Letters to a Young Poet

I’ve said it many times on this blog, but I’m a sucker for “self-help” poetry books. I’ve heard great things about Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and finally got around to purchasing my own copy. Before I started reading, I knew nothing about Rilke, and was reading simply because of the book’s reputation. The book is a collection of ten letters that Ranier Maria Rilke wrote in response to Franz Kappus, a young man seeking encouragement, advice, and feedback on his poetry. Kappus had written to Rilke discouraged because he had received so many rejections. In the first letter, Rilke addresses literary critics, Kappus’ own work, and the need for writing. Rilke doesn’t pull any punches with his new correspondent, as he tells Kappus that his poems have “no individual style. . .[and] are not yet anything on their own account, nothing independent” (15). Rilke of course tells Kappus that a couple of the poems have potential, but still have severe shortcomings. Rilke expresses his disappointment that Kappus is more intent on getting published than he is writing good poems. Isn’t this the way of it? For young writers (not necessarily young people) there is a thrill in being published, in growing your audience, in notoriety, in being acknowledged. Rilke challenges Kappus to take a little personal inventory on his reason for writing:

Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all–ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? (16)

I think this can be a tough pill to swallow for those of us born and raised in capitalism. Why write if I can’t make money? Be famous? Be somebody? Somewhere along the line of growing up and old, we lose sight of that simple core of humanity: creation. I love watching art classes in elementary schools. Kids are ecstatic to have a much of color amoeba’s on their paper, telling mom and dad with pride that they drew a peacock. But the mere joy and satisfaction is good enough as we grow older. We’re told that we have to make a buck, that our work doesn’t matter if someone else doesn’t think it matters–whether this voice is internal or external depends on each artist’s situation and experience, but it’s still there. And Rilke says that to the poet, nothing should matter but your desire to create art. He tells Kappus to

seek those [themes] which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty–describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. . . To the creator, there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place . . . A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. . . for the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself. (16-17)

Rilke spends the rest of his letters–published here anyways–defining artistic creation, beauty, and meaning. In Rilke’s mind, writing poetry is a lifestyle, a life-long pursuit of developing skills, spending time in nature, and finding meaning in your life and in the objects and lives around you. Writing poetry isn’t about getting published, it’s about creating–taking something, whether it’s internal or external, and weaving it through your own loom, making it physical and meaningful for you the poet. If there is no meaning or beauty in it for the poet, how can one expect others to give a rip about it?

And this sentiment of writing because you have to is extremely difficult, because nobody notices. And we want to be noticed, we want to be somebody. And it’s a difficult road developing your writing skills to the point of your creation being worth somebody else’s time. To this difficulty, Rilke states:

People have. . . oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us. . .that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. (41)

The journey of a poet is indeed a difficult one. Learning to make your thoughts and experiences understandable (and bearable) for readers is difficult. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose sight of the actual art of poetry. Rilke’s letters provide excellent encouragement to focus on what matters: life and its meaning/expressions.  I think that it’s also interesting to note that Rilke claimed to always have two books by his side: the Bible and a prose work by his favorite author. Rilke seems to have exercised his search for meaning in light of his spiritual beliefs, not in spite of them. I’m also shocked that his favorite writer would be a novelist and not a poet. Obviously, in order to produce good writing writers must consume and digest good writing. Sorry for the disgusting metaphor, but once we consume and digest, we are inspired to move that influx of information into our own expression. To be a good writer we must continually work on becoming masters of our craft and language. How can we learn either if aren’t reading something?

Rilke’s short collection of letters has a permanent place on my bookshelf due to his wisdom of life and creativity. I really appreciate his stance that improving and developing is a life-long journey, and being a poet is a way of life.

Another Year in the Rearview Mirror

This past semester hasn’t been a good use of blogging. But I’ve spent so much time preparing for my senior lit class that something had to give. So over the past few months, I’ve read and taught:
Catcher in the Rye
Grapes of Wrath
Othello
King Lear
Tale of Two Cities
Les Miserables

It’s a shame there isn’t any poetry in the senior curriculum, but I’m working on writing a good world poetry unit that will be available for download this spring.

Books that I’m adding to my reading list for the blog are:
Letters to a young poet by Rilke
God’s Silence by Franz Wright
Inside Out by LL Barkat
Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield
Four Quartets by Eliot
Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
Fame is Infamy by Andrew Schwab

As usual there is plenty on my plate while my cup overflows. I’m working on a long poem (5 pages qualifies as long doesn’t it?), a short story, and my ever growing collection of poems on light. So there’s gotta be time in there to blog right? Right.

