Three Theological Poems

It’s been a funny time for writing poetry.  I’m still awaiting an upsurge in confidence for some reason; and my creative energies have in many ways been employed elsewhere with academic work.  And so these three poems appeared at various times over the last year, and it seemed to make some sense to collect them here at the start of 2017.  I think there are some worthwhile thoughts in there; I’ve purposely let them ‘cool’ for quite a long time before editing.  Who knows if these things are helpful to others?  In any case, it’s helpful for me to have a place to put them for now.

I’m preparing for my ordination this summer and will begin my curacy back in Bath & Wells Diocese.  It feels like there is much to be done before then, not least in terms of ongoing theological thinking, and yet the events of the last few months have been fruitful and formational.  Durham continues to be a beautiful and stimulating environment in which to learn and earn my Anglican stripes, with its wonderful Cathedral dedicated to St Mary which inspired the first poem.

Last summer, I spent a month in a ‘modern Catholic’ parish – not dissimilar to those where I will be ministering very soon.  The second poem is a reflection on ministry there, with its many echoes of my childhood in the Roman Church, as well as its distinctively Anglican features.  The title refers to the Latin prefix ‘trans’ (meaning ‘across’ or ‘beyond’) that forms part of many of our English words.  The poem springs from my questions concerning the theological concept of ‘transubstantiation’ of the bread and wine at the Eucharist; however, there are many other relevant ‘endings’ in view too:  transcendence, transgression, translucence and so on.  ‘Trans’ itself as an abbreviation has come to refer commonly to gender and sexuality – suggesting further boundaries which both Church and society are called to navigate in our time.

The third poem is a reflection on the apophatic way of ‘unknowing’ – the idea that we can only begin to speak of God in terms of what “he” is not.  Really my understanding of this is only in its infancy; but I continually find it helpful to see theological orthodoxy as only really constituting a ‘fence around a mystery’, as someone wise once said.  In the struggle to figure out what to believe, how to behave, and where to belong, it is reassuring to know that I don’t have to – indeed can’t – know everything.  The Christian life consists in things much more demanding and liberating than mere knowledge:  it thrives on, and delights in, Divine trust and love.

 

Cloister

After prayers
I steal through darkened grandeur
And stumble monkishly
Into your light.
The cloister opens like a song;
A breath of green
Anointed with April dew,
Each splashing arch a luminous choir
Rush of air and sun-poured light
Chaste and full like the spring sky,
Hailing she whose womb ripened very God;
A kingdom: outside-in, inside-out.

 

 

Trans-

“I’ll just go and get Jesus,” you said
And I baulked at the daftness of it.
But later when you held it aloft –
That translucent disc,
Paper-silly sun from out a packet,
Barely even bread, let alone body –
Became for just a moment
Not his flesh quite yet
But the see-through of his opened side,
A porthole in this ship we few are crewing,
A roundel glimpse of grace-filled shores.

 

Via Negativa

There is a freeing spaciousness to nought
An open oval looping every thought;
Emptied of idolatry’s vain projections
Loosed from history’s blinkered vivisections
Osmotic, doubt-permitting porous circle:
Open-mouthed in awe-beholding startle!
The angels fly their ever-wondering circuit
Like moons ’round gloomy globes in rev’rent orbit
And all seems put away beyond our grasp,
Then sudden Love breaks lock and key and hasp.