Living Poems

Did you know YOU are a poem? Check out Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek ‘poema’ is usually translated ‘workmanship’. I like ‘poema’ better, as it implies beauty and artistry, but ‘workmanship’ is nice.

I’ve discussed the importance of poetry, poetic education, poetic imagination and poetic reading in many different venues (many of the talk topics you see here relate to this theme). I’ve also used my own poems as lenses through which to view aspects of the spiritual life.

For several years, I hosted a Living Poem Society get-together during which we poets shared our current works and discussed the motivation, layers of meaning, word choices and life experiences that helped form each poem.

I hope to re-animate that group one of these days, but, until then, I’m working on a small volume of my poetry, for which I’ll include notes about that sort of background material that can help readers understand each poem more deeply. The title for that work-in-progress is A Destiny to Burn. Here’s the story behind that:

Artist Rose Shopen Klassen gave me an intricately carved candle and, when I said I’d never light it (because it was so beautiful), she told me “A candle has a destiny to burn that will not be fulfilled unless you light it.” That phrase became a poem of mine (Destiny to Burn), and I still love to say it over and over, it so resonated with me!

If an artist has to learn anything, it is how to be utterly spent on the doing of one’s work. Granted the skill to do it, there is still the mountain to climb of learning to pour out the self into works of art, most of which will be given away freely. This candle (I did and do light it, briefly…still hard to let it disappear completely!) reminds me to let myself be burned away in the living of my life, in order that Christ might somehow shine through all that is me, all that I do, whatever I create.

Here’s a collection of my talks that feature poetry, poems, or poetic formation.