Happy new year everybody. Here’s to poetry and the bridges it builds!

Reason for Song

There seems to be the motif of death and restoration in these posts lately.  It isn’t really intentional. Maybe someone somewhere will come across all of these poems and be encouraged. Anyways, here’s my latest published poem about two people learning to live life without their fathers: Reason for Song.

Loss

I’m proud to announce that Catapult Magazine published another poem of mine: “A Breath”. I normally don’t explain my poems, but there is a gravity around the purpose and origin of this piece that needs to be told. A family I know lost a son and a brother to suicide this summer. The memorial service was very upbeat, and I was impressed by the community that came together to share memories and to support the family. I couldn’t help but reflect on my own story of loss and grieving my father’s death. I looked around at all of the people gathered at this family’s service–there were a lot of people at my dad’s funeral too–and wondered how many would be around in 3 months to continue offering support. It’s always easier when someone dies from some other family, because then we can get back to life. But for those who are at a loss and grieving, getting back to life is tragic in itself. So I wrote this poem for this family as a way of saying I remember your suffering; I’ve suffered; I still suffer. It’s easy for people to say that time heals all wounds. While the saying is true, it doesn’t help those in pain and sadness. So when there is loneliness, and pain, and maybe even a loss of conversational words, there can still be poetry and community held together by the grace of Christ.

Here’s the link to A Breath.

A Decade Later

Ten years ago this morning (it was a Sunday then) I woke up in a camp near Estes Park, Colorado. The crisp fall air had settled into the cabins, and we all groaned getting out of bed. I had performed a monologue the night before, and the group discussion afterward was moving. I had finally let go of all my anxiety/anger/doubt about my father’s bile duct cancer. I was at peace with God’s will in however things turned out–whether he would/could heal my dad was no longer an issue. I slept sounder than I had in weeks and for the first time in awhile, I saw God as good.

As a staffer on the church youth retreat, I had to go around and help wake up all the other guys so we could get out the door and go to breakfast. I didn’t have much of an appetite. And my walk to the dining hall was unusually quiet and introspective. We had one more worship service, communion, and then we’d all pack up and head home, get back to life. I watched as the band warmed up, the morning sun much warmer inside the chapel than outside. Dust particles floated in the beams of light, and the brightness didn’t bother me. I heard someone asking for me in the background, and then I was told that my mom was trying to get a hold me, that my dad wasn’t doing too well.

He was fine the last time I saw him. He would have said so anyways. The Friday before I left for the retreat my family had met with hospice care because my dad was getting weaker and weaker. “If I die,” he said, “just put me in a pine box.” That’s really all he had to say about hospice care or even dying. I was crunched for time and had to get packed and still hadn’t written the monologue I would be performing the next night. I patted my dad on the leg and told him I’d fill him in on all the camp details. He loved camp. To my dad, there weren’t many things more important. I waved as I drove off. Dad had made is way to the porch. He hadn’t been outside much lately, but he mustered the strength to stand there, belly bulging like a starving African child, skin pale and sickly. He smiled and gave a big wave, and I unintentionally snapped a photograph in the depth of heart. I didn’t give him a hug. I didn’t say, “I love you.”

The camp director let me in to their offices so I could call my mom and see what was happening. Of course I didn’t get cell reception back then (I checked earlier that morning, just in case). My mom answered in tears. I told her they told me that Dad wasn’t doing well.

“Daddy went to be with Jesus this morning,” was all she said. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I packed up and drove home–it was the first time I’ve ever been able to get out of a speeding ticket (anybody who’s anybody knows not to speed through Lyons. I even knew, but I sped. And got pulled over. And was shown mercy by the cop). Dad’s body sat in his favorite chair beneath the large window, stiff and cold. I held his hand–even in his sickness his hands dwarfed mine–and lay my head in his lap. And mom and I cried and talked about the kids that found Jesus at camp. The coroner came and we all packed up and the funeral craziness began. It was ten years ago. It was yesterday. It was forever ago. Here’s the poem I wrote for the funeral:

