“When The Full-grown Poet Came,” ~A Poem By Walt Whitman

When the full-grown poet came,

Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;

But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone;

-Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand;

And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,

Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,

And wholly and joyously blends them.

“O Living Always, Always Dying,” ~A Poem By Walt Whitman

O living always, always dying!

O the burials of me past and present,

O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;

O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)

O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them,

To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.

“Dead Wren” ~ A Poem By Henri Cole

When I open your little gothic wings
on my whitewashed chest of drawers
I almost fear you, as if today were my funeral.
Moment by moment, enzymes digest
your life into a kind of coffin liqueur.
Two flies, like coroners, investigate your feathers.
My clock is your obelisk, though only this morning
you lunged into my room, extravagant as Nero,
then, not seeing yourself in the sunlit glass,
struck it. Night – what beams does it clear away?
The rain falls. The sky is pained. All that breathes suffers.
Yet the waters of affliction are purifying.
The wounded soldier heals. There is new wine and oil.
Here, take my handkerchief as your hearse.

Music Review: Heather Williams

I happened upon the music of independent musician Heather Williams purely by accident, but, I was hooked instantly. The three songs available on itunes stream on her myspace page where I first heard them. After hearing her unmistakably sincere voice the question of why she doesn’t have more of a promoted presence in the music world immediately surfaced. If you give her music a listen I’m sure you’ll be asking yourself the same question.

“Hallelujah” as featured here is actually two songs spliced together. The namesake of the track is a confessional and celebratory song that starts small, but, builds in presence until crossing a dramatic musical threshold toward the end. Lyrically it begins with recognition of humanness and our need for grace. But, the ultimate message is that, despite fact that we struggle and fumble through our daily existence making mistake after selfish mistake everyday, God’s unconditional love for us still calls. The second part of the track is an a cappella rendition of the, “His Eye Is On The Sparrow.” Williams handles the classic hymn beautifully.

“Holes” is a piano-driven track that exhibits the pop sensibility of Williams while also showcasing her soulful voice. Like the lyrics in “Hallelujah,” “Holes” communicates the experience of someone who has humbly realized her human limitations and, as a result, opened herself to the hope of something much bigger.

“Beautiful Thing” is the track that hit me immediately as an infectious, gutsy, whimsical pop groove. Its terribly catchy and one can’t help, but, to nod, wiggle, toe-tap, or all-out dance while its playing. Its another track that displays the soul in the voice of Heather Williams, but, does so with a power and groove that is distinct in comparison with the mellower ambiance of “Holes,” and “Hallelujah.” “Beautiful Thing” seems like the kind of song that should be on the radio and, in airplay on pop-format radio stations, would stand head and shoulders above most of the vanilla, formulaic music that currently dominates radio playlists.

The threads that are woven through each of the Heather Williams songs featured on itunes are her sincere voice, a consistent message of grace and hope amidst the reality of daily life, and soulfulness that makes her music unique and extremely palatable to the ears. I strongly suggest, that for the price of a tall latte, these three songs by Heather Williams are well worth the price.

“I’ll Bet A Fiddle Of Gold Against Your Soul”

I recently read an old magazine column written by the late singer/songwriter Rich Mullins that used a fiddle as a metaphor for a man. He made the point that a fiddle is nothing more than an assemblage of materials with no power of its own to do anything but collect dust. He described the fact that a fiddle is hallow and the idea that, if a fiddle did have feelings, it would feel empty sitting in its case with nothing but stale air residing inside its wood enclosure.

On the other hand, when it is played by a skilled fiddler, a fiddle becomes a magical instrument that, on its own and without any other accompaniment, can be a source of music loud enough, melodic enough, and rhythmic enough to bring people to their feet and cause them to dance!

It is gray Sunday afternoons like this that my hope catches its breath with the thought that, though, I am like an empty, nondescript farmhouse, I still may someday be used by the Master Fiddler if He so desires.

Suggested Reading: The World As I Remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin by Rich Mullins

Christians Should Shut Up

This evening I did something that I haven’t done nearly enough lately. I cracked open my bible, prayed for guidance, and read. My bookmark was resting in the book of Luke. I like to stay focused on the gospels when I read the bible because when I start looking past the life of Jesus I lose focus on the One who is the basis of this whole thing called Christianity. For that matter, I think the majority of people who call themselves Christians have this problem, too, whether they realize it or not. But, that is another issue for another day.
I didn’t even read that much this evening, but, one point struck me as I read through the latter half of the fourth chapter in Luke: the healing compassion of Jesus prefaced His need to reveal his identity as the Son of God. His acts of Love were performed without requiring anything before or after in return.
In the first instance in verses thirty-three through thirty-five Jesus drove demons out of a possessed man. The scripture states that the evil spirits in the man recognized Jesus and tried to speak out against Him, and subsequently reveal His identity, but, Jesus said to them, “Be Quiet!”
Verses thirty-eight and thirty-nine describe the instance in which Jesus was asked by Simon to heal his mother who was suffering from a fever. The scripture doesn’t say that He laid out conditions for Peter or any others present, but, just that, “He bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.”
The fortieth verse states that, “people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one,’ he healed them. Then in verse forty-one when scripture describes demons coming out of people Jesus healed declaring, “You are the Son of God,” Jesus rebukes the spirits and doesn’t allow them to speak, “because they knew He was the Christ.”
One would think that performing miracles such as these and then requiring sacrifice and repentance in return would at least be reasonable from the perspective of Jesus in this situation, so, why didn’t He use these instances more directly to His advantage?
I could probably search through a few online bible commentary’s and find some alternative interpretations to explain why Jesus performed these acts and then intentionally suppressed the revelation of His identity as the Son of God. But, I think that there is a valuable lesson to be learned by modern Christians from this account of some of the first miracles of Jesus and that is that there is, indeed, value in acting like Christ before one preaches Christ in words and that loving and humbly serving the needs of others before we throw bible verses at them should be a top-level priority in our daily lives.
We live in a world now where ideas are easily communicated over digital networks, but, where, as the pace of society continues to quicken, our personal relationships with others are often compromised in favor of our often self-serving daily goals, desires, and to-do lists. Stopping and considering the needs and hearts of others just doesn’t fit conveniently in the flow of daily life in America in 2009.
My confidence in this interpretation of these particular verses is grounded in the spirit of the entire ministry of Jesus while He was on earth from His directive to love others as we love ourselves to the initiative that He took to clean the feet of His disciples, and His willingness to sacrifice His life just to be able to give us undeserved forgiveness.
When I look at my own life in comparison to this lesson its easy for me to recognize that I have a long way to go before I could ever even entertain the thought that I am living these words out in my own life. But, every journey has a starting point.

Cheating At Christmas

Misdirected emphasis on items that come home in a shopping bag
Lights stranded in the cold on a green plastic-encased wire
They don’t make it any easier to see to touch, to feel, and to believe what is true
The scent of nostalgia brought on by familiar songs and tales
Feelings of pseudo-community brought on by germinating seeds of anticipation
That are discreetly, indeed cleverly, rooted in selfishness
We’ve traded in a willingness to accept steadfast grace
In favor of an annual date with comfortable and fleeting greed