Poem .. part 2

After I blogged yesterday about the class approach to a poem I sought out Robin Skelton’s “The Practice of Poetry”. I did a quick read in a couple of sections. I’m even more convinced that we should approach a poem “open”. By that I mean that we should not approach it with an already formed process for discussing it, e.g., our class approach was to consider it through the overlapping lenses of sociology and ministry. I believe we should listen to what the poem wishes to whisper to us. It may wish to say what we have not come prepared to both search for and find by imposition of pre-formed analysis. We may be looking for something particular; the poem may not wish to comment and lead us that way. It is just that the poem used on Thursday evening last seemed to me, and I know anthropomorphic again, cry out that it was being hurt by our somewhat forced analysis. Perhaps we need an introduction to approaching and reading a poem?

Pain from a Poem

Last evening at class we were given at the outset, as has happened on other occasions, a poem to read, discuss but mostly analyze using the twin overlapping lens of sociology/ministry. As has become our habit the class found many examples. However, sort of unlike me, I felt reticent and unable to participate. it seemed to me, anthropomorphically speaking, that the poem was 'pained' by that analysis. it was a poem about the strange fragility of love. Love between a man and a woman that moves into their latter years and is glimpsed, just briefly. A true love. A love unspoken. A love often missed by gestures and the absence of gestures. A love not always sure of itself, but love nevertheless. A love that is what love so much is .. mysterious. I felt the poem as a sharp nick in my own heart. On this occasion I just felt that our analytical tools were not the sensitive handling that the poem invited.

Lest we remember

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
Build ourselves a monument
Sanctify the war
Number our heroes
The dead we'll ignore
Nobody remembers
What the young ones died for

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we remember
The pain of it all

And over and over
We'll tell it again
The story of bravery
Of dashing young men
The reasons we'll argue
The blame we will lay
Till truth as we tell it
Is history one day

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we remember
The pain of it all

Lest we remember
Lest we recall
In case we find reason
For just one more war

Song by Andrew Dutney, circa 1981, from the album "I've Got Eyes".

only the truth is revolutionary

only the truth is revolutionary, a photo by jonnybaker on Flickr.

Friendship

It is the role he claims for the church, though, that makes this book so
worthwhile. Summers presents the possibility of a hospitable church as
a means of healing a wounded society through friendship which offers a
profoundly counter-cultural opportunity as a social good. He examines
hospitality by engaging with Derrida as a conversation partner, liking
Derrida’s openness and refusal to reach resolution, which Summers
believes to accord with the open Kingdom of God which is never to be
apprehended, and which is found in the dynamic of Eucharistic table
fellowship, in which the God who welcomes all, shares and is shared
(p. 178).
SUMMERS, Steve. Friendship: Exploring its Implications for the Church in
Postmodernity. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2009. 211pp. Hbk.
ISBN: 978-0567490643. £65.00.

Twitter

OK I'm trying to find out how to use "Twitter". I've got a link on my blog. I've placed both blog and 'Twitter' on my emails as part of my signature. This is new for me but I'm being encouraged to try. So hesitatingly, off I go.

Jesus as Prophet

Jonny Baker in his blog has the following ..
Walter Brueggemann's Prohetic Imagination has two chapters on Jesus as a prophet. Here are two excerpts.

It is the crucifixion of Jesus that is the decisive criticism of the royal consciousness. The crucifixion of Jesus is not to be understood simply in liberal fashion as the sacrifice of a noble man. Nor should we too quickly assign a cultic, priestly theory of atonement to the event. Rather we might see in the crucifixion of Jesus the ultimate act of prophetic criticism in which Jesus announces the end of a world of death (the same announcement of that of Jeremiah) and takes that death into his own person. Therefore we say that the ultimate criticism is that God himself embraces the death that his people must die. The criticism consists not in standing over against but in standing with; the ultimate criticism is not one of triumphant indignation but one of the passion and compassion that completely and irresistibly undermine the world of competence and competition. The contrast is stark and total: this passionate man set in the midst of numbed Jerusalem. And only the passion can finally penetrate the numbness...

...The cross is the ultimate metaphor of prophetic criticism because it means the end of the old consciousness that brings death on everyone. The crucifixion articulates God's odd freedom, his strange justice and his peculiar power. It is this freedom (read religion of God's freedom), justice (read economics of sharing) and power (read politics of justice) which break the power of the old age and bring it to death. Without the cross, prophetic imagination will likely be as strident and destructive as that which it criticises. The cross is the assurance that effective prophetic criticism is done not by an outsider but always by one who must embrace grief, enter into the death, and know the pain of the criticised one.

The language that they are using

The fact that popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them. Tom Beaudoin

Happy Easter & especially for Lent

Who manages the Easter season now?