Jan 9, 2009

The Poetry of Twitter

by Anonymous

Kevin Hendricks
Another day for Random Acts of Poetry. Some of you may be wondering a bit about this little theme cropping up on HighCallingBlogs.com. This network is about glorifying God in every day life and work, right?

Like TheHighCalling.org , we originally envisioned this network as professionally focused, leaning toward business. Some blogs in the network do this incredibly well like Shrinking the Camel and Red Letter Believers and New Breed of Advertisers . We love what you all are doing, Bradley , David , and Sam. (And hey, Sam, participated in Random Act of Poetry this week with Soaked to the Skin ! Go Sam!)

But then we realized another thing we could help people with. Bradley, David, and Sam understand this vision of faith in daily work because they understand how to find the miraculous in the ordinary . They understand that God is in their work.

People like Ann Voskamp and others are always helping us find God in surprising places. L. L. Barkat has been finding God in her back yard. Gordon Atkinson finds God afresh in the Bible (harder to do than you might think). Jim Schaap finds God at his college classrooms and in his year of morning thanks. The Rogue Angel and Satchel Pootch even manage to find God in snarkiness.

Which brings me to today’s feature.

King of Snark, Kevin Hendricks joined the blog network this week. (You may have seen this little side project he’s involved about Church Marketing .) Kevin is a great guy. On his blog yesterday, I noticed a post that looks a lot like poetry . It's an auto archive of all his Twitter Post updates from that day.

If you are not on Twitter, that autoarchive list may not make sense. Even Kevin decided that “importing tweets into my blog doesn't seem like a good idea. [I] like the archive feature, but out of context they're just weird.”

But suddenly, I started seeing poetry all over Kevin’s twitter feed. So I compiled something from Kevin’s tweets over the last few days that I'm calling “Ode to Twitter and Breakfast.” It is begging to be performed... if only there was world enough and time.

Ode to Twitter and Breakfast

Nobody tweets about breakfast anymore.
It's all get to work this and late for work that.
I'm sitting down to breakfast. Yeah.
Cereal, milk, OJ. That's all breakfast needs
to be. I love breakfast. Between 7-9 a.m.
talk about breakfast. And coffee doesn't count.
Toast is underrated.
Confession: I have *two* distinct Breakfast Time songs.
Confession #2: I came up with them *before* I had kids.
Also, I launched a Billy Graham blog, billyspot.com
"The morning is here ... breakfast is near."
Wow, you've got some breakfast song chops.
I promise to keep the Billy tweets to a minimum.
My mother drilled it in to me to avoid sugary cereals
so it's Wheaties. I used to eat Corn Chex too.
Wheaties, milk, OJ. Always. Yes, I love habits.
A 1978 Texas Monthly feature asks if Billy
Graham is the most powerful evangelist since Jesus.
My songs involve repeating "It's breakfast time" to different beats.
Oh, sweet breakfast time, it's good to be back.
When my body conspires against me, breakfast will help, right?
If breakfast doesn't help, you can't blame breakfast. It tried.
Billy Graham's 1st public testimony "reinforced
my conviction that I would never become a preacher."
Then, oh, sweet breakfast time, it's good to be back.

Also, we’ve got other people celebrating Random Acts of Poetry around the network.

Soaked to the Skin by Sam Van Eman of New Breed of Advertisers
Found in the Outdoor Journal IV by L. L. Barkat Seedlings in Stone
Of Launching and Recovering Faith by Ann Voskamp of Holy Experience
Poetry by Mom2Six of Treasures of Darkness
Morketiden by Erica of These Three Remain
Honorable mention for this crazy video of Mark D. Roberts at Ramblin Dan that has a kind of poetry to it.

I even recorded a poetry podcast at goodwordediting.com with one of my favorite Christian poets Jeanne Murray Walker . Give it a listen.

Or just skip my site and go straight to Jeanne Murray Walker’s work .

(If I missed anyone, let me know in the comments and I'll add a link. Remember to tag your posts "Random Act of Poetry" to help create community. And send me an email with a link so I don't miss it, too. This is a big network now, you know!)

And finally, if you ARE on Twitter, friend us @highcallingblog @markgoodyear @chriscree and @ramblindan .