The Great Devotional Poetry Project

You know that thing called New Year’s Resolutions? I normally don’t make them, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. However, back in December I had an idea for something like a resolution. I’d written a few poems based closely on scripture over the years,* and I always really enjoy those poems when I’m done with them. I have scripture references or quotes in most of my poems, so I’m not talking about that, exactly. I’m talking about something rooted a bit more deeply in the text over the course of the whole poem, as in my Isaiah 65 poem. 

Isaiah 65 Poem

I really like the book of Isaiah, and certain chapters in particular. One of those chapters is number 65. Some of the word pictures are very striking, like those first few verses: "I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am,' to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people," (v 1-2a).* The descriptive language in this whole chapter is very effective in creating a sort of cinematic presentation of the broken relationship between God and his people, followed by its eventual repair.

There are also some wonderful repetitions. In verse 12 for example, God, speaking of his rebellious people, says: "when I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not listen." This is juxtaposed beautifully (and doubly)** in the promise of the new heavens and new earth, as God says: "Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear" (v 24).

I encourage you to read Isaiah 65 for yourself; there's so much more to it than what I've briefly mentioned here. I like it so much, it inspired a poem:

My First Bible

There are lots of children’s Bibles out there. Some of them are basically large picture books of key Bible stories. Others are more complete, but in kid-friendly language. Then there are plain old ordinary Bibles, with some illustrations. I had the latter.

Long before I could read, I had my illustrated King James Bible. My brothers each had one, too, but theirs had built-in zippers to keep the book closed when not in use. I was very jealous. I still don’t know why theirs had zippers and mine didn’t. Maybe there were only two of the zippered Bibles at the store when my parents bought them. Maybe I was too little to use a zipper. No matter. I eventually decided mine was better because it was easier to flip the pages without that extra cloth in the way.

How I Work

On one of the back burners of my brain, I've been thinking about how I work, by which I mean, the conditions I like to work in.  It all started when I read a Meme on Facebook (can you believe it?), and I started noticing little preferences I had about my workspace.  When I sat down to scribble (read: type) out a thought about this phenomenon, it quickly spiraled downhill into a blog post:

Where do I write?  Theoretically, I can write anywhere, especially here in the computer age.  And I have.  I’ve written at home, in various parts of my home.  At work (only a couple times, when it was slow).  In my high school math class (when I was finished with my work – see?  I’m a good kid – really!).  During breaks at a briefing.  On my computer, my laptop, my netbook.  In a restaurant.  At Starbucks, naturally.  At Barnes and Noble.  On a walk.  On the subway.  In the car (once #hazardous, #don’ttrythisathome #SoRidiculousI’veResortedToUsingHashtags).  On the train in Germany.  At my various residences prior to the current one.  In the park.  In the yard.  In hotel rooms.  Etc.

Still, when it comes to serious, intentional, prolonged writing, a good, specified work space is a beautiful thing.  In the past, this was B&N or Starbucks, because I didn’t have a good space at home, but one can’t go to these places and purchase food and hot chocolate and Nantucket Nectars every day.  One would go broke.  Thankfully, I now own a lovely house with some architectural character, and I turned the dining room into my studio.  I have surrounded myself with beautiful things – my paintings from Afghanistan and Jordan and various other travels.  A nice display case with the artsier souvenirs from my own travels and those of family members.  And of course, my writing desk.  It’s gorgeous, and I refuse to put a computer on it – the entire surface is available to me to sprawl my notebooks, notecards, papers, pens, pencils, highlighters, books, awesome owl bookends for my most treasured art-and-God books, and my elbows; underneath is also clear, for unrestricted leg room no matter what angle I’m sitting at.  It’s wonderful.  It tends to get cluttered.