Sunday Drive Through the Aspens
by Joel E. Jacobson

It happens this time every year,
every autumn that comes and goes–
the lively leaves of green transform
into glowing gold and yellow and red and orange–
the trees tell us the end is near.
And, though I only realize it now,
my father’s leaves changed years ago.
His life his example his compassion–they shimmered
like bars of gold and dollars of silver.
But as his serving limbs of love, patience, and Godliness
wilted under the freezing blizzard of age and pain,
and as his solid tree trunk body was scratched away
by the velveting bull elk of cancer,
the beautiful man I knew as a child faded and withered,
and his leaves of strength–browned and burdened–
fell to the ground.
And so it is I hike through the forest of men
searching for my tree to carve my initials in.
But when I draw near and face my dear daddy
I see it’s really his initials instilled and carved into me.
The beauty lies in our drive through the
aspens on Sunday.  For when I returned,
Christ had already called and carried you up
His mountain, leaving the wretched, battered bark
behind in our arms.  No regret hardens my heart though
because above your head and through the window,
the trees shined in all their glory
as Christ restored your golden leaves in eternity.

After reading this poem for the first time in years, I want to meddle with it, revise it, fix it. Because this was me 10 years ago, when I was going to be a screenplay writer, when I hadn’t been rejected from grad schools, literary magazines, and movie production companies, when I was on staff at a church preparing to become a youth pastor, when I had just graduated college with a degree in English, when I was single (with no hope or prospects on the horizon), when I drove a white (money pit) Jeep Cherokee, when I worked for Red Robin opening restaurants, when I was a Christian because it’s what my parents taught me, when my faith wasn’t my own. For the first time in my life, I had to wrestle with the character of God, wrestle with why I believed in Him, why I should believe in Him, why He was worth anything in light of losing my father. If God wasn’t real, then my dad wasted his life (and mine).

The months and years following my dad’s death were instrumental in developing my faith and my life path. It’s funny (more ironic than funny), but the church I was working for was good at burning people out, and after a year of being on staff I backed away from volunteering with youth and focused my efforts elsewhere. I became a substitute teacher because Red Robin left me too tired to write (haha, I am fortune’s fool, always too something to write if I’m not intentional!!). Then I became an elementary school teacher, and eventually moved to high school. All the while I’ve grown in my understanding of the character of God.

And through it all, the poetry has remained. It’s funny (okay,maybe more ironic than humorous, maybe both) that I am the son of a laid-off-geophysicist-turned-AFLAC-insurance-salesman and a math teacher mother. My dad cared about bridging relationships with people in his community. He was the helpful handyman in our neighborhood, the volunteer carpenter for church camp projects (the same camp I was at when I found out about his death). He helped an elderly lady winterize her swamp cooler. He was a mechanic, a woodsman, a carpenter, a salesman, a husband, a father, and the funniest man he ever knew. This was his poetry.

I love the mountains, but don’t share my father’s love of hunting. I’m not so good with a band saw or lathe, but have managed to install flooring and complete other power-tool-required house projects. I don’t change my own oil anymore. But I write. Words are my wood. My love of poetry has opened doors for relationships and connections that I would never have dreamed of. I’m able to use writing to connect with students, colleagues, neighbors, family, friends, and strangers. Loving those around us and honoring God were always more important to my dad than any of us kids following in his footsteps. Oh, winning at cribbage was near the top of that list too, but I digress.

I remember, as the years passed, struggling with what it meant to be a godly man and the frustration of having to figure it out on my own. (I wasn’t really alone, but it often felt that way). At my brother’s wedding, he told my brother that marriage wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it. It’s still hard wondering what kind of wisdom I could have gained in regards to marriage and fatherhood. But I don’t have that, and for whatever reason it wasn’t meant to be.

What was meant to be was the poetry: the experiences, the lessons, the relationships, the faith. God’s taken care of me, of us, of my dad. I don’t know if I’ve fulfilled my dad’s expectation of me as a man of faith, a husband, a father, a brother, a son, a teacher, and a student. People who knew my dad have told me frequently that I would have made him proud ten times over. Here’s to hoping. The past decade seems to be an instantaneous eternity, and there may only be tomorrow or another whole decade ahead. But thanks to my dad, there will be poems and poems and poems.

