Spring apologetics

My apologies for posting so rarely lately.  Seems like life has been crazy, which I guess is always the case.  I also find myself deeply reluctant lately to comment on current events in this forum.  There are plenty of things to comment on, mind you -- I just don't feel led to plunge into the arguments.  My sense is that Romans 1 is being lived out in our culture, and I'm not talking simply about the issues around same-sex marriage (for you Minnesotans).  Rather, I think as the culture around us is divesting itself more and more of any kind of biblical worldview, we see God simply turning loose and saying, "You want to go your own way?  Okay, I'll let you."  Those who hold to a biblical worldview find ourselves more and more pushed to the margins.

While there remains a need for apologetics, I think the task of apologetics has changed.  Instead of arguing with and trying to prove the culture wrong, I think the task for Jesus-followers today is to live out the alternative in a way that demonstrates to the world that Jesus is real.  So we are to be engaged with culture not on the level of argument and protest, but on the level of compassion and initiative.  This will be the only legitimate defense when we are accused of being "haters."

I had an interesting conversation about a year ago with a woman who had come a few times to Central for our food distribution program.  She had been told that our church was hateful and exclusive because of our biblical beliefs about marriage.  Amazingly enough, instead of believing it and avoiding us she decided to come and check us out.  In our conversation she first asked about our stance on marriage and I explained briefly.  Then she told me what she'd heard out in the community about Central, and how she had come to see for herself.  "What I found," she said, "is that you guys are doing more for the community than any other church I know.  You're sending out mission groups all over the world and you're giving away food and caring for the poor here.  This church is not hateful at all."

That, I think, is the kind of apologetic that will make a difference from here on out.

Something different

For many years I have loved and hated poetry.  I have a few favorite poets that have crafted words into my soul -- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Wendell Berry, and a few others.  There are also some occasional works of Tennyson, Blake, and the like that I return to again and again, and a few lesser known poets I enjoy reading.

I also used to write a bit of poetry myself, most often as a way to express something that I couldn't deal with in prose.  The following is a bit complex and most often when people read it they just smile and nod and give me a blank look.

So maybe it helps to explain it before you read it.  (Or maybe it should just moulder in the depths of my files and not trouble you?)

"Inscape" is a term that has been used to describe Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry.  The idea is that by describing an external landscape, the poet is really describing the interior of his own soul.  So what is described in the poem as a geographical reality is actually an internal, spiritual reality.  So that's the first word of the title.

"The Prodigal Turns" is the moment I'm trying to capture here, recognizing (as becomes clear through the poem) that I am the prodigal.  I am trying in this poem to say something about the moment of repentance, the transition from self-absorbed sinner to repentant, Jesus-focused sinner.

So the first movement starts in late summer, watching the line of brown move down the mountainside.  The self-absorbed idealist (me) lives in a land of self-indulgent dreams.  Reality forces the dreamer to acknowledge that these dreams will not -- and should not -- be actualized.

Autumn, the second movement, has the speaker beginning to deal with the grotesque and violent nature of his own sin.  The self-absorbed person simply feeds off the life of others, consuming without reckoning the cost.  There's an obvious allusion to Matthew 6 and the trust in which we're called to live; but the cat -- an external reflection of the speaker -- is still caught in that violent, consumer pattern of self-indulgence.

Winter, the third movement, is the one that calls me back to this poem most often.  This movement has had three different titles since I wrote the poem.  "Holiness" makes obvious what I have tried to capture here, and the entire movement is a statement about the nature of sin.  God's grandeur is so far beyond what I can take in.  By shutting myself against God's glory, I am left facing my own inability to accept it, my own corrupted nature.  My closed eyes do not impede God's glory, they simply separate me from him.

Spring is the moment we most often call repentance, but it is the result of the first three movements.  The flood waters bring death, of course, as in the story of Noah and as in baptism.  We too often leap directly to new life, but death has to come first or there is no room for new life to grow.  There is an innocence, a powerlessness, in the muddy flats left behind when a swollen river recedes.  Yet floodplains are often the most fertile soils available.

So here it is, for what it's worth.

Inscape: The Prodigal Turns

Prologue: Narcissism

            In a far country, dreams grow like ivy up the sides of the valley;

            all they touch is trimmed in gaudy green

            with streaks of brilliant red.

            The earth turns.  Emerald leaves wither and die.

            An avalanche of brown precedes the snowline

            as it falls from the hilltops.

Autumn: Hubris

            A cat, death brooding in its eyes, stalked a sparrow.

            The bird neither sowed nor reaped, nor took measures

            for its own defense.

            Cats may levitate if need be, rising slowly

            above brown earth for a mouthful of bloody down;

            mine did.  I mourned silently for the bird, but cried out

            in awe of the spectacle: Life from death.

            My cat only chewed hollow bones

            and left a scarlet-black stain on the earth.

Winter: Holiness

            Hell is bright days in winter

            when the sun has no power to warm.

            I cannot open my eyes, partly for the cold

            and partly for the light jabbing icicles

            through my eyelids.  Ice-crystal rainbows

            obscure frost-rimmed trees ringing like bells

            in the breeze, or cracking like a firing squad at sunrise.

            Too grand for me, this miracle-laden landscape

            must remain external, and behind my eyelids

            I stand face to face with my pettiness.

Spring: Surrender

            Aggressive freshets of meltwater steer

            downhill; they seek a river.  Before reaching its banks

            they are a flood to give even Noah pause.

            Death swims these raging waters.

            As days go by, the deluge recedes;

            I see muddy fields, barren and fertile as my own soul,

            awaiting the sower.