Category: Poetry

The Dark

When did we learn to be afraid of the dark?

Was it in our nascent days, as newborn eyes

slowly opened to a world full of light

that illuminated so many things we could not name

as we learned what faces were, and found one or two

we could trust, only to have those faces suddenly

disappear in darkness as the light, suddenly taken,

plunged us into distress that could only be assuaged

when the faces reappeared in a resurgence of light?

The faces tried to help of course, and out of love

gave us small lights that burned through the night

or else little glowworms that eradicated darkness

at our touch.  Or else rushed at the sound of our cries,

turned on the big lights, and held us as they whispered,

‘There, there, everything will be alright.’

And so, we learned that light was safe, and darkness –  

something to be feared, cast off, avoided at all costs. 

All of this is understandable, of course.

For the dark can be filled with terror, something

we learn more fully as we grow to discover

the existence of wild creatures, criminals, and worse.

As stories of evil found in darkness become more

than just stories, and teach us that we were right

to be afraid of the things we could not name

which are now all the more terrible for the naming. 

But the dark is more than this, is it not? 

It is beauty.  Grace.  Stillness.  Silence. 

‘Large and full of wonders,’  Dunsany said.

It is the place where moon gardens bloom,

where stars find space and power to shine.

It is where the Aye-Aye creeps to life

and nature shows a side we seldom see. 

It is where lovers so often meet,

and life itself is blessedly conceived. 

Was it not out of darkness that earth came to be?

Did not God create the darkness and the light? 

And were we not, before we learned to fear,

safe and secure in the dark of the womb,

where we were ‘fearfully and wonderfully made?’   

Jesus knew darkness.  Indeed, he ran toward it. 

Both the darkness of the skies and the darkness

of the hearts of men.  The darkness of his slowing

breath.  The darkness of his coming death. 

A darkness embraced of his own free will.

‘Into your hands, Father, I enter the darkness.’

His body would lay in darkness for three days, he said.

Yet even at this he did not shirk.  Knowing, unlike us,

that there was no reason to be afraid of the dark. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Luke 9:51 – A Meditation for Ash Wednesday

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

He set his face

to fear, hate, and jealousy,

violence, lies, and treachery,

division, wrath, and envy.

He set his face

To the agony of the garden,

the betrayal of friends,

the fists of soldiers,

the scorn of elders,

the dance of demons,

the might of empire,

the filth of politics.

He set his face

to bone studded flagella

that tore his flesh,

the weight of the beam,

the bite of iron nails,

the slow loss of breath,

the knowledge of impending death.

He set his face

to the full weight of sin:

theft, lies, adultery,

abuse, neglect, cruelty,

guns, bombs, missiles,

war, famine, genocide,

my country right or wrong,

silence, fear, cowardice,

complicity, ignorance, indifference.

He set his face

to cold death surging

through his veins,

to pulses of unending pain,

to the mockery of passersby,

to the contempt of those

for whom he’d die.

He set his face to

to you and me.

To all who lived

or would come to be.

To the criminals gasping at his side.

To the soldier watching as he died.

To the women gathered ‘round his cross

To all the least, the last, the lost.

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

On the Superfluousness of Words

Using many words,

I stretch and grope and strain

to understand the ineffable,

to explain what I can’t explain.

I’ve done so for so many years,

trying to understand.

Asking, answering, questions,

gripping reason with my hand.

An expert I’m supposed to be,

the guy who knows it all.

But now at last I’ve come to see:

The time has come to fall,

Into the grace of silence,

where questions cease to be,

where reasons do not matter,

Only you and me.

With you I find my answers

though neither of us speak.

My arguments, superfluous,

it’s presence that I seek.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Why all the Poetry?

‘I’m singing this note ‘cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing’ – The Who

You may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot of poetry lately.  I have no idea whether this is being received positively or not, but for what it’s worth, I thought I might explain why my posts have taken this surprising turn. 

It has to do with my spiritual journey.  Those who know me know that for the past few years, I have been delving more deeply into what Brother Lawrence called ‘the practice of the presence of God.’  It began with John Eldredge’s Pause App, where I found the value of stopping throughout the day to re-center and rest in the presence of God.  As time went on, I found myself increasingly drawn to silence, stillness, and solitude.  I began checking out Lectio 365, which drew me more deeply into the books and writings of the 24-7 Prayer movement, where I began to create a ‘rule of life’ to govern the way I approached prayer in particular and life in general.  Then, last year, I enrolled in an 18 month program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation designed to deepen both my spiritual life and leadership in the church. 