2 Book Reviews (part 2)

In my last post, I reviewed Paul Miller’s A Praying Life. One aspect of the book I did not discuss was Miller’s assertion that man is made up of two parts: logic/outer self and heart/emotion/inner self. Of course, this is an over-simplification of the complex known as human life,  but Miller’s point is still valid. He asserts that the Enlightenment severed the presence of logic and heart in the public sphere. Miller discusses how this impacts a prayerful life. One of the ideas that struck me was that post-Enlightenment humanity has severed logic from heart, and Goldstein is a perfect example of the problems that this separation has created. I was also struck by the similarity presented in Miller’s idea with Timothy Keller’s short book, Prodigal God. The book is inspired by the parable most traditionally labeled The Prodigal Son. Jesus, responding to the Pharisees griping about Jesus welcoming and eating with sinners, tells a story about a son who demands his inheritance from his father, and then goes into the world to squander it on women, drugs, and everything else that brings immediate satisfaction. Broke, he goes to work for a pig farmer. Hungry and unfulfilled, he returns home. His father sees him from a distance and runs to greet him. The father kills a fattened calf and throws the biggest party around. The older brother gets pissed off because he’s followed all the rules, done everything his father ever asked of him and he doesn’t even get a goat. Keller’s entire book reveals that this parable is not about a lost son coming home, but rather about a God that is willing to pursue everyone at all costs. Keller asserts that Jesus talks about two types of people in this world: those who want to blaze their own path, do their own thing independent of tradition or expectations and those who spend their whole life making/following rules all the while casting judgment on the lowly younger brother and his free-spirited ways. Keller makes a strong point that the older brother in the parable is a symbol for the pharisees. In the bigger picture, the older brother represents those who think they can achieve salvation/grace by what they do. These are the people who make signs that read “God Hates Fags” and “God sent the shooter” and then stand outside of high schools and yell at the kids, saying the kids will go to hell for all of their bad decisions. Older brothers are people who make things like education a moral issue (it’s right or wrong to send your kid to a public/Christian/home school). Older brothers are those who insist on rules for holy living. Older brothers have cause a lot of pain in the world as they threaten/judge the younger brothers. I think we see mostly older brothers in churches, and mostly younger brothers boycotting them.

These two classifications connect with Miller’s heart/logic categories because the younger brother is all heart and winds up unfulfilled. The older brother is all logic/head and ends up angry (and equally unfulfilled). This may be the root of my frustrations with Goldstein’s attempt to find flaws with arguments for God’s existence. There is absolutely no heart–it’s all prideful, arrogant, logic. Both Keller and Miller suggest that a balanced life is important–be able to think for yourself, but have a heart for people around you–regardless of their (un)tradition. When asked what the most important thing in life is, Jesus said to love God with all that you are and then love your neighbors as yourself. This is a challenge to both older and younger brothers.

I have a friend at work who has been wrestling with the existence of God for several years now. Raised in an alcoholic home, he rejected the notion of God (or at least a loving one) fairly early in life. As we share our stories (usually at the bookstore…a great after-school excursion), he revealed to me that he has come to the logical conclusion that God exists and even has the capacity to love. He knows in his mind. He also said that the only step is to take a leap of faith in believing in Jesus as savior. His mind is on board but his heart still has doubt. It doesn’t mean that his mind is right or wrong, or that his heart is right or wrong. It means that the two make an impact on how we view things, and an over-reliance on one can lead to troubles.

Regardless of your background, Prodigal God is a fascinating read due to Keller’s ability to breath new life into something so popularly misread. Keller makes very pointed observations about humanity and Christians should shed themselves of the older brother legalism, learn how to have a little younger brother heart, all the while pursuing, like the loving father, all of those around us.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I read The Road (2007 Pulitzer Prize winner) over the holidays as it came to me highly recommended. It was fitting to read because of the recent movie release, and many of my peers (co-teachers and friends) had read it with varying responses and reactions. I was a bit worried due to McCarthy’s token violence and gruesomeness. Granted, the cannibalism is terrifying and sickening, but if you get hung up on that then you are missing out on the rest that this novel has to offer.

One of my students told me that The Road is the first novel that he’s read that seems to be more of a prose poem than a novel. This came during a conversation about some contemporary views that the novel is nothing more than an evolved epic (you know, the type that was sung by the ancient bards. Hello Helen…). I’m not sure I agree, but it’s fun to think about. There’s something just different about prose and poetry. In fact, Joseph Hutchison wrote this in a recent blog post:

. . .[W]hat is the difference between prose and poetry? I would say that it all comes down to this: poetry cares more than prose does about the imaginal dimensions of words. Poetry essentially exists in order to plunge the reader into the wild imaginality of language, while prose exists to let the reader experience the imaginal at a distance. This is why good poetry is more imaginal than good prose, why we call prose “poetic” only when it becomes imaginally heightened, and why we have a “form” called the prose poem.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this novel for a month, but was waiting for some sort of springboard. Is The Road a novel, a prose poem, or both? The context of Hutchison’s quote is one of the meaning of language, so nitpicking about whether poetry is just a wild imaginality of language is splitting hairs (in this instance!). But why even consider The Road a piece of prose poetry in the first place? For starters, the form.

This novel reads like none other that I’ve experienced. It’s not stream of consciousness like Joyce, but the only punctuation used are periods and possessive apostrophes. There are no chapters, only paragraph to page-long episodes that move along chronologically.  Are poets the only ones that can mess with form? No, but hang in there. The form actually relates to the setting of the novel. The apocalypse has come and gone. The sun doesn’t shine, everything is burned or is burning, it rains and snows ash, and there is no warmth or hope. Those people that were left behind have resorted to cannibalism as all other animals and fruits/vegetables/grains/foods have rotted or been consumed. I guess punctuation rules were also raptured (haha). In all seriousness, life in the novel no longer has meaning (except for the main character and his son, who both spend the entirety of the novel looking for the good guys, “carrying the fire.”) and the lack of punctuation, formal chapter breaks, and sentence structure reflects this. I don’t think that this in itself is reason to call the novel a prose poem. But many of the snippets/episodes feel “poetical.”

As crazy and terrifying as the story is, I was engrossed in a novel–not a prose poem. And then I reached the end. Once the story concludes, when we know what happened to the father and the son, McCarthy provides a paragraph about mountains and a fish in a pond. Of the fish he writes:

On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

The end. What the–? Nothing else in the novel reads like this last paragraph. I’d say this is an ambivalent image that rips open the entire novel for interpretation. This forces me back into the novel, forces me to look at what is going on beneath the surface. I suppose that prose is just as capable of doing this as poetry, but it seems to me that McCarthy forces the read to look at the imaginal up close, though it seems kind of distant during the reading experience. Without the ending, this is just a novel. However, that last image thrusts the book into consideration for being prose poetry.

(I mentioned imaginal, and this may beg for an explanation. I first learned that term in a poetry class at University College under the tutelage of Joseph Hutchison (yup, the same Hutchison quoted above), who was also my thesis adviser. We’ve had many conversations about it, and I spent a good part of my thesis work defining “imaginal” from a Christ-centered point of view. Hutchison recently wrote some great, thought-provoking  insights into the imaginal. I have come to a little bit different conclusion/definition of the imaginal, and I will post a blog in detail in the near future. However, the basis of the imaginal is clear and indisputable: there are things in our lives that we perceive outside of our five senses. We experience the unseen, feel the unfelt, sense the untouchable. For now, that’s the imaginal. Come back next week to read more specifically about my take on it as  Christian artist)

But form doesn’t ensure poetry, so we have to look at imaginality. What’s so imaginal about The Road? At first glance, nothing. As crazy as it sounds, the apparent absence of imaginality establishes…yup….imaginality. As I read the novel, I shouldn’t care about the characters because everyone is as good as dead anyways. But I do care–deeply. What is it that causes that care? It’s not in the prose. The boy needs his father’s encouragement, but he also challenges his father to help everyone that isn’t going to try and eat them–even if that person is two steps from death. As I followed these two characters down their road, I was filled with absolute dread and fear that something horrible was going to happen. I have no textual evidence to explain why. By the end of the novel, I was filled was uncanny hope…with no textual evidence why. I experienced something that wasn’t written. But was this experience a pie-in-the-face or a distant observation? I don’t know.

So is The Road a prose poem? I want to say yes–the epic poetry of old is resurrected for the post-apocalyptic bard to sing on top of rotten strumming from a burned guitar. In a world (presented in the novel) where everything is dead–language, vegetation, humaneness, mercy, etc.–there is a mystery that my five senses cannot explain. Many may argue that this is prose and not poetry, which is fine. Either way, it’s a direct path to the imaginal.

Thinking: In Critical Condition

Data is the new god of education. The state of Colorado has made it law that all educational practices need to be based on student data. This is all well and good in theory, but the reality of such laws is more testing. The joke in education now is that no child is left untested (rather than behind) because there is so much pressure to achieve good test scores. It’s funny to me that it isn’t important to know something, but rather how to do something. I recently finished a class through my school district that covered the use of Google Docs in the classroom (really cool ideas by the way–ecollege and blackboard need to build apps that interact with Google Docs…the writers workshop can be forever changed in a good way!!). One of the instructors who is actually a part of Google Educators told me that in the real world, it doesn’t matter what you know. In fact, Google says that they want people who can collaborate instead  of just having people who know everything. Really? I’m pretty sure that if you want to program for Google, you’d better have your act together in terms of programming and computer science. I thought about asking for a sip of his kool-aid, but I needed a good grade. So in a time when education is growing more and more inadequate here in the states, the educational bureaucracy continues to play pinata.

(Side note: And homeschooling isn’t the answer either. Sure, those parents who choose to do so guarantee themselves full control over their children’s curriculum, what they have access to and what they don’t, but it’s still a thought vacuum where you have limited input from people who think/interpret things differently than you do. And one person trying to teach subjects of multiple grade levels is just as stretched as a teacher with 30 kids in a classroom. There are plenty of cracks to slip through in both situations.)

I’ve never been satisfied with the CSAP test, Colarodo’s implemenation for No Child Left Untested. Colorado Department of Education recently released some portions of the test. As writing is one of the most difficult skills to master (you have to read, think, and act simultaneously–pretty tricky for many students!!), I took interest in looking at the various prompts. (Full Disclosure: Of course I see the prompts every year when I proctor the test, but the district makes us sign a contract saying we won’t talk about it. So I won’t talk about what I see on tests, just what I see on the CDE website). Here is a list of the high school (grades 9 and 10) extended writing prompts available online and the years they were in the test:

• (2001) Some people believe that students should not hold jobs while they are in school because jobs take time and energy away from studying. Others contend that although there should be a limit on the number of hours worked, having jobs is a good way for students to learn responsibility and gain experience in the real world. What do you think? Write an essay that presents your opinion on this issue. You want to persuade the reader to favor your opinion, so you should offer a clear and forceful argument.
• (2002) Think of something important you have that you did not buy. It could be an object, a person, a place, a personality trait, or anything else. Write an explanation to tell its importance to you.
• (2002) What is your favorite type of music? Write a paragraph to explain why it is your favorite music. Be sure to provide reasons to support your choice.

(As a side note, it’s a big deal in state standards for students to write for a variety of purposes, but these prompts are all opinion-based. Sure one of them is persuasive, but I don’t think any of them demand any higher level thinking skills. If thinking skills are not required, how can one ever be proficient?)

We as teachers are now expected to look at data, make decisions, think creatively, and form a plan. Yet the system is simply saying, “What do you think? How do you feel?” Writing is an endangered species in itself, especially with people like Goldsmith who are not even requiring students to create their own thoughts about anything (link).

One of the powers of literature is providing the reader with an experience in which he/she might never personally engage. I think it’s valuable to draw connections between what we read and what we live, what someone else thinks and what I think. The ability to do this depends on ones ability to think critically. How can you ever expect students to show their full potential if you don’t require them to reach/think beyond themselves?

But I suppose there is enough data and information out there that it isn’t necessary to think for ourselves because somebody else is willing to do it for us, or they already have. Does this concern anybody else besides me?

God, Negative Capability, and the Too-Safe Christian

About a month ago, I finished reading The Pastor as Minor Poet by M. Craig Barnes. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but haven’t been sure what exactly I should write about.

The main premise of the book is that pastors should approach people the same way that poets approach poetry. Barnes relies heavily on the writings of Eliot and Pound as he draws connections between poetry, the Christian faith (including the character of God and the hear of poets found in the Bible), and relationships. A large chunk of this book is directed towards pastors as they prepare their sermons, and while interesting, doesn’t necessarily relate to my life. However, Barnes keys on two ideas that can be thought provoking for everyone, regardless of their faith.

Barnes presents Keats’ idea of Negative Capability, “that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Simply put, Negative Capability refers to the inherent mystery surround poetry–the idea that one doesn’t have to have all of the answers to a poem in order to enjoy it. In defining his own poetics, Joseph Hutchison writes,

Puzzlement is a puzzling quality. . . I especially enjoy being puzzled by my own work, but I detest the impulse I sometimes feel to “hide the treasure” somehow, as some kind of test for the reader. Mystery is the essence of life on our planet. . . The works of Emily Dickinson and Rae Armantrout seem to me full of mystery. . . .

Poets seem to have this knack for finding joy in the mysterious (or should anyways).  Barnes takes this idea of Negative Capability and it’s resulting joy and suggests that humans, in our post-Enlightenment/Age of Reason nature, can’t deal with not having the answers. My students get really frustrated when they can’t solve a poem–regardless of the musicality or images. American citizens get all hot-to-trot when we don’t know what our President is thinking/doing/deciding. We want and demand answers. Barnes believes that this demand for answers and clarity pervades the church as well. People seem discontent with the mystery of God–and many have decided God doesn’t even exist because of so many questions/mysteries/unknowns (What kind of God chooses some people and not others? What kind of God justifies eliminating an entire race/civilization? What kind of God would send somebody to hell for eternal damnation/suffering?).

