Starting points

I can't help it.

I'm postmodern.

It's an inescapable fact of location, as profound and mundane as my roots in the deserts of Arizona, my SoCal sojournings, and my current residence in the semi-urban jungles of North Houston.

I'm postmodern.

It doesn't mean I don't believe in truth. It doesn't even mean that I don't believe in certainty and knowledge. It just means that I live in the year 2012, and the jig is up for modernism.

That's okay. It never was a very good foundation anyway.

But Jesus is the same in every age, and his truth stands above the lies, confusions, and blind spots of every generation.

And I'm so glad for the ancient witness of people like St. Augustine, who can help us understand what it means be earnest truth-seekers and disciples of Jesus... even though we can't be modern.

Neither to the right nor to the left

The slope is slick on either side,
and leaves no feeble hope to hide;
you ever, always must decide,
        or fall.

For hard and narrow is the way,
and on each side the wide wastes lay;
at times the climb is just to stay
        at all.

There is no safety over there;
truth stands exposed in the mountain air,
and always, if you don't take care,
        you fall.

Robert Frost: Not to Keep

"Genuine poetry communicates before it is understood." --T. S. Elliot

Of course, Elliot was talking about the reader's experience over multiple readings, but that idea is actually embedded in the structure of this Frost poem.

First he gives us an experience; only then, and only slowly, does he tell us what he's talking about.

He doesn't just tell us about the bewilderment. He forces us to become bewildered as well. That way, whether or not the rest of our life experience prepares us to empathize with the characters, we can actually share in this one little aspect of their emotions.

We know what it feels like not to understand. Because we have read this poem.


Not to Keep
by Robert Frost

They sent him back to her.  The letter came
Saying. . . . And she could have him.  And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was there,
Living.  They gave him back to her alive--
How else?  They are not known to send the dead.--
And not disfigured visibly.  His face?
His hands?  She had to look, to look and ask,
"What is it, dear?"  And she had given all
And still she had all--they had--they the lucky!
Wasn't she glad now?  Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, "What was it, dear?"
                                                         "Enough,
Yet not enough.  A bullet through and through,
High in the breast.  Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again."  The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How it was with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.

Sarah

You are her daughters,
adorned in lamblike silence.
Let God be the judge.

Not as the gentiles: with you the last is first;

with you no Jew nor Greek, no slave nor free,

and even heaven's angels are accurst

if they would preach salvation differently.

For faith, by hearing, enters like a child,

here where the poor and hungry are the blessed,

delighting in the joys of the reviled;

here honor's in the marks of the oppressed.

So not of soaring visions, but the boards,

splintered and broken from the ruined ship

to which you clung—boast; and of the cords

that bound and lashed, the crowning thorns that rip

your flesh, the sword that wounds your side;

boast in Christ's shame, and in his glory hide.

Christina Rossetti: Windflowers

There is something very courageous about Christina Rossetti's unflinchingly whimsical innocence. Her poetry is wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove, and somehow even when she is not dealing with explicitly sacred subjects, I see the spirit of Christ in her poetic sensibilities. 



Windflowers
by Christina Rossetti


Twist me a crown of wind-flowers;
That I may fly away
To hear the singers at their song,
And players at their play.
Put on your crown of wind-flowers:
But whither would you go?
Beyond the surging of the sea
And the storms that blow.
Alas! your crown of wind-flowers
Can never make you fly:
I twist them in a crown to-day,
And to-night they die. 

Beer Lahai Roi

Understand, dear child, that to be understood
is good, but rare; beware, it could
if you care, lead you wild through the desolate wood,
and there lies the way of despair.

As sunlight grows the glistening green
leaves, and leaves the space between,
be content but to be seen
by the one who sees, and who is, good.