In the course of this journey, I have discovered that the clearest path to the presence of God involves shutting down my discursive mind, that part of myself that is always thinking, always bouncing from one subject to another, rambling about in search of answers to both complex and not so complex problems.  I have lived most of my life this way.  I suppose there are some deep psychological reasons why this is so, things I don’t need to get into right now.  But this way of being has both upsides and downsides.  On the one hand, I enjoy being a thinker, a guy who reads books and knows things.  On the other hand, a mind always in motion, one that seldom rests, can be damaging to one’s soul.  It can prevent the soul from connecting with the God who dwells both in and around us, who invites us into the awareness of our union with him. 

And so, I have learned the infinite value of Silence.  Stillness.  Solitude.  The emptying of my mind to simply rest in the presence of God.  Of entering into what an anonymous 14th century Christian mystic termed, ‘the cloud of unknowing.’  I liken that cloud to an experience I once had atop Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park in Maine.  My wife Megen and I had driven to the top, only to find ourselves enveloped in a dense fog.  Our dog Phoenix took the drive with us, and as we walked around, Megen took her a short distance away to, well, do what dogs have to do after long car rides.  Suddenly, the fog became so dense I could not see anything, Megen and Phoenix included.  It was just me and the cloud, nothing or no one else in sight, for what seemed an eternity (in realty it was probably less than a minute or two).  I was concerned that I couldn’t see them at first, but slowly I began to rest and trust that they would reemerge from the cloud.  I began to sense their presence even when I could not see them.  And soon enough, there they were. 

I’ve been learning to rest in the cloud with God.  To know he is there even when I sense nothing.  To rest in his presence.  Sometimes, it is nothing more than that.  But sometimes, he emerges from the cloud, and I experience his presence even more deeply.  It’s not like I hear words or see visions.  It’s more like what Mother Teresa once said when asked by a TV reporter (I think it was Tom Brokaw) about how she spoke with God in prayer.  ‘I don’t say anything,’ she said, ‘I just listen.’  The reporter then asked, ‘Well, what does God say to you then?’  To which the beautiful nun replied, ‘He doesn’t say anything.  He just listens.’ 

If you don’t understand what that means, I don’t know if I can explain it to you.  All I can do is encourage you to try it out for yourself and see what happens.  I trust you will find it wonderful. 

In any event, my spiritual practices have taken me into such spaces, where all else fades away and I simply rest in the presence of God.  It doesn’t happen every time.  Spiritual practice doesn’t work like that.  To borrow a phrase from Henri Nouwen, often, ‘as soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree.’  I’m still learning, and I suppose that I will always battle my discursive mind. 

But sometimes…

I’ll enter a time of silence, or take a walk in the woods, or contemplate an experience of sacred memory (and all memory is sacred), or practice Lectio Divina, or engage in some other practice, and fall into a state I can only call grace.  And sometimes, the felt presence of God emerges from the fog in ways my discursive mind cannot possibly explain.

And somehow, for reasons I cannot fully explain, I have discovered that when I leave such space, poems emerge.  I don’t know where they come from.  They just come.  They seem to emerge from the cloud, from my experience of God’s presence.  Perhaps it is that when a person touches their Creator, they cannot help but create. 

The poet Jane Hirshfield says, ‘one reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world…poetry is the release of something previously unknown into the visible.’  Yeah.  I think it’s something like that.  Somehow, when I emerge from the cloud, I do so having discovered something, something I didn’t know existed, a thought, a feeling, a part of who I most deeply am.  And when I go to journal about the experience, words emerge in a form that leaves my discursive mind behind, that is, in the form of poetry that just flows from the deepest recesses of my soul.  I don’t think much as I write the words that emerge.  Again, they just come, making visible something I previously had not known to exist, something that was always there. 

I honestly don’t know if my poems are good or bad.  I suspect that discriminating poetry aficionados scoff, snicker, or worse, at my paltry attempts.   I honestly don’t care.  The only thing that matters is that my poems are real to me.  They reflect the deepest parts of myself, the parts that reflect my truest self, the parts that are most in touch with God, the parts I want to reflect more genuinely in the whole of my life. 

They are my heart’s prayers. 

So, whenever one appears on this blog, I invite you to make of them what you will.  I hope that at least some of them have been, or will be, meaningful to you.  And that perhaps they will inspire you to seek God’s presence as well, and discover, well, whatever it is that God wishes you to discover. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Mary’s Oil

A Meditation on Mark 14:1-9

I’m not going to stop evil. 

Not entirely.

I mean, who ever did?

It’s like perpetual motion,

a machine that won’t stop.

A devouring, raging brute,

clawing its way from age to age. 

I read the signs, my heart flutters

to history’s latest frenzy. 

Things fall apart, as Yeats observed. 

All I can do is break my flask,

offer my libation,

proffer my resistance,

pour out my love,

as small and meaningless

as these may seem. 

But at least He will know.

