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The Language of Honesty at Work in Art
Over the past year at HighCallingBlogs.com, we've learned that poetry is a secularly acceptable way to talk about spirituality in the workplace. I'm not suggesting we water down our message and start singing kumbaya together. But many times, Christians in the workplace speak so much Jesus lingo that we scare people off.
That's where poetry comes in. You see, Jesus lingo makes for bad poetry.
I know, I know, we're supposed to be only encouraging here. But we also need to be careful that we don't encourage each other into a kind of dishonesty.
Poetry is the language of honesty. If you want to know what makes a poem good or bad, just evaluate whether it is honest. Honest poems will not have cliche. They will not be easy. They will grab you by the shirt sleeve or collar or belt loop and swing you around so that you can’t look away.
In contrast, dishonesty makes for really, really bad poetry. It also happens to make for really, really bad Christianity. When we Christians rely too much on our Jesus lingo, our faith becomes dishonest. I'm serious about this. It's not that we start expressing untruths about God or Jesus or ourselves as Christians. It is a matter of beauty and aesthetics.
All nature declares the glory of God, like the psalm says. Beautiful, aesthetically pleasing work declares the glory of God, too. Shoddy work, ugly work, not so much.
Last week, L. L. Barkat and Marcus Goodyear (that's me) talked a lot about truth and beauty. We were leading poetry workshops at the Mount Hermon Christian Writing Conference. In fact, I'll be leading more poetry workshops this weekend at Laity Lodge in a retreat with Mark Galli of Christianity Today. (I wish you all could be there with me. Someday maybe.) Once again, I'll be talking a lot about truth and beauty.
L. L. made the conversation very simple for people. We started the workshop with a game. Just write a sentence with a picture in it. We taught a few quick editing tips, then everyone handed in their sentence. While I blabbed on and on about poetry and more truth and beauty stuff, L. L. stepped aside and assembled the sentences into one poem, not unlike what Glynn Young does for the Tweetspeak Poety parties.
Here is the results of those two workshops:
Workshop 1
Dew sailed in
over stones, over me,
over pigeon purple-headed
searching silver-covered mold,
searching redwoods, eucalyptus,
come grasping for cherry bursting
grace. Dew blew in, wet cracked open
bow-backed blossom, as if to say,
"I want that one."
Workshop 2
Green fingers
stretch like a dream,
full cracking water, overflowing barrel,
reaching past mirror silver, riffling
reflection of squirrel, sequoia,
honeybee sipping prim rose,
staring past me.
Fun, huh? We crowdsourced those poems, assembling a kind of truth from bits and pieces of what everyone observed. Then we thought we should play the same game with everyone here at HighCallingBlogs.com.
Last week, L. L. invited us to consider "How to Write a Poem." Boy howdy, did we get some good responses. We're featuring Karenee's response today because she followed the rules so precisely and wrote a great poem:
I'm not going to touch the cutting edge
of glass broken as it fell from the ledge
of concept into reality,
and all because
there were
flowers
drinking water
at the table,
and the cat was thirsty.
All RAP Participants
Ange’s 7685 The Place for Dreams and Sunsets
Simple Country Girl’s Wild and Free and Odd One Out
Marcus’s Zombie Gratitude, Resort and Yet Another Heresy
Cindy’s Stepping Out
Linda’s As for Me
Cheri’s Because it’s April
Miriam’s Three in One Poem
Lyla’s Of Heroes, and Falling into Wells
Laura’s Uncommon Currency and Sunday Sermon Notes
Erin’s Contrast
Monica’s Consuming Sin, Consumed
Kelly’s Rebirth
Karen’s Cutting Edge
Emily’s Sycamore Seeds
Erin’s Called Forth
Missy K’s Morning, Nine Years Later
Glynn’s My Western City Dreaming
Nichole’s B poem
Lorrie’s Unsweet
Elk’s ////
Maureen’s Sore Chasing Dreams
Louise’s River Deep
Melissa’s fool’s errand
Dave’s Subway Guy
Kingfisher’s He is Risen
Jim's House
Monica's Closure
Cindy's Throwing a Pot
LL's Note to the Shepherd and On Writing an Easter Poem
nAncY's picture
Vee's Blood on the White Cliffs
Photograph, A spider loves its work, by kadavoor / jeevan jose is used under a creative commons license. Post by Marcus Goodyear.
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