I’ve realized over the past couple of years that I do not really truly understand the character of God. He is a mystery to me. How much of that mystery am I okay with? How much mystery do I despise, resulting in demands to have the answers? How much does my view/opinion/understanding of God depend on the relationships/influences of the people around me and my past?

This leads to the second point Barnes makes in his book. He thinks that relationships between people should be nurtured the same way a poet and a poem relate. As I have conversations with those around me, I hear time and again stories about people (pastors, Christian friends, Christian family) that have completely alienated those around them. Adam Fieled  posted a blog last spring with the following quote:

My two basic problems with Christianity: 1) that I have never seen or heard Jesus 2) that I have seen and heard a lot of Christians. They are, I think, mostly a lousy advertisement.

And again, more recently:

If anyone wants a good scare (quite as good as Carrie), go to Netflix and watch Jesus Camp. I had no idea that out of 320 million Americans, 80 million are Evangelical Christians. One in four. I’d say that there are probably 1 million Americans seriously involved in art. So there are 80 times more Evangelicals in America than there are artists. The center of much of the film’s action is Rev. Ted Haggard, who appears an hour into it. Haggard was later charged with picking up and having anal sex with a male prostitute. Now that’s leadership.

I don’t think the only way to experience God is through other people, but it seems that people are a major prism through which others will determine their point of view. Is it any wonder why people don’t see mystery in the character of God when those that follow Him don’t seem to live anything but hypocritical lives?

The poetry that seems most criticized in the poetry world is that which is too easy, too obvious, too old-school (some would say too quiet, but I won’t go there). But what if Christians got over their safe, homeschooling counter-culture and took the risk of accepting the mystery of people, and saw others as objects of love instead of something that needed to be fixed–actually being a part of the world instead of hiding from and criticizing it?

The Christian Consciousness

On his blog Stoning the Devil, Adam Fieled posted a thought provoking article regarding language and consciousness. To summarize, he synthesizes Buddhist meditation with Deconstructionism. It appears his purpose is to suggest that when reading and analyzing poetry, we need to look at our language tools as imperfect and faulty, but worth using anyways. I agree with this overall conclusion, but Fieled (unintentionally?) doesn’t give the Christian Consciousness a fair shake. In his introduction, he states,

The Buddhist’s focus, indeed, is just as much on consciousness as on morality, and “right” consciousness creates right morality. Judeo/Christian cognitive systems often (but not always) privilege morality and its expression in strictly defined (ethical) behavioral patterns over consciousness; i.e., your consciousness can be shaped, refined or even reified in any way, as long as you tow the party line. In the context of most Judeo/Christian systems, a given subject is by no means compelled to investigate his or her own subjectivity; questions of language and consciousness can be discarded if deemed uncomfortable or irrelevant. For a Buddhist, the linguistic investigations of Deconstructionism have (I would think) a more urgent pull.

Fieled doesn’t set out to establish Christian versus Buddhist consciousness, but I think somebody aught to discuss how the Christian consciousness plays into the discussion. Fieled is obviously familiar with Buddhist teaching, as he refers to the Four Noble Truths and various teachers and thoughts regarding Buddhism. Sadly, he seems to have based his opinion of the Judeo/Christian on his perception rather than actual Biblical concepts/teachings. I think Fieled has pegged the “religious” person (someone who thinks they have to follow all sorts of rules), rather than the individual who seeks to understand and emulate both the true character of Jesus (as man and messiah) and what the Bible says.

The first inaccuracy in Fieled’s claims about Judeo/Christian “cognitive systems” is that you destine your own consciousness by “tow[ing] the party line.” If you do what you are supposed to do, you can manipulate your own consciousness into whatever you want it to be. However, the Christian “system” of growing in consciousness is called sanctification, where God changes the heart and mind of the believer through the Holy Sprit, and it takes the entirety of one’s life to complete (from salvation to death). The Christian is to pay attention to this process, and work at getting better, but it should be more meditative and genuine than simply dancing around a line of rules and regulations. This is somewhat similar to Fieled’s idea that our tools are imperfect–the growing Christian sees himself as imperfect and desires to be involved.