Clutter is fine.  It can be remarkably satisfying to survey a nice, productivity-caused clutter.  But leave it that way, and I find myself avoiding the desk.  So, a lesson I have learned about myself: I need a clean, organized surface to start work.  If I’m to sit down at the dining room table (where I find myself doing all of my poetry editing), the entire table must be clean and cleared of any non-poetry related stuff.  To sit and compose correspondence or write something new, my studio writing desk must be neat and tidy.  Right angles and all that, with sufficient space for my notebook and elbow-room.  Although I enjoy organization in it's place, I’m not at all a neat-freak, so I find this very interesting.

And what about time of day?  I am my most creative from the evening to the middle of the night, but that could be as much a product of my work schedule as it is of my life-long night owl tendencies.  At any rate, a nice creative prompt can help alleviate this tendency; can pull the opening hours of reflection closer to mid-afternoon.

Reading is the best prompt, because just about any genre can get the creative juices flowing, as long as it’s not on a computer.  Computers are distracting and screens are unimaginative.  Hard-copy books are portals.  Some movies or other multi-media can be very inspiring, as well, but most are just brain-suckers - great for relaxing, not inspiration.  Music can be very helpful, depending on the style, content and volume.  And listening to a good sermon, for example, can give lovely insights that may be applicable to what I’m writing, or just get the brain ticking, which is always good.  Reading the Bible does much the same, besides also having an unmatched ability to restore the mind and soul, among its other qualities.  And prayer.  Prayer is one of those things that seems intangible until you get a direct answer.  I find it very helpful to pray about my writing – I may not pen something five minutes after praying, but it always makes me open, which leads to writing sooner or later.

These are some of the things I’ve noticed about my habits as I turn my attention more and more toward serious writing.  I'm curious if others have such finicky preferences.  Somebody should do a study...

Self-Publishing: A Few Lessons Learned

If it's been a while since I've blogged, it's because I've had a lot going on.  Work has kept me busy, I switched to night shift a couple times, I got a stomach bug, etc, etc.  And of course, I'm working on my book!  It's been quite the process, and I thought I'd share a few things I've noticed about the self-publishing process, as I have experienced it thus far:



1.  It takes FOREVER.  However long you think it's going to take you, times it by 10.  Or 100.

2.  Being professional means making time and money commitments.  Authors these days are active on social media, so I must be as well.  Authors need professional photos, so I had some taken.  A free-lance author must market their own work, so I have been doing research.  The list goes on.

3.  Better get lots of eyes on your work and be as self-critical of your writing as possible.  You want to ensure that the best work you are capable of creating (without the wisdom and assistance of editors) ends up for sale, not just some hodge-podge that was "good enough".

4.  Know your work and what you're going for, and stick to that ruthlessly.  Be decisive, and be confident in what you're doing.  My poetry book has a theme, and it's important that all the poems in the book are related to that theme.  It's also important that all the poems are of a similar quality; you don't want a really good poem you wrote a few months ago right next to a truly awful one you wrote in high school.  I've had to take poems out, add poems in, and make edits, all in the name of consistency.

5.  Don't be shy.  Talk to people who have self-published.  Send your stuff out there.  Let people know you're Creating Art.  Completely buy into your new endeavor.



I'm still learning all these things, but those are my top five lessons so far.  I'm sure there will be more...

Happy New Year

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
            ~Romans 7:15, NIV

Here it is already: 2014.  It's New Year's Day, and everyone (it seems) is making resolutions for 2014.  I have never made a New Year's Resolution, at least not projecting out for the entire year.  I understand it's an inspirational, empowering way to start the new year.  I understand it challenges us to better ourselves.  I understand most people don't keep their resolutions past the first few months, but that some succeed and have a great sense of accomplishment at the end of it all.  And I understand that I would be one of the former.  That's why I don't do it.

But this year is different.  This year I am putting my hand in the hand of God, and stepping out into the darkness, trusting that it will be better for me than a light, and safer than the known[1].  And so, I am making a few New Year's Resolutions.  The first is to get back to work building up this blog.  My goal is to update it no less than monthly.  The second is to self-publish my poetry collection, with a goal of having it 'on the market' by the end of February.  The third is to be more disciplined in pretty much all of my habits, but I'm not sure how I should quantify that yet.  More later.  And the fourth and most important is to not only put my hand into the hand of God and step out into the darkness, but to then move forward in trust.

