Setting Sail on Whitsunday

Santa Maria

 

Santa Maria went in the water this week. I was down to the marina yesterday to do some work in preparation of raising the mast: a little cleaning, a new light for the mast, pumping out the bilge. There is always something to be done on a boat. Sometimes that something is even sailing this ship.

It is interesting to note that the Latin word for ship – nave – is used for the worship area proper in a church. The church is likened to a boat. The most common reason given is that the ship functions rather like the ark of old: a safe haven while billows rage. Obviously, scribblers of holy writ never sailed with me.

I am a novice sailor and for my few years of sailing, long is the list of things gone wrong. A pair of glasses have gone overboard (along with every sort of tool), our engine has stalled at the most inopportune moments, rocks and shoals have been broached, sheets (ropes for land lovers) have tangled, and once the mast came a-tumbling down. Thankfully no-one has ever been hurt. It was only this last year that my brave wife and I have garnered enough confidence to take passengers on board. So when my legs scissor over the life line and bid land farewell my heart skips a beat: excitement beckons. But it is excitement precisely because an element of risk informs this activity. Sailor knows well the power of water and wind. Ships really do go down.

But even so, there is also a kind of comfort on the Santa Maria. Today I had my first 2013 lunch aboard our boat. I reclined in the cockpit, stretched out my feet, and imbibed my open-face sandwich while watching the long weekend unfold in the marina. I love lounging to the rocking motion of a boat in bay. The sight of cormorants in flight pulls a certain peace from the sky to my eye, to my heart, to my very being. People padding down the docks with ship’s wares – tendering their comforts to vessels of adventure – speak to me of the paradox of life. Just like life, this Santa Maria both animates and pacifies me; it simultaneously satisfies and unsettles me.

Today, “Pentecost Sunday” or “Whitsunday,” is celebrated in churches in the western tradition. This is sometimes called the birthday of the church; the animating and comforting of the church by the Spirit, by the Holy Wind who both drives us beyond comfort zones and soothes our souls. Wild and warm, this Sirocco can be trusted but never second guessed. When we bid land adieu, we broach a new way of being in the world: we sail with a heel, travelling aslant to the perpendicular, wise to the will of the wind, and finding ourselves smiling and glad for the adventure that is life.

Of Poetry and Echoes

“ECHO!”

Do you recall the first time you called out that word, eagerly anticipating hearing your voice’s return? Maybe it was at summer camp, or while hiking with friends, or visiting a cottage by a lake. There is something magical about an echo. There is something arresting in hearing my own voice’s arrival, not from within, but from afar. In that first moment, when I encounter me outside of myself, I am ecstatic – I stand (from stasis “to stand”) outside (from ek “outside of”) myself.

Echoes are magical, not only because they are a low tech – and so a more satisfying – form of replication, but because an echo is a replication with a difference. My voice returns to me having been shaped by hills that soften, by cliffs that sharpen, by the lake that lilts my voice with sound waves that wash back to cochlear shores. Echoes introduce me to me with a difference. Unlike parrots, who mock me with their parody, and unlike an mp3 which freezes me with its cryogenic clarity; echoes inform me. They allow me the opportunity to meet myself anew.

Poems are echoes. Poetry echoes me by allowing me to hear my voice with a difference. Words wind their way through my body when I write a poem, when I hear a poet. The world comes to me in a different key when I hear this, for example. Poetry is language’s echo. It takes speech and twists it. Poetry rebounds words off the world. Poetry allows me to see from the perspective of a tree. It allows me to feel with a street’s point of view. Poetry takes the familiar and drops it off a cliff, so it bounces back to me shattered and true. I am left asunder in the wonder that words do what I cannot imagine. I cry out, and words echo back to me strangely familiar: strange in their refracted nature and familiar in their refusal to remain strange. Claiming me poetry names a new world for me. Echoes become me because I am beholden to the fact that even my words come back to me differently than I imagined they would.

Word makes its way as it leaves home;
It sounds the world as flesh and bone.
Word works love’s sway, it echoes true;
It marvels me with coloured hues.

Splayed Across the Land

Poems:
splayed across the land
products of promiscuous thought
wild oats, they will not be tamed – nor
ordered into domestic
corrals – no they are
feral,
never to be herded, only
over-heard.

Too close and they bolt, these
poems not planted:
invading our guarded gardens
not pretty
not edible
unclaimed
some maim
serenity and sour wine.

Poems under beds
slipping into heads
surreptitiously –
so many poems, daring to
be read
under flower beds
but never flowery
these poems.

Greening now

Greening now the tree queries me
“How will you be on earth? As you are in heaven?
Rooted in the mystery
you are
not far
from surfacing, from breaking through to freedom.”

My maple mentor
reminds me that we
are rooted
in fecundity.

We share this – even while
she coaxes me to be where I am
despite
these roving roots that skip me, spin me, ski me, kneel me
across earth’s girth.

I slip across the land while my sister keeps watch,
firm on terra firma,
she teaches me to be where I am
even while my
where whirls on
in its way.

Sing me to the Moon

Friday night my wife took me to a Kellylee Evans concert. Kellylee is an emerging artist who gives a jazz twist to a variety of musical genres. I really can’t describe what happened, but I’ll give it a shot.

Energy poured into “The Studio” in the form of a diminutive dame shorn of shoes. She sang with a voice serenely smooth yet strong; soft and strong, her voice invited me in. I crossed the threshold and the door closed behind me. Slowly a table was set. She took music that I might not otherwise imbibe – hip-hop, rap, various genres of music, along with jazz standards – and wound them round her voice, which is as peculiar and precious as scotch – neat with enough peat to pull disparate sounds into a sensual singularity.