At least the fragrance

will fill the room –

if only for a moment. 

What good will it possibly do? 

Perhaps no more than a fleeting respite. 

Or, perhaps, by God’s grace,

all the good in the world.    

Time will tell. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Dark Sunrise

I rose before first light

to behold the sunrise

on the morning after

a drenching winter rain.

But the sky was darkened

by long trains of clouds,

racing across the heavens

on stacked parallel tracks

as if to keep a schedule.

So I did not see the sun rise.

But I did see her light.

And a kettle of vultures

shaking off their slumber

to spread their wings and take

possession of the skies.

I heard the dark eyed junco,

with his feathered cousins,

the wren, sparrow, and jay,

battling the morning cardinal

for supremacy in song.

I heard the roosters crowing,

calling the monks to Lauds,

if any could be found, and

felt the breath of a new day

filling my lungs with glory.

I did not see the sun rise,

But she rose just the same.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

A Forest Trail

Is there anything more lovely

than the sight of a forest trail,

when you are standing at its head

where it stretches to who knows where?

More beautiful still are those that

rise in uneven stairs fashioned

by rangy and gnarled tree roots,

inviting you to step up and in

to wherever they wish to take you.

Proceed at your peril dear traveler,

for beyond the sylvan horizon

are treasures beyond imagining

that will make your life seem dull

despite its urban complexity.

Once you touch the face of God

your heart will burn forever.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Elijah

They watch me build the altar,

Setting stones one by one.

Rock by rock I raise this pyre

Praying God will light the fire.

I thrust my spade into dry ground

Moving earth on every side.

The sand and rock piles high and steep.

The trench descends three gallons deep.

I lay the wood I hope will burn

The sacrificial beast.

An image once of strength and might.

It’s eyes now fade with dying light. 

I’ve finished now what I’ve begun,

Save to douse all chance of fire’s natural rise.

What happens next must be divine.

Lest people think the glory mine.

Great God of many names!

You alone – Ignite the flame!

Cleanse dull minds that all may see:

This is of you, and not of me.

The fire flashes, blinding, bright.

All eyes go dim, and then, true sight.

I am reduced to clay and sod.

The cry goes forth, ‘Yahweh is God.’

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

(Inspired by 1 Kings 18:20-39).

Meditation on John 19:28-30

Jesus knew that his mission was now finished, and to fulfill scripture, he said, ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. When Jesus had tasted it, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and released his Spirit.

What is a man to do,

When given sour wine?

When bitter grapes replace the sweet?

When innocence and violence meet?

When anger rises in his breast?

When those around him serve up death?

There was a man

Who cried with thirst

Under a blackened sky.

They offered him such bitter drink

And stood to watch him die.

Yet tasting it

He did not spit

Nor call out for their blood.

He spoke a prayer,

Then bowed his head,

And gave his life to God.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Election Day

‘In this dark hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure’ – Faramir of Gondor

I offer these poems to anyone who may be dreading the worst today. I pray that even as they acknowledge the possibility of darkness, they point you toward the light.

Autocracy’s Rise

The darkening skies descend.

The unsuspecting masses blink

As trembling prophets absorb

What they knew would come.

For them, the expected death

Of what they once held dear.

They brace, for loss, for ruin,

And the marching feet of doom.

They know, that past is prologue,

As the behemoth takes its place

At the vanguard of a chilling dread

That now hangs over all.

Yet this they know, deeply:

That all will not be lost.

For all cannot be taken.

There is still that which abides,

Which nothing can filch or harm,

Beyond the dragon’s reach.

There is faith,

The substance of hope.

And love beyond imagining.

The forest, filled with wild.

Music, to dance to, to fuel desire.

For eternity. For Life.

There is the present moment.

To savor, bless, and know.

And in that moment God,

Ever-present. Constant. True.

Pointing the way forward. On!

Presence. Protection. Peace.

Is this not what matters,

Most of all, when all else fails?

To know that in such days

The best cannot be broken?

That in the end the sadness

Comes untrue, and love wins?

Oh Blessed One who stills my soul!

Let me not forget these truths.

And when the sky is darkest,

Let me feel your smile,

That I may brave the tempest,

Shielded by thy perfect love.

For Election Day

I have no earthly ruler

No President to claim

I serve the one who is the King

The name above all names.

The empire is a monster

A snarling, fearful beast

Like Grendel or Polyphemus

On mortal flesh it feasts.

Perhaps once I thought otherwise

That it was true and brave

I know it now for what it is:

It reeks of death and grave.

The times they are so fearful

Dreadful, dank, and dark

The leopard beast is on the march

As ‘lambs’ now wear its mark.

And yet I have no need to fear

Though all I once knew fails

My life is in the hands of Christ

Whose Kingdom will prevail.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent