Christmas After All

Our Christmas revels were tempered by a miserable cold suffered by my six-year-old daughter, although she did perk up enough to enjoy opening presents and watching movies.

My daughter is a being of pure energy. For me, she exists not so much as a child as an unstoppable force in a child's guise. So, seeing her laid low--even with something so clearly insignificant in the grand scheme of things--fills me with fear. I am made painfully aware of my own weakness and the flimsy pretense of invincibility with which I cloak myself and those I love most.

Today, it is not joy that connects me with others I know. Instead, it is this: we have all walked in a great darkness, and we walk in darkness still. Sometimes as we walk, we tell stories or sing songs. Sometimes we hold hands or fall asleep in each other's arms. Sometimes we laugh or cry or simply stare in silence.

As the snow falls in tonight's darkness, I imagine it is falling not just here but in Ohio and Michigan and Illinois, in Kentucky and Tennessee, in New York and Massachusetts.

The snow falls tonight as a benediction, covering with a quieting beauty, the hopes and fears that met to make this day a blessing, a holy day after all.

Illuminating Manuscripts

Let’s say the barbarians have taken over,

And let’s say they’re burning everything,

And the only way to save the books—

All the sacred writings that breathe

Light and meaning into our dusty shells—

The only way to preserve that which

For all these years has preserved us

Is to illuminate it,

                        To construct a place,

A scriptorium where we sit each day

And read and paint with gold and silver,

In hopes that maybe the texts so adorned,

Shiny, exquisite, pleasing, mysterious,

Will be deemed valuable enough to save

By those who left their souls behind

To conquer for the sake of conquest.

Let’s say we awaken suddenly to find

The smoke is already billowing through

Our streets, and darkness is falling:

Find your holy place and take up

Your pen and brush, your gold leaf

And your silver dust, and now at once

Begin and do not cease, begin and

Do not cease, begin and do not cease.

A Lesson Learned from My First Semester in Divinity School

When you are busier than you have ever been in your entire life, you have to make some difficult decisions about how to spend your precious time. What I believe you must not do is completely abandon that which nourishes you, that which fans the flames of your soul, that which has brought you to this special place and this particular moment.

I believe it is especially important to keep the creative energy flowing. If you are a dancer, dance; if you are a painter, paint, if you are a singer, sing. You probably won't get class credit for any of these things (with a few notable exceptions), but you will be happier and healthier than if you were to limit your activities to reading dusty textbooks and producing even dustier papers. If nothing else, I recommend keeping a journal. The energy and the ideas that are generated by journal writing frequently become something upon which you can build.

These past six months have been an amazingly fertile time for me as a writer and musician.  Theoretically, I have much less time for writing than ever before.  And yet, almost every time I've taken the time to write a poem or a song or a journal entry, I've learned something new and significant about myself and about the world, both visible and invisible.

As a seminarian, I do not believe it is my job to cough up digested bits of other people's wisdom. Rather, I believe my task is to take the received wisdom of others into my hands like bricks with which I can construct something entirely new and meaningful and beautiful. May it be so.

Speed Reading the Book of Psalms

My Hebrew Scriptures class has covered a lot of territory--almost the entirety of the Hebrew Bible--in a very short time, which has necessitated reading these amazingly rich and complex texts much, much faster than is desirable.

So, most of the time, I've been in "reading-for-comprehension-rather-than-appreciation" mode.  But, when a particular passage has really struck me right between the eyes, I've tried to slow down and take a good look at it.

Sections of several psalms struck me in just such a way. So much so, that I've actually set one of these passages to music (audio and/or video to follow).

It occurs to me that the parts of the Bible that are most meaningful and important to me are often poems, or are at least poetic.  And I think that's true for most other people, too.  Why is this the case?

The answer, at least for me, is that poetry speaks not just to the mind but to the soul.

As Kim Rosen says in her book "Saved by a Poem":

"Indeed, the very indefinability of the word gives us the need for poetry. Poems can speak these ineffables with a kind of mysterious accuracy. 'Poetry is a commitment of the soul,' Gaston Bachelard writes. 'Forces are manifested in poems that do not pass through the circuits of knowledge.'"

What kind of understanding is deeper than knowledge? And why is it that we spend so much time gleaning facts when we read, rather than experiencing this deeper understanding?

I understand the exigencies of a demanding MDiv program, but I also understand the need of the human soul to breathe its way into the deeper understanding that poetry can provide. And now to learn how to balance the two . . .