The Rumor of Another Life
Saturday, March 28th, 2009I’m growing in my appreciation for poetry. Maybe it’s living long enough to see the beauty that’s in the world when I leave the security of the logical left-side of my brain to explore words, images and notions with the intuitive, creative side of my brain where poetry has a place along with the ephemeral glimpses of life that are easily overlooked and lost.
A while back, while reading from the monthly newsletter of the Alliance of Baptists, I paid close attention to the story of Dorothy Barr, a load-bearing member of the Alliance who had lived her life in pursuit of her calling as a minister. After finally reaching her goal of being a woman in ministry, she had a near-fatal car crash that altered the trajectory of her life so that active ministry was no longer possible. She was depressed because she had worked for years striving through male and congregational resistance, through the long years of study in seminary, until she had at last reached her goal. She was a woman in meaningful ministry in a place that made her happy and that was an adequate response to her calling by God.
After the wreck when she was going through rehabilitation, she not only had to deal with her broken body, she also had to deal with her broken spirit. It dawned on her in that challenging time she needed to quit feeling sorry for herself. In response to the questioner of how she changed her feeling of helplessness and grief over her ministry into a more peaceful way of living, she replied, “I had to learn to live into a new life.”
Maybe that’s the hope of Lent. Maybe that’s the sense of gratitude one can share with God that spills over into every fiber of being, even into those places where loss and grief dominate.
This week’s Christian Century has a poem worth sharing. As I said, I’m developing a taste for poetry intrigued by the ways the words and images can create a place of solitude where the soul can relax and be refreshed. I believe the poets have an artful gift to describe a world that most of us need … a desperate glimpse into the world beyond words.
Jeanne Murray Walker is an oft-published poet who lives in Minnesota. Here’s her poem, “Easter Week”:
Speaking of Houdini and escape,
of Spring, this Spring, there being
no General or Eternal Spring.
yesterday I saw a blue pickup
pull out from a stoplight with eight trees
swaying and gesturing, sentenced to a life
they never chose. We know the cruelty
of mathematics, the bottom line,
how it can cancel the exactitude of longing.
How bereavement can sound like
the plunking of a piano tuner through an open window,
notes trying to break free
but staked to the tonic scale like greyhounds
tethered to a doghouse
in the killing heat of summer.
As the truck accelerates, the wind
ruffles the trees’ feathers. They could be five year olds
in an Easter pagaent, trying to slough off wings
and other baggage. They are that filled with
the Holy Ghost. Oh, the beauty of green!
Oh the rumor of another life!
[From Christian Century 4/7/09, 34]

