7 posts tagged “poetry”
After blogging recently about the trailer to the Sigur Ros film 'Heima', I was struck today by a passage from Eugene's Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. It's a long book, and I've only just got into it (this quote is from Chapter 1), but I loved this passage about the power of creation to move us deeply. The passage grabbed my attention because the single moment of the Sigur Ros trailer that had most pulled at my heart was an instant- it probably lasts less than one second - when the camera catches a hawk in flight, the green-grey mountains spread out behind it. This has been the point each time I have watched this clip when the mysterious beauty of the music and landscape has come into focus for me, and a strange sense of hunger and wonder (let's invent a new word for this feeling - hunder) has risen in me. It is a powerful feeling this 'hunder': Strong enough to taste yet gone in a moment; a feeling both of pleasure and of longing; of being both awed and dissatisfied, touched, reached somehow and yet called to reach further.
Peterson:
"Wonder. Astonishment. Adoration. There can't be very many of us for whom the sheer fact of existence hasn't rocked us back on our heels. We take off our sandals before the burning bush. We catch our breath at the sight of a plummetting hawk. 'Thank You, God' We find ourselves in a lavish existence in which we feel a deep sense of kinship - we belong here; we say thank you with our lives to life."
This is the feeling that Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann describes as being 'Awed to Heaven; Rooted in Earth". This powerful and pardoxical phrase forms the title of a collection of poems / prayers published in 2003 and drawn from the prayers Brueggemann had prayed to begin his lectures over several decades of teaching. Like Peterson, Brueggemman helps us to explore the God who is utterly 'other' and yet evident amongst us.
Brueggemann:
'We wait for you to dissolve in tender tears. Your impervious rule takes no prisoners, we wait for you to ache and hurt and care over us, and with us, and beyond us. Cry with us the brutality. Grieve with us the misery. Tremble with us the poverty and hurt. Attend to us - by attending in power and in mercy, remake this alien world into our proper home.'
How is it that God can make us feel so utterly at home in the very moment that He seems to call us homewards? Just as he so totally affirms all we are, he calls us higher and deeper to all we can be. Abraham lived in tents, in the promised land, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, and when we experience the 'hunder' of worship, we know what it is for our hearts to say at one and the same time 'this is my home' and 'this is not yet my home', and to be drawn from worship into longing and from lnoging into worship again.
There are five-star reviews of 'SpokenWorship'on both the UK and USA Amazon sites - both unsolicited...
UK:
USA:
Doing some research on Peter for Spring Harvst this year [great event - we had a good time at Minhead hanging out with some of our oldest freinds...] I was reminded of this great picture by Wayne Forte, an artists whose work I use constantly (www.wayneforte.com). Without featuring either Peter or Jesus it says so much about their freindship and the crisis tht could have broken it, but in the end was the making of it...
I wrote the poem 'The Other Side' after reading again Jesus' words to Peter in John 21...
Let down your nets
On the other side
Peter
On the other side of your fears
On the other side of your certainties
On the other side of your doubting
On the other side
Of who you think you are
On the other side of staying in the boat:
Step out onto the waves towards me.
On the other side of panic and drowning:
Reach out your hand to mine.
On the other side of your reputation, Simon
Become Peter, the movable rock
On the other side of haste
Of your hot-head
Of violence
Put away your sword
On the other side of the lake
On the other side of town
Follow me to the other side of life
Be re-born
On the other side of the tracks
Find the sheep
On the other side of the mountain
See the other side of the coin
Seek-out the other side of the father
On the other side of his lost son
On the other side of religion;
The other side of law;
On the other side of the temple;
The other side of the wall.
On the other side of obedience
The other side of love
On the other side of forgiveness
Hear the seventy-times-seven
Other sides of the story
Though darkness will fall
On the other side of dawn,
You will laugh
On the other side of your face
On the other side of this side of Heaven
On the other side of denial, Peter,
On the other side of loss
On the other side of Pentecost
Let down your nets….
Spoken Worship is at last available in book form. Zondervan will release the collection next month. Details are available at:
Everything we bring
To this place
Finds a place here
Every case that we carry can be consigned here
Every load we are lifting can be left
Every secret we are slaves to can be spoken here
Every terror that torments us can be told.
There is room here for anguish
For the agony of abandonment
There is ground here for grieving
For the weeping wounds of loss
In this circle of safety
At this fireside of faith
There is space for story and song
There is room for revelation and renewal
Here is hope
And healing
Here is forgiveness
And freedom
Here is connection
And correction
And coming to our senses
At this source
Whose depths are never ending
This river
That will never run dry
At this table
Whose banquet of abundance
Knows no bounds
No wrong
Is too wrong
To be righted here
No tragedy too twisted
To be turned
For everything we bring
To this place
Finds a place here
And every load we are lifting can be left
In the Image of My Father
Made in the image of my Father:
breath-filled,
his will to live kindling my life,
his call to be driving my being.
My heart is sparked by his heart;
my mind is fired by his imagination.
My animation is his declaration:
because he is, I am.
Made in the image of my Father:
able,
artful, articulate,
created to create,
pulsing with potential.
Designed to design,
invented for invention,
made to make.
Through his eyes, I see possibilities.
Through his ears, I hear harmonies.
In his heartbeat, I feel life’s dancing rhythms.
Because he can,
I will.
Made in the image of my Father:
dependent,
rooted in relationship,
commissioned for companionship,
a free individual made free in community,
distinct yet needing devotion,
complete but needing completion.
Unique, I seek the company of others.
A part, I seek my meaning in the whole.
Because of him, I need to be needed.
Because I am loved, I love.
Made in the image of my Father:
human,
his word of command shaping flesh,
his loving intention sculpting the soil of earth into life.
His voice causing, calling, claiming me, naming me,
framing my future,
fashioning me.
Because of his dreams, I have promise.
Because of his promise, I have dreams.
Ushered into extravagant existence,
tumbling into time,
fumbling,
falling,
free.
I am human.
I am dependent.
I am able.
I am breath-filled.
I am made
in the image of my Father.
c. Gerard Kelly, April 2006. To be published in 'Spoken Worship', Zondervan, April 2007
