This poem is submitted for the Warrior Poet Circle hosted by Jason Stayszen at Connecting to Impact. Today’s prompt is Proverbs 22: 3: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it (New International Version). To see more poems, please visit the site.

Thoughts on "Beautiful & pointless"

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry today, I’ve posted a review of Beautiful & pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr, poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review. The book was just published last week, and it is rather a good one – smart, witty and with just the right amount of snarkiness (but not too much), as I say in the review.

It’s the kind of book that sets you to thinking about poetry and writing, how you came to both and where you think both might take you.

I came to poetry through a kind of back door, or perhaps a side entrance. Yes, I read poetry in middle school and high school English classes. Yes, I read it in college when I took two semesters of English literature – two semesters and two volumes of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (I still have them on my bookshelf). What I remember most was the professor I had for my second semester, who loved to give tests consisting of obscure lines by Romantic poets, and we had to identify the poet and the poem. (My default: whenever I was in doubt, I answered Wordsworth. The professor’s Ph.D. thesis was on Wordsworth, and my default was right about 85 percent of the time.)

Seven years out of college, I found myself in a corporate speechwriting group. I had taken one rhetoric class in college, and had had Latin in high school, which had exposed me to Cicero, Seneca and other Roman orators. But I was pretty raw when it came to formal rhetoric, and understanding what I was doing with speeches. The friend I mentioned in my post on Friday set me on a course toward the modern poets, and I discovered Wallace Stevens.

I’m not sure what impressed me the most – his poetry or the fact he had been a vice president at an insurance company, despite being offered a plum academic position at an Ivy League college.

But it was when I started reading Stevens that I started getting serious about language and writing. From Stevens, Eliot and Dylan Thomas, I moved to other great poets. I went back to the Romantics (although the bad taste about those college tests still lingers). Then Dante, Tennyson, the British poets of World War I. Beowulf. Dickinson. Chaucer. Edgar Lee Masters. Whitman. Longfellow. Many others. I read to see how words were used, how meaning could develop through meter and flow, and how to pace language. And the speeches I wrote began to change.

The first time the change had become obvious was in 1985, for a speech by a marketing executive at a customer dinner to introduce a new product. I wrote it, but I wasn’t at the dinner to hear it. Others who did hear it wondered at what had happened – the executive had walked into the dinner as just another business guy but left it “almost a poet,” I heard.

Three years later, I was assigned to an executive who knew (1) he wanted to transcend the company and the industry to lead it in a direction it had to go and (2) how to use a speechwriter effectively. We made a small slice of industrial history, but history nonetheless. This was followed by nine of the most productive years of speechwriting I ever had, a hiatus of two years, and then six productive years.

Two years ago, I was no longer writing speeches for others. I started writing poetry, and found it both easier and harder than writing speeches.

There is no writing I do that makes me feel more vulnerable than poetry. It’s not that I think people will think them bad; it’s that I’m afraid people will see straight through them to my soul, or perhaps my heart. Other forms of writing I do – while just as “creative” – are usually less transparent. I can write a story that may or may not be autobiographical. I can give an account of something in a journalistic or reportorial style, but the personal is usually hidden.

But I can’t write a poem without feeling naked and vulnerable.

Related:

A review of David Orr's Beautiful & pointless is posted at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Dorothy's Lament

You’ve had the power all along
she said but
you had to learn how to use it
she said so
I clicked my ruby slippers together
three times
there’s no place like home
there’s no place like home
there’s no place like home
but I forgot I was holding that
stupid green balloon
and it kept me stuck
in Oz.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday at One Stop Poetry. To see other poems submitted and an interview with photographer Lauren Randolph, please visit the site.

Photograph by Lauren Randolph for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

Some background on the king from “The King’s Speech;” giving up God for Lent (say what?); and a Sundaymeditation in the form of a song from Rich Mullins, who still inspires so many years after his death. Another good week online.

Prose

“It’s All About the Poems” by Eric Swalberg at Journey of Words.

“A Very Public Intellectual,” review by Joseph Epstein of the new biography of Susan Sontag.

“Artist” by Travis Thrasher at The Journey is Everything.

“The Phos Hilaron” by David Koyzis at Evangel.

“Bad Boy” by Bradley Moore at Shrinking the Camel.

“One Thing for All People” by Matt Appling at The Church of No People.

“Six Words” by Laura Boggess at The Wellspring.

“Know-it-all” and “I’m no super hero but I do have a super power” by David Rupert at Red-Letter Believers.

“Did God Actually Say?” by Jeanne Damoff at The View From Here.

“The Obit Writer” and “Growing Like a Weed, or Maybe an Oak” by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful.

“Royal Duty: The King Behind the Speech” by Robert Llizo at the Scriptorium.

“It’s You or the Mothballs” by Brock Henning at LifeSummit.

“The 30-Year-Old Grandpa” by Jason Vana.

“The only thing employees want to know” by David Murray at Writing Boots.

“Up Against the ‘Great Firewall:’ Ai Weiwei” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

"The music within me" by Marty Duane Scott for Bibledude.

“Giving Up God” by Jessica McGuire at Jezamama.

“Planning for Reality” by Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

"Diminish and Remain" by Kelly Sauer at A Restless Heart.

Poetry

“How Did I Get Here?” by Lorenzo at Crowned with Laurels.

“Reflection of Reality” by Eric Swalberg at Journey of Words.

“Lucy” by Brian Miller at WayStationOne.

“A Monday Morning Psalm” by L.L. Barkat at Love Notes to Yahweh.

“Growing Things” by Justinian at Delight and Glory and Oddity and Light.

“Erosion” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“Lenten Journal: Question” by Milton Brasher-Cunningham at Don’t Eat Alone.

“Found” by Laura Boggess at The Wellspring.

“Deep Indigo” by Rob Kistner at Image & Verse.

“Wanting of a sin eater” by B.K. McKenzie at Signed…BKM.

“Time” by Nancy Rosback at A little something’.

Paintings and Photographs

“Wearing Pink” and “A Little Silence” by Susan Etole at Just…A Moment.

“Sobering Reality” by Catherine Ross ay Urban Gritt.

Videos and Podcasts

“Sunday Meditation: The Color Green,” via American Digest.

“Sunday Morning Music: Iron and Wine,” via Don Miller.

“Double-Edged Sword” and "The Mucilage of Figaro" via Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

Photograph: Image 4040 by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.