As we all bid farewell to 2013, I am bidding farewell to sitting still, and embracing the uncertainty of having nowhere to lay my head[2].  I am saying goodbye to putting my hand to the plow and looking back[3], and hello to John 14:13-14[4].  Goodbye status quo; hello change.  Goodbye self-reliance; hello God.  Goodbye comfortable; hello terrified.  I'll shake the dust of 2013 off my feet and move on.  No amount of doubt on my part will stop me, because my God feeds birds and clothes flowers[5].

I am ready for the New Year[6].  Are you?

  

 -RML

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[1] From the poem God Knows, by Minnie Louise Haskins

[2] Luke 9:58

[3]Luke 9:62

[4] And John 15:7-8, John 15:16, John 16:23-24 and Philippians 4:13, and so forth.

[5] Matthew 6:25-34

[6]Not really, but I am determined to meet it head-on anyway.

The Fierce Things

“[T]he curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principal to be fierce about.”

                ~G. K. Chesterton

So far this blog has been a lot of work.  I think it’s because I have a hard time separating what I want to talk about and what God seems to want me to talk about.  It seems like I have to write four or five posts before I’m ready to just listen.  So what now?  I’ve talked about why we create, and I’ve talked about the power of art.  I couldn’t figure out what to write about next.

Last Saturday, I wrote a poem about God calling people.  It was kind of a re-drafting of two poems I wrote years ago that didn’t really work – one was about Abraham, the other about Philip.  So the first two stanzas of the new poem are about them.  Then there’s a stanza about Jonah, then one about Paul.  Finally, I ended with a stanza about us.  I typed it up and moved on with my day.  But in church on Sunday, the pastor’s sermon was Jonah, chapter one, and it was all about being called and how we respond to it – he even referenced the same story about Paul.  I just kept thinking, ‘Ok.  I hear you.  This is…not a coincidence.’

We tend to think of a ‘calling’ in terms of full-time ministry.  Prophets are called.  Missionaries are called.  Pastors are called.  Most of us are just ‘living our lives’.  I used to think so, too, but I’m beginning to think that God has a calling of some sort for each and every one of us.[1]  The more I try to get out of it (and then don’t), the more I’m convinced that God has called me to military service.  There is nothing full-time ministry about that.  At the same time, the more misguided blog posts that I write, the more convinced I am that there is some other blog post that I’m supposed to be writing.  And the more I have tried to avoid writing ‘Christian literature,’ the more poems God has given me about Him – suggesting that Christian literature is exactly where I should be.[2]

I can’t (or at least, I shouldn’t) look at these callings differently from each other – the call to service is as much of God as the writing.  Some are called to be mothers, doctors, businessmen, teachers, tax men, sales clerks, lawyers…anything and everything.  If you are following a calling in your profession, you’re not just ‘living your life’.  It’s the same for artists, and what a blessing to be called to a vocation that allows us to speak to souls about God in such a unique way.  My brother is a musician; he plays in a symphony.  This is not ‘Christian’ art, but it is good art, and his contribution to it is also good.  Art does not have to be overtly about God to be a witness to Him.  The first piece of art was made by God Himself, and He looked at it and saw that it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).  Do we find the word ‘Jesus’ in an aerial view of the earth?  In a constellation?  No.  And yet, all of creation points to God (Romans 1:20).

I recently visited Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.  There was one area housing a few pieces by a certain artist, pieces that I couldn’t figure out the point of.  They were the only ones in the entire museum that didn’t seem to mean anything, including several pieces of art that I genuinely disliked (art is, after all, a matter of taste).  But these were the only pieces that weren’t saying anything.  I read the small placard, hoping it would illuminate their purpose.  It explained the artists’ goal, which also said nothing beyond itself.[3]  A person doesn’t have to understand a thing to sense something in it, but neither understanding nor response will come from art that doesn’t point to something beyond itself – this is truly ‘art for art’s sake’, and it is empty and lifeless and cold.