She sang, she danced, she transformed a wooden audience into a waving, singing, swinging body. We drank from the same well and became one, if only for this moment of magical escape. But no, that isn’t quite the right word: it wasn’t so much a magical escape as a momentous immersion in the power of music. Here we discovered the joy of being in the presence of Song, in this instance we glimpsed another way of being in the world – a way of joy.

At one moment in the concert Kellylee said: “Thanks for coming out tonight and supporting live music.” Not “me,” not “the band,” not a thousand things you might otherwise imagine. No, she honoured “live music.” It made me wonder how often people encounter music in the flesh. Is our addiction to technology the kiss of death for musicians, for music? Who knows? It seems as if some folk are permanently plugged in – constantly under musical siege. But something different happens at a concert. There is a power in the presence of the songstress and her fellows as they call us to cast aside our control if only for a moment – for a pure moment as they chase the muse where she leads. Something happens in this loss of control, in this gathering around song, in this seeing a new of being in the world – swaying our way into abandoning ourselves to joy. She starred our Friday night.

As I went for a walk Saturday night, I thought of Friday. Kellylee Evans made our night shine. She sang me to the moon, where I could see constellations from a new vantage point. I drank deeply from her vocal well and was wondrously quenched with a new kind of thirst: a wanting more of this wonder at beauty, goodness, and truth, if not Truth.

Don’t “Like” this Post without Reading It, Please

The other day I noted a new follower of my Twitter account. I’m not the most popular guy in T-world and so tend to scope out followers on those rare occasions when someone signs on. I was interested to find a little URL associated with my new friend and so thought I should see where it led me. Imagine my surprise to discover that at this very site I could get more followers overnight! And to think I thought I needed to write clever, or funny, or inspirational, or thought provoking Twitter tomes to coax folk to follow where I lead. It turns out all I need to do is fork out $20 (on sale!).

This rather reminds me of my otherwise wondrous experiences with blogging. Sometimes, I’ll post a blog, and within minutes will have some “likes.” “Cool,” I’ll think, “I should check out where my fans are from.” I then go to the handy-dandy tool for scouting out those scouting you out, and discover that no-one has visited my blog. They “liked” it from their blog reader, which means they (might have) read the first 50 words or so. I have since discovered that they don’t “like” my blog so much as they would “like” it if I “liked” theirs by returning the favour. All of this got me thinking (this doesn’t always end well).

Do I write for myself, for readers, or for the subject matter?

Maybe I can do all three. Probably I do. OK, I do. But it seems that one or the other takes priority. If my first priority in writing is myself (perhaps to boost my ego), then writing moves in one direction. If I write for readers (perhaps to boost sales), then writing moves in another direction. But if I write out of passion, or even vocation – because not writing seems to be a betrayal of deep longings or persistent proddings – then yet another realization emerges: the subject matter matters. It isn’t that the subject matter trumps writer or reader, but it makes a space for us to gather together. In other words, I want readers who don’t only like what I write, but read what I write because what I write about (writing in this specific post) is more important than my popularity or the reader’s enjoyment, inspiration, etc.

I suppose I have a certain luxury in not needing to make my buck with my luck at likes. Maybe I’m a romantic. Maybe that’s not so bad. At any rate, I am so happy for all who have made it this far in this rambling rant, and am quite content to find a small community of interested writers and readers to share in this journey that doesn’t end in with the full stop.

Black and White, and Colour too

Last Friday evening my wife and I attended the annual Gala celebrating Waterloo Lutheran Seminary’s graduates. The class this year was nearly 30 in number; young and not so young women and men who will make their mark in the world as counselors, chaplains, educators and pastors. It is always a proud and bitter sweet moment for us. Our students are the diamonds in the rough of the academy; they make our jobs worth the while even while they sometimes complicate our carefully crafted theologies and challenge our scholarly sense of self importance with the demands of teaching people rather than topics. We take this time to bid them well and adieu. Alongside this celebration, we also fêted Robert A. Kelly, our church historian who is retiring after 28 years at our school. Bob has been something of a institution in our institution. Students all have favourite Dr. Bob memories: his witticisms, his passion for the Gospel, his endless patience for students, and his utter lack of patience for entitlement and self-importance. Bob has been a compass in our community and we will miss him terribly.

Many colleagues and students stood up to recall fond, funny and formative memories of their interactions with Bob. As I listened to them, it struck me that this moment was one of those rare times in a life when you see something of the whole of someone. Random recollections from a broad selection of interactions gave me a richer picture of Bob. As I sit, now, and think about this it was rather as if I had been looking at a black and white picture that, for a moment, became multihued: or perhaps the reverse was the case, since both black and white and colour, too, have a peculiar beauty related to their different utilities. In my mind, black and white brings certain things into relief even while seeming to instill in us a sense of the ambiguous, mystical quality of life. Colour, by contrast, seems to celebrate not only diversity but also the utter incongruity of existence: how can it be that we are, rather than are not? Of course, both black and white and colour are good, true, and beautiful. We need to celebrate both the mystery of a person as well as their flesh and blood concreteness. We need to see both; to embrace both.

Friday was an important day for many reasons. It reminded us that we are a people composed of those who gather together. Next fall, when Bob is a visitor to our school, we will be a different folk. Our face changes as faces change; and this is both celebrated and mourned. This is both black and white and colour; both mystery and facticity – all nourished by memory. On Friday we remembered Bob and the students who leave with him this year; they are not gone, but they are differently present. Friday gave us opportunity to see who we were even while we anticipate who we will be. It was a moment to delve deeper into our identity; to remember that identity is slippery business, but a blessed business because we are remembered by God as well as we are remembered by one another. God knows us inside out because God sees us in black and white, and colour too.