Language of the Soul

Cloud

When the day of Pentecost had come,

        they were all together in one place.

       And suddenly from heaven there came a sound

       like the rush of a violent wind,

       and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

                    —Acts 2.1-2

How do you find your way in this life?—

with no true destination,

so many urging paths,

a hundred little blue lines,

a thousand competing maps.

The choice is ongoing, and fraught.

Let the map go.

Be a cloud in the wind of God.

Clouds go where the wind takes them,

rising when heated,

falling as rain,

but never resisting.

Their power is in the wind,

and their closeness to it.

          Steve Garnaas-Holmes (www.unfoldinglight.net)

A long time ago I fell in love with poetry. I love words, and reading poetry every day has become a kind of spiritual practice. There are shelves of poetry books in my house, some leather-bound, inherited from grandparents.

Throughout time poetry has been a way for humans to express ideas, emotions, and beliefs. This posting opens with the well-known passage from Acts that we hear every year on Pentecost Sunday. I almost tune out the words of this story, they are so familiar. But when I read a poem, based on this passage, I am transported beyond the story—what would it be like to be “a cloud in the wind of God…rising, falling, never resisting,” willing to risk a new way of living.

Poetry speaks to our hearts rather than our brains. Maybe this is why there has been an increase in writing and reading poetry during the pandemic. A Guardian editorial in January 2021 stated, “Perhaps it is only through poetry, dealing as it does in language compressed, transformed and transfigured, that sense will ever be made of the Covid-19 pandemic – at least internally and emotionally.”

How many of you remember hearing Kitty O’Meara’s poem, written last spring as the world shut down, which begins, “And the people stayed home...” and ends with the words, “And when the danger passed…they created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.” (Scroll down to listen to this poem)

And how many of you watched Amanda Gorman’s riveting performance of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the presidential inauguration earlier this year? In that moment I think she personified prophetic hope:

            “…When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.

          The new dawn blooms as we free it.

           For there is always light,

           if only we’re brave enough to see it,

           if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

In times of crisis I think people need poetry to help express their hope, sadness, longings, laments, even resistance. Theologian Walter Brueggemann states that God needs prophets in order to make God’s self known and what a prophet has to say can never be said in prose. Think of Isaiah…”And they shall mount up with wings as eagles…”

I encourage you to try reading some poetry this summer…or if you already have some collections of poetry on your shelves (maybe from your high school English classes!) start a practice of reading a poem each day. Some of my favourite poets: David Whyte, John O’Donohue, Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye.

The power of poetry moves us to dream new and imagined possibilities.

It is an intentional expression of the heart.

It is the language of the soul.

Amen.