One of my
resolutions for this new year was to read more poetry. I’ve met with some success. I have been much less successful writing this
blog, but I hope the different pace of summer will afford me more opportunity
to write.
Among other
things, poetry helps me pay closer attention.
It connects me to my soul in unique ways. Much of the language of the Bible is poetic
language.
One poet I
have been reading is not someone new to me, but “an old friend,” Denise
Levertov. If you are unacquainted with
her poetry, I commend it to you. She
writes wonderfully about faith, nature, relationships, politics – in short,
about much of life.
In a poem
from the 1960s, entitled “The Ache of Marriage,” Levertov celebrates marriage
while acknowledging the work it entails.
The poem
begins:
The ache of marriage:
thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it
I so appreciate the sensuality present, the embodiment of
emotion.
The poem
ends:
It is leviathan and we
in its belly
looking for joy, some joy
not to be known outside of it
two by two in the ark of
the ache of it.
I hear joy and work and the desire to embody love in the daily-ness
of life together.
The poem,
though, helped me reflect on something else, the ache of ministry. Earlier this year a member of my congregation
died. He was a relatively young man,
divorced, with three children - 23, 20, and 17.
When it came time to plan his memorial service, I met with the three
children. They were “in charge” of their
father’s service – the ache of ministry.
On the day
of the service, the twenty-year-old, a son came to me. He wanted to wear a tie, but he wasn’t sure
how to tie it. That is something we
typically learn from our fathers, but his father was not there. It isn’t easy to tie a tie while it is on
someone else, so I put it around my neck and tied the knot, loose enough so I
could then put it on this young man. In
that moment, especially, the ache of ministry.
The ache of
ministry – the joy and work of it, the desire to embody love in the daily-ness
of it.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
