Wilderness Poems

This weekend I able to spend time in the mountains and woods at St Dorothy's Camp in Sonoma County on an Artist's and Writer's retreat. It was an amazing way to go deeper into the season of Lent. As I walked through the redwoods, I thought and prayed about what it means to follow the Spirit into the wilderness and I looked for the way that God speaks through the wild landscapes of trails and mountains and tangled forests. I wanted to share some of the writing (always a continued work in progress) that came from my weekend away.

Wilderness Poems

I.

As this ground cracks herself open

to make way for such insistent sprouts,

does she know what a miracle she is offering?

Does that dark, fertile soil know

she is a womb giving birth to new life

with each cresting moment?

Would such knowledge

make this eternal labor

any more or less

miraculous?

II.

This earth is a body being broken.

She is split and torn

as determined roots

push their way

through her toughened flesh.

She is both fractured and strong.

I come to this wild place

seeking gentleness

But what I find is

sometimes life, like birth,

is a kind of violence.

III.

This earth is God's body.

Her gentle curves willing to endure

both our uglinesses and our brutalities.

I know no other word

for this but love.

Her embrace persists

through my many rebellions.

When I come back to her

barefooted, like a child,

she receives me into her

as though I have at last

come home.

Come To the Edge

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

-Christopher Logue

Fear is a funny thing. Fear takes our delicately virginal-white sheet of untainted paper, and with its giant, devouring, powerful hands it sweeps in and crumples us into a fine tousled mess of confusion, distress, and defeat. That could be the very end of it if we allowed for such a travesty. End of show. Final chapter. Cue the credits. In fact, we could snuggle our way into the warm and comfortably unchallenging confines of a dark and unkempt wastebasket and be perfectly complacent until the end of our days on earth. Besides, one man’s trash is another’s treasure, right? Rotten banana peels and half wet tea bags aren’t the worst we could face in life. It’s not that bad.

But what if we took the opposite approach? What if we embraced our new shape and used it to our advantage? When you think about it, a crumpled piece of paper travels a lot further through space and time than an unaffected white square floating unconsciously throughout its existence.

What if we jumped off the cliff instead? What if we took the risks we never thought we could?

When I allow myself the freedom to create authentically; when I forget the external reflection of my actions and acknowledge the gently nudging positive voices deep inside of me; when I push past the fear and take a step toward the unknown by utilizing my gifts for the benefit and joy of others; and when I make a truthful connection with another human being; then, and only then, do I experience the most conscious and life-altering jolt of the sacred throughout my body and beyond…into the realm of my spirit.

And they came,

and He pushed,

and we flew.

Welcome Home

the creative altar

In her book The Artist's Rule Christine Valters Painter writes, "Discover the sacred in your artist's tools; they are the vessels of the altar of your own unfolding. Look at this cup of holy water, washing clean the brushes. See the blank page, awaiting your blessing. Gaze on the colors before you, each one a name of God: Safron, Cobalt, Azure, Ruby. Let this be your prayer."

This quote about the way God is present through the creative arts seems particularly significant and beautiful in light of the season of Lent. Yesterday, on Ash Wednesday, we were reminded that we are but ashes and dust. For me, this is a reminder of our creative potential, a reminder of the beautiful story of creation when God's artist hand reached into the soil to shape new life. With God, every small thing has the potential for beauty. Every ordinary object and life is an altar for the sacred, a place where God breathes and moves.

I see lent as a journey back to our creative roots. A reminder that with the raw materials of our lives there is the potential for something boldly and wildly colorful to unfold. On this journey where we attempt to follow Jesus into the metaphorical wilderness, I am reminded that no landscape is too desolate for God's creative work. This includes the dull, every-day routines of my own life. Lent invites me to see my life with new eyes: to look for the Artist God hiding in every color, every interaction, every hum-drum moment. And through my own creative work during the next 40 days-- whether that's writing, painting, praying or just engaging in relationships-- I hope to become more entangled with this Artist God so that my life might become a canvas where something new can emerge. For me the space of Lent is the kind of creative altar that Valters Painter describes: a place where the sacred unfolds as we creatively engage with the Divine.

A Dusty God

Since it is Ash Wednesday and all, I have been thinking today about the sacredness of dust and ash. Most Ash Wednesday services have us reflect on our own mortality and transience and receiving ashes on our forehead is meant to be a reminder of this. "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," is a common mantra for this ceremony. Still perhaps feeling the invincibility of young adulthood and, thankfully, not having the aching body to further remind me of my dust-like nature I don't know if the full effect of these words has really hit me. The glorious Spring day that we have been enjoying in the Bay Area today has made it especially difficult to feel solemn and reflective about life. Walking home from church smelling the trees in bloom, feeling the breeze blow through the valleys of Marin, and looking out across the hills it is hard to feel anything but pure joy about the life that I am already experiencing.

It was while making that walk from our home to church this morning that I began to notice the sacredness of my dusty existence. In fact, if given the choice between the dusty outdoors or the well-swept confines of a sanctuary on a day like today I would probably stick with the dust. Perhaps this is over-romanticizing the beautiful parts of the world over the mundane, but I would like to think that the ever-present potential for something wonderful that truly inspires me.

A while ago on Facebook a video was being passed around that shows an artist creating a series of drawings where the artist covers what appears to be an overhead projector with sand and by scraping away the sand in some places, adding some in others creates some really awesome stuff. Here it is if anyone hasn't seen it:



This, of course, demonstrates many things, but today it reminds me of the infinite possibilities that something as mundane as dirt can have. I have often found myself questioning lately the idea of a transcendent God that is somehow above or beyond creation, an idea that would seem to place eternal life and a return to dust in a sharp opposition. Perhaps dust itself is sacred, perhaps returning to it isn't such a bad thing, and perhaps we worship a God who is, in fact, quite dusty. Today I see God being something like that sand painting and the whirlwind of possibilities that it can become. I then find something sacred in imagining myself as related to all of these possibilities as I am related to the dust from which they are formed. In any case, perhaps Lent is a good time to give cleanliness a bit of a break and look for God in the messy.

join the journey

This Lenten blog is a place for us to reflect on the question, "Where do you or have you encountered the sacred in your life?" Your post can then be an artwork, a poem, a song, a video, a story, or anything else that has been meaningful to your spiritual life. Just make sure you share a sentence or two about why whatever it is you share is meaningful to you.

To contribute e-mail Kyle at theokyle@gmail.com or Katie at ktrinter@gmail.com and sign up for a date here.

beginning the journey

Wild Geese

A poem by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.