It’s important for artists to resist creating solely for ourselves.  We have a calling.  Therefore, we need to create in a way that fulfills that calling.  We must create for another person; for a cause; for God; for a reason.  If we do that, our art will live and touch people.  The importance of creating art that suggests something beyond itself is true of secular art, and it is true of ‘Christian’ art.  This is the proper response to an artistic calling, no matter the market:  Not just to create, but to create well.

It is very tempting at this point to devolve into a discussion of the general state of explicitly Christian art in our present culture.[4]  But I have come to the conclusion that my energy is misplaced when I do that – I don’t think it really matters.  We get side-tracked by such things, which is, perhaps, only natural; if the ‘fierce things’ really are fading, does it not follow that our souls will grasp for other things to be fierce about?  This is not to say that I’m not bothered by the state of contemporary Christian art.  I have a sinking suspicion that the general lack of variety and quality in explicitly Christian art is symptomatic of the very death of fierceness in our beliefs.  In this sense, it concerns me deeply.[5]  But our focus needn’t be on trying to ‘fix’ it; on trying to ‘solve’ this ‘problem’.  If we focus on our own callings instead, and believe in God fiercely, our art will reflect that.  In other words, “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

No one artist can do this on his own, nor even a small group of outliers – we have these already.  So I am praying for a new renaissance in the contemporary church of our culture, at large.  I want to be able to walk out of a Christian bookstore with my head held high and my arms full of quality merchandise.  I want the world to know that Christians make the best artists, because their God is the original Artist.  I want us to be the creators of living Things that speak to people’s souls.  As with anything else, if we have a calling to this work, we need to do it well.

-RML

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[1] This is different from the murkier ‘God’s plan for our lives’.

[2] But not necessarily via Christian publishing houses.

[3] Note:  If you have to explain why you made something (not to be confused with discussing its meaning with people who already have their own ideas about it), this may be a sign that your work is dead.

[4] Indeed, I did so in at least three previous drafts of this article, each time with dissatisfying results.

[5] The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this is the same reason so many people in the US are forsaking church.

The Power of Art

The habit, very prevalent today, of dismissing words as “just words” takes no account of their power.

                ~Dorothy Sayers

Usually when I write a poem, it’s because the first few lines have popped into my head.  I’ve been thinking about something, or I see something, or I’m feeling frustrated, or a Bible verse is demanding my attention.  I always try to write those first lines down right away so I won’t forget them - nine times out of ten, I end up writing the whole poem right then.  In such cases, I usually write the poem in order, that is to say, stanza by stanza, and more or less even line by line.  I make changes as I go, of course, and more when I ‘finish’ and read over the whole work, and again when I type it up.

I think I’ve written every single poem on paper, with a pencil.  In the margins of those pages are scribbled lists of words that rhyme with whatever I’ve already written – some poems have many scribbles, crossed-out words, and erased and re-written portions, and some don’t.  It’s a process, and some poems are harder in the writing than others.  In the end, though, I have written the poem – I have chosen which words to use, and what structure; I have shaped the poem to fit an overarching idea, which often becomes more clear to me even as I write.  The process in its entirety is exactly as described by Dorothy Sayers in The Mind of the Maker,[1] though she uses the example of writing books and plays:  Where she discusses controlling free-willed characters to fit together with the plot,[2] my ‘characters’ are rhyme, meter and stanza, and my ‘plot’ is what I’m trying to say.

Because the process is the same, so are the results.  I have ‘predestined’ my poems to be a certain way; I have controlled their formation.  The structural elements have a ‘life of their own’, which is their free will, but as long as I keep them bound to the overall concept, they will conform to it and make the finished poem something altogether independent of the author.  This is a wonderful thing to experience as a writer, and is half the blessing of doing the work – as much as a person may be moved by someone else’s creation, its creator is privileged to be moved by it first.  This independence, however, is also very troublesome for someone like myself – I hesitate to share my creations with strangers, lest they ‘over-analyze’ them.[3]

But there is a difference between introducing foreign ideas and gleaning truths that were hidden.  Here again, Dorothy Sayers[4] has things to say, reassuring me that, just as the poem exerted its free will to result in something I could not have entirely preconceived, so also the free will and unique experience of the reader can see things in it that I didn’t notice.  This is, again, because art connects with us at the soul-level.  There is Power in the Word, and there is Power in words; neither return empty[5] when there is Power in the soul.

