Poetry: Friend or Foe?
Although I love poetry, I know that not everyone has the same taste for it. I taught high school English for three years so I know this through experience! However, I love puzzling out the meaning from the metaphors. I love the rhythm and the alliterations. But most of all, poetry requires my full attention and gives me a gift. I see things in new ways. I am delighted by imagination.
Poems have been a part of my spiritual direction journey. About fifteen years ago, I took a weeklong spiritual retreat at a Catholic Retreat Center in Palm Beach FL. I was beginning to feel the effects of burnout after 20 years of ministry and needed time to rest and reflect. I met daily with Sister Marion who also loved poetry and introduced me to the Carmelite nun poet Jessica Powers. I met with her for an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. She would give me scripture passages, poems and audio messages on which to reflect.
One of the poems she gave me was “The Garments of God.”
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
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Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
It caught my attention that his robes were not the beautiful fabric of velvet or silk which I might expect of a Sovereign. I identified with the child in the dark clutching and clinging to his garments. It was a time in my life when God was pointing out to me my dependency on myself. I had always been able to figure things out, to create, to achieve, to endure. However, coming to the end of myself was the beginning of leaning into His strength, His wisdom, His way of being. That child in the dark was being asked to walk into the light as an adult.
Is poetry your friend or your foe? Consider befriending this creative expression to make new discoveries about yourself and your relationship with God.