Secondly, the idea that Christian “systems” aren’t “compelled to investigate his or her own subjectivity” is ludicrous. Whether one investigates the ideas of spiritual gifts, the sentiment in the Psalms and Proverbs, or even the creation story, it becomes obvious that uniqueness is important in the Christian journey. I think if someone believes in Jesus as savior, he or she needs to figure out how he/she is unique, figure out what God has wired him or her to do.  The difference here with the idea of consciousness is one of God consciousness rather than self consciousness. While Buddhists seem to try and rid one’s self of that self in search for emptiness, the Christian sets out to align his or her heart/mind/spirit/soul/will with God’s. This is part of the sanctification process mentioned earlier. In this search for subjectivity, man finds unity in the spirit of God, thus opposing the idea of deconstruction (and making this entire thought process relevant), which I will return to in a bit. This God consciousness is most clear when Jesus is in a garden the night he was arrested. He walks a short distance from his friends and confesses to God that he doesn’t want to go through with this whole crucifixion thing, but then he says that God’s will is more important than his own. Even Jesus showed an example of aligning the human mind with God’s.

Thirdly, I am saddened by the fact that Christians are perceived as discarding questions of language and consciousness if they are uncomfortable or (self-proclaimed to be) irrelevant. If this is a perception, then people must be thinking that way, but I don’t think it is in line with Biblical concepts. Jesus says to take the tree out of your own eye before judging the piece of sawdust in someone else’s eye. This relates to the previous point of self-reflection, but it also relates to the idea that if something is uncomfortable or challenging, it needs to be a higher priority than anything else.

Hopefully, this provides a few points that paint a different picture of the Christian journey, one of of self-reflection, meditation, and growth, rather than one of snippy religious rule-following. With this in mind, I’d like to add my own thoughts on language, Deconstructionism, and Christian consciousness. Fieled gives importance to language through meditation. Language must be equally important (if not more so) to the Christian, as language itself transcends mankind. The book John says that “in the beginning [of time] was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” Many pastors may stop me right here and say that this passage is about Jesus being the physical representation of scripture, the actual word of God. I’m not arguing with that, but I’m struck that the word, or words, or language are synonymous with God. (I’m not saying only Christians have access to language, that’s silly. I am saying, from the Christian point of view, that words are a pretty big deal!!). Add to this thought the creation story in Gensis. (I’m not getting into evolution versus creation here either–I’ve already written extensively about that.) Genesis says that when spoke, major things happened. God said let there be light, and the light seperated from the darkness. God said let there be a seperation between land, water, and air and the skies and oceans came into being (again, I’m not commenting on how long this took, or making statements on old Earth young Earth big bang. RIght now, it’s about the language!!). Not only does God equate himself with language, but he uses His spoken word create. And all of this before the existence of humans. I would say that language should be a big deal within the Christian system.

Which leads me to Deconstruction. The idea behind Deconstructionism is that when evaluating a piece of literature, the reader assumes that that piece exists solely on its own, completely independent of anything else. The Deconstructionist cannot see the writing as a cohesive whole, but rather as a work that is contradictory, that doesn’t mean what the author intends it to mean, and therefore resulting in creative failure.

Deconstruction then is in direct opposition to the Christian system.  The practice of automatically looking for contradictions has led many people to atheistic and agnostic beliefs (I’m not saying this is the only reason people abandon and/or reject the Christian faith, but one possibility.). Looking for contradictions have also led people into a deeper, more honest relationship with Christ.  Jesus sought unity between mankind and God in every facet of life. In this sense, Deconstruction is in itself, contradictory. I don’t think this means being a religious robot because who loves something/someone who is holding their feet (or soul?) over the fire screaming, “Love me, or die! Love me!!” Deconstruction seeks disunity, and the Christian system seeks unity.  And they are synthesized through Christ. [Edit: By synthesized, I mean brought together and changed–maybe synthesis isn’t the right word here, but I’m trying to get at the idea the Christ brings forth change towards unity.]

Like I said earlier, Fieled and I agree that our tools of language are imperfect and flawed. I add to that thought that we ourselves are imperfect and flawed, contradictory in nature. In our humility and realization of our fallen nature, we can openly turn to Christ for saving unity. This doesn’t mean that everything is peachy-keen as Christian radio, art, and music might suggest, as it is only the beginning of the sanctification process.

So I do think that the Christian system holds the responsibility to seek an understanding of language, contradictions, and unity through a desire to be aligned with God’s consciousness. This impacts not only one’s perception of literature, but perception of life as well.