Ultimately, the artist and the feeling he puts into his art don’t matter; it is what the consumer receives from it that is important, and this is why our creations outlive us.  If the consumer is affected in a way that is consistent with the work, he will either love or hate it, just as people respond to teaching and prophesy with either joy or derisive laughter; sackcloth or stones.  It is not the job of the artist to try to control this reaction – that is impossible.  It is the artist’s job to create a conduit through which God may choose to speak to the soul; to use his gift to “profit all.”[6]  It is the consumer’s job to approach the work in the right spirit – to see what it is meant to say to him, and not what he wants it to say.[7]  Those who approach art otherwise may be surprised by some revelation, but usually they will walk away content to talk about brush strokes.[8]

Consequently, there are three aspects of a creative work:  There is the artist who rendered it, there is the consumer who responds to it, and there is God,[9] who inspired it and infuses it with the power to engender that response.  Herein lies the power of art:  That God may use it, as He will, to provoke within us not just an emotional response, but a spiritual one; not just feeling, but action.  That is why various institutions have been wont to treat art and its creators as dangerous, flinging insults like ‘subversive’ at them like rice at evil spirits.  Of course, the irony is, art and its creators are dangerous; not in the way those institutions tend to think, but in the same way that C. S. Lewis’ Aslan is not a tame lion.[10]  There is Power in the Word, and power is dangerous, because it can effect change.  I mentioned what is not the artist’s job.  What is the artist’s job is to ensure that what he is creating is of and for God; there is plenty out there already that is not.

-RML

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[1] Chapter five, Free Will and Miracle.

[2] Characters who nevertheless have enough free will to interact with the plot in ways that surprise the author.

[3] I was an English major, and I was always frustrated by that when it occurred in my classes.

[4] Chapter eight, Pentecost.

[5] Isaiah 55:11

[6] 1 Corinthians 12:7

[7] It seems prudent to note that, in order for a work of art to have its full effect, the consumer must also approach it with the understanding that if it has anything to say to him, it is probably about his own state, or about God, and not about the artist; once the piece is finished, the artist is nothing, though we can’t help but sense the piece of him that is in his work.  In the same way, we don’t read the Bible to study the men who wrote it.  We will, of course, learn something about them, but the primary purpose must be to learn about God (and our relationship to Him); and that not as we would make Him, but as He is.

[8] In all of this, I am differentiating between the spiritual interests of a consumer, and the technical interests of a student.  I am only concerned with the former, for whom the actual making of the piece has no real import; for the latter, the brush stroke is a legitimate focus, though the student is still unlikely to 'hear' anything from such an approach.

[9] This statement is related to, but not the same as, Dorothy Sayers’ brilliant analogy of the Trinity in The Mind of the Maker.

[10] The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Why Create?

Speak to me until I understand

Why our thinking and creating

And why our efforts of narrating

About the beauty, of the beauty

Why it matters.

            ~Sara Groves

It was hard for me to figure out how to write this post, and it’s still inadequate; I am woefully unqualified.  I have a BA, but I am not an academic.  I do not have any credentials as an artist, much less a theologian.  All I have is an odd sort of insistent tugging to create this blog.  As its creator, it falls to me to justify its existence and suggest its direction.  The question I feel is most important to answer in so doing, is this:  Why create?

