The Hidden City (or Running)

The Hidden City

Today I was running in the beautiful park
down the quick wide path
breathing fast, hurried scents
and blurred green, peripheral light,
dark, heavy, quick thudding of careless feet.
It left me out of the breath, windless.
All this in an effort to chase down health,
fitness, some illusory beauty.

I had to stop to let the wind catch me.
Sweating in the stillness there
I saw the light roll out from beneath the door
like the train of the King's courtly robe -
the making of a bright slanting path.
Every intimately detailed face
on every little leaf turned into that Way
and showed another world through stained glass -
a slow, wasteful, everlasting sigh.

Then my heart slowed enough to nearly die
and a slender thing like starlight
twinkled near my feet - a spider's invisible work
unseen but for careful payment of attention
and the kindness of low evening light.
Before my eyes an entire Kingdom wavering in and out of sight.
A leaping prismatic array, a hidden city
ignored, stepped on, disbelieved.

Duke Summer Institute pt 1

I left Oxford Sunday night and drove till about 3am. I slept for a few hours in my car and then finished out the trip on Monday, arriving at Duke University around 4pm. I was tired from the driving but today was so full that I've barely had time to be attend to the weariness. I also drank coffee.

This week is all about the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to us from God (see 2 Corinthians 4 & 5). In morning worship the speaker made the observation that the scriptures say that "God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

It doesn't say " so that we might proclaim the righteousness of God" or "so that we might know the righteousness of God" or "so that we might have..." It says, "so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

We become, we embody, we incarnate His righteousness in this world. We are a new creation. And we carry on his mission of calling people back into peaceful union with God through Jesus Christ.

Later in the day, I attended our small group discussion for this week, which is led by Malcolm Guite. He is an Anglican priest, poet, and singer/songwriter. The track I'm in is called, "The Shaping Spirit of Imagination; the Arts and Reconciliation." It was fantastic. I can't wait to get back there tomorrow for more!

Malcolm is wonderful. I've already enjoyed one book of his poems called "Saying the Names" which I stole from the coffee table of Abbye and Jeff Pates several months ago. I'm sure that by the end of this week I will be frustrated to have left with as small of an encounter with him as I will have had.

One point that stood out from the small group time was (and I'm pulling just one little thing among so many wonderful things) the need for 'making' over and against 'un-making'. Malcolm told us of a book written about Amnesty International's archives. A book about the de-humanizing effects of torture on both the victims and the perpetrators. The torture was enacted to 'un-make' the victim's humanity, and in various ways the work of evil in this world is to unmake what God has made and called good. To pervert. To mar. The redemptive work of God is remaking, making new.

Our call is to creatively re-invest in the world so that people who have been un-made by evil can be re-made by the creative, dignity-restoring, love of Jesus. In fact, Jesus came to us as a human to restore us to humanness. Sin un-makes humanity. God re-makes humanity. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be human again.

And there are many many other things I'd like to write, instead I'll wait and sit on your couch or at your table. I'll hopefully be near enough to speak quietly, to hear what you aren't saying, and to wonder with you why sighs given in trust and oceans lulling against sand-shores seem to come from the same depths, both oceans, both mysteries, both attended by the Spirit of the God of new birth.

Like You Said

Confidence in your words, Lord, this is a prayer for my family-
Those born and yet to be born again.
There is a place of springs in the land of exile, the mean-time,
a living seed of hope. Love for the bloom to break open
is strangely watered by the seed itself.

We wait, invested in your words, which are like anchors
in a shifty place. Our survival. Our revival.
Your words came to us over the waters in the late watches
when we were afraid. You spoke to us then and we were created.
Light from the face of the Firstborn, borne still.

The pages turn, they keep me from the Turning-
the weary dream that slithers in a senseless sensual sulk.
Open your mouth, Shiftless One, divide the night from the day.
You and your double-edged sword, the alleviate of your voice.
In your light we see light, the black banners shred and disappear.

You have eyes to see, Lord, and ears to hear.
And we would be like you, groan for us, Holy Unconfused Spirit!
This is my prayer, a brittle-winged thing.
It's grateful for your cradling palms and your warm breath-
Here the Trumpet, the burning bloom from the sky breaks!

It's just like you said. Everything, just like you said.

Tolkien and the power of Creativity

"The Christian still has to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now percieve that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairie Stories

Verlyn Flieger in her book Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World goes on to say this:

"Both Tolkien and Barfield regarded the Word as the instrument of Creation and words as instruments of humanity's separation from God and from the universe...Both felt that the task of the poet was to bridge that separation, to use words to reconnect what they had severed. For each of them, words were to be poetic instruments of humankind's ultimate and conscious reunion with God." And again, "Poetry reinvests the world with meaning and rebuilds relationship with it." (pg 47-48)

In Tolkien's essay, these thoughts occur after his explanation that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, that the Gospel itself is the ultimate case of a true myth. And that myth defines reality, calling us back to a time when the same God who called a dead messiah from a dark grave into the light of Easter morning, also spoke this creation into existence with the words, "Let there be light".

Could it be that God has always used something more akin to myth, poetry, song, and story to bring into realization his creation? For us, these things are considered the less concrete forms of expression. What if for God they are the most substantial means. What if the old stories of the Bible that sound so mythic are closer to reality than any literal language we could conjur? In other words, what if myth is actually more literal?

And finally, what if imagination and creativity are the doors through which we bring into reality a love so fantastic that it sounds like a fairy tale?

Thanks Wendell, I keep forgetting

How to be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

--------------

ps. Thanks Kristen Sayres. I scooped this up off your old blog.
pps. Now I will close this laptop, lay on the ground in the sun and read a book in my friend's backyard in Memphis, TN. Amen.