Like a wild animal,
the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows
how to survive in hard places…. Yet
despite its toughness, the soul is also shy.
Parker
Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, 58
I just
returned from the third and final of a series of “Soul Leaders” retreats. These retreats were intended to provide space
for the exploration of our souls as ordained or licensed leaders within the United
Methodist Church in Minnesota. We used
poetry, music and art in circles of trust to welcome our shy souls, in methods
based-in and inspired by Parker Palmer.
For some,
poetry is, at best, a tolerable method for exploring the soul. For me, the opportunity to use poetry to
explore my hopes, dreams, fears, longings and relationship to God is a
delight. I rarely leave a book of poems
without having had my soul enlarged a bit.
One of the
delights of this Soul Leaders experience for me was that prior to each retreat
some poetry was working on me already. I
brought with me some poetry that had been finding its way into my life in the days
and weeks just prior to each retreat.
In the
winter, there were these lines from Rilke that I took with me:
How we squander our
hours of pain,
How we gaze beyond
them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an
end. Though they are really
seasons of us, our
winter-
enduring foliage,
ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,
where birds and
reed-dwelling creatures are at home.
(an
early version of the Tenth Duino Elegy, tr. Stephen Mitchell)
When we met
in September, it was not long after Seamus Heaney died, and I was re-reading
some of his work, and when I do that I often find something I had previously
overlooked. This time it was his poem “The
Rain Stick” (The Spirit Level). The
lines that held me, in particular were these:
You are like a rich
man entering heaven
Through the ear of a
raindrop. Listen now again.
At that retreat we did a lot of drumming
This week,
I carried with me Wallace Stevens. I
first encountered Stevens’ poetry while working on my doctoral
dissertation. My dissertation had nothing
to do with poetry, but exercising late at night, I watched the PBS Voices and Visions series on
poetry. Wallace Stevens was one of the poets
featured. Stevens poetry can be
challenging, but I find him worth the struggle.
Both his poems and his reflection on poetry are meaningful.
I don’t
know what drew me back to Stevens last week, just before the retreat, but
something did. Here are a couple of his reflections
on poetry:
It is life that we are
trying to get at in poetry. Opus
Posthumous, 185
One reads poetry with
one’s nerves. Opus Posthumous,
189
Things that have their
origin in the imagination or in the emotions (poems) very often have meanings
that differ in nature from the meanings of things that have their origin in
reason. They have imaginative or
emotional meanings…. In short, things
that have their origin in the imagination or in the emotions very often take on
a form that is ambiguous or uncertain.
It is not possible to attach a single, rational meaning to such things
without destroying the imaginative or emotional ambiguity or uncertainty that
is inherent in them.
Opus Posthumous, 249
This latter helps me understand not only the potential richness
of poetry, but also the potential richness of Scriptures which are often
poetic.
The Stevens
poem that has been sticking with me most the past few days is a late poem, “July
Mountain” (Opus Posthumous, 140).
It contains these lines that have been particularly moving within me:
We live in a
constellation
Of patches and of
pitches
Thinkers without final
thoughts
In an always incipient
cosmos
The sense of openness and adventure and creativity in these
lines captures something important to me, to my soul, to my relationship with
God.
I am
grateful for the poetry which opens my soul.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