I will hazard a guess that every artist finds himself returning again and again to his work, no matter how much he may try to go in other directions.  I read an article recently that tried to define what a poet is.  It was a pretty good article, but it missed the mark.  It’s an interesting question for me in particular, because I have never considered myself a poet…yet I am continually writing poems.  I have therefore come to believe that the truest definition of a poet is ‘one who writes poems’[1]; any attempt at a more complex explanation inevitably leads to an effort to define how or why a poet is.  Such an endeavor is hopeless, like trying to explain ‘what is a C. S. Lewis?’  We cannot know ourselves, let alone another person – you may as well try to define God.  A poet is someone who writes poems.  Does he know where the poems come from?  I certainly don’t.  God, obviously, but beyond that?  All I know is that poetry exists within me, much like my spine, or bacteria.  So why do we create?  Because we are creators.

An interrelated question presents itself:  Why does it matter?  The ‘so-what’ question.  You can find many intelligent defenses of art.  They don’t seem to have made much of an impact on a societal level, which is not surprising if you consider the nature of art.  Art is abstract, and its benefits are intangible.  Science may benefit the body; art benefits the soul.  Art is necessary because we have souls, souls that are starving, and so we consume art.  Why, then, do we not value it?  Because we humans have a tendency to avoid our own souls – this is where we see things clearly and feel things truly.  It is a frightening place that we are ill prepared to approach, whether Christian or not.

We also tend to undervalue the soul, or else the old Christmas anthem, O Holy Night, would not have that powerful and mystical phrase, “and the soul felt its worth.”  We are generally more preoccupied with life; we fail to consider the needs of our souls amidst the clamoring needs of our bodies.  We need food, water, sleep, exercise, leisure, work, money, etc.  All true, and all earthly.  All physical.  All mortal.  The soul, which is infinitely more important in the long-run, needs only God.  This one thing is easily drowned out by the rest, especially since it is the one thing we are usually most eager to avoid.

But how is a need for God connected to a need for art?  I believe that art is an expression of God.  It is our poor attempt to represent his glory, beauty, power, mercy, wrath, compassion, and on and on.  We can never quite get it right, of course, but we can capture glimpses, suggestions, in a sublimated, abstract form[2] that somehow is able to speak to the soul not only of the artist, but of others as well.  Art is the best kept secret in the annals of miracles.

I have tried to explain, at a very basic level, why artists create art, and I have tried, at a spiritual and human level, to explain why we all need art in our lives.  Very well.  But what place does art hold in the Church?  It’s easy to see art in a church building on Sunday morning; there is architecture; flowers; music; maybe a video.  But what about the Universal Church; the Body of Christ?  In 1 Corinthians 12:7, Paul, speaking of spiritual gifts, says:  “[T]he manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit all.”  We tend to refer to ‘spiritual gifts’ as something separate from ‘God-given talents,’ such as art.  This makes a good deal of sense, though I think there is room to consider the possibility that art can be an expression of spiritual gifts.  Can not art, for example, reveal something of the mysteries of God and the human heart in its imperfect, abstract way?  Can it not, in that sense, prophesy?  But that is another discussion entirely.

It is of more direct benefit for our purposes here to look at art simply in terms of the verse in question.  We say art is God-given talent; is it not, therefore, a “manifestation of the Spirit?”  After all, we worship a creative, artistic God.  And I have already spoken of the benefits of art; does it not, therefore, “profit all?”  Matthew Henry says that “[w]hatever gifts God confers on any man, he confers them that he may do good with them, whether they be common or spiritual.[3]”  I don’t know that artists have some abstract version of spiritual gifts, or are instead blessed with “common” ones, but their work fits the verse regardless.

This brings us to the real answer to the question, why create?  We create because God has given us a gift, and this is exactly why we ought to create.  It is, in some sense, a “manifestation of the Spirit.”  It is therefore not our gift to hoard.  We have a responsibility to use it and to put it out in the world, like the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30).  The gift is given to the artist that all may profit from it.  That is why we must use it, and that is why it matters.

-RML

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[1] And an artist in general, ‘one who creates art’.

[2] These are also the reasons we do not stop creating art – because we are unsuccessful, we must try again, and because we are partially successful, we are wild with desire to capture another glimpse.

[3] Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1991, pg 2266.