I had no clue how to categorize my blog when I first joined The High Calling network. L.L. Barkat was the managing editor back then, and she channeled me into Culture. Culture? Are you kidding? Really? I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how much that one small act encouraged me. Then I lived with God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us for nine months (I never thought about that as a pregnancy before), and it changed my life. She has been a Barnabas to me, and I’m thrilled to welcome her into this space with an excerpt from that book.
“Listening is the path to intimacy,” says poet John Fox . . .
To become better poet-listeners, Fox suggests that we quiet ourselves for a good ten minutes and practice listening to the world around us. With the openness of a contemplative, we’re to make note of movement sounds, voice sounds, doors shutting, dogs barking. Then he suggests we focus on one or two of the sounds that most intrigue us. Feel them, he instructs. Note where you feel them in your body.
Such exercise in listening produces surprising intimacy. Like the day I decided to listen to a Coke bottle. I’m kind of a health nut; I can’t remember the last time I took a swig of soda. But I listened anyway and this is the poem I found when I quieted myself.
“Bottled”
I am fizzle
fazzle pizzazz,
snap crackle…
slide your hand
past my red belt
take me by the
ribbed neck
set teeth on edge
flick fluted tin
and, pop!
We can question the value of bonding with a Coke bottle by listening to it, then writing down what we hear. But I like to remember Ruth Haley Barton’s observation that we bring the same patterns of intimacy to our relationship with God that we have with people (and, I would add, with the created and invented world around us). In other words, if I can’t bond with a Coke bottle for ten minutes, or imagine what it is like to be a Coke drinker, I’m less likely to be able to bond with an invisible God. The interesting thing about the soda poem is that it led one commenter (I posted the poem on my blog) to suddenly desire a Coke; it urged another commenter to admit a questionable habit (his value judgement, not mine) of opening bottle tops with his teeth. This is how it works when we get intimate; a process of identification and sharing is initiated.
King David, great poet of the bible, was a pretty good listener. He listened to sky, wind, deer, cattle, mountains, valleys, cedars and goats. In their rising, panting, going in and coming out, he heard echoes of the Divine, and responded, “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” This led him to uninhibited praise: “I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being” (Ps. 104:24, 33).
Writing poetry can lead us to intimacy and praise; it can also help us begin to listen to ourselves. It’s a kind of active silence well-suited to the extrovert, wherein we welcome flapping sounds from the burden on our backs and express them in the space of a poem. The confines of limited space ask us to first listen hard, so we can later capture and powerfully communicate elusive truth. As Fox notes, the point is not to become a world-famous poet (a daunting goal indeed) but rather to provide “a home for your bewilderment. A healing place for your anger… the space [you] need to breathe and wander, laugh and wail.”
Is this why the Psalms have been one of the most enduring and inviting parts of the bible? What David pulled from the depths of his soul on silent nights, are poetic truths so raw, ebullient, furious, and sorrowful, that we can taste the truth of his experience. His words help us become intimate with ourselves, others and God by providing a home for our confusion, a healing place for our disillusionment, a place to breathe. In the end, I can think of no better way to express what poetry, including David’s poetry, does for us than to share these words from poet Laure Krueger. In an intimate act of listening to my words of disillusionment in an online post, she juggled and reformed them into this…
I find myself thirsty
for plain sounds that whisper,
glory.
sure words resonate
where i can hear, once again
God moving
through broken lines
that murmur with tenderness. but
at the heart of poetry, silences.
I’m not offering an “Arnoldian notion of poetry replacing religion,” but rather a recognition that God murmurs in the silence of unexpected places. Poetry can be one of those places.
A statement for you to complete in the comments: “If I close my eyes and listen right now, I hear…”
Post excerpted from “Poetry: silence,” God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us, by L.L. Barkat and used with permission.
L.L. Barkat is the author of six books, including the new collection Love, Etc: Poems on Love, Laughter, Longing & Loss; an experimental fiction and poetry title, The Novelist: A Novella, and Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing (twice named a Best Book of 2011). She has appeared at Best American Poetry, VQR, NPR, Every Day Poems, and Scratch Magazine. Staff Writer for The Curator and Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry, Barkat can be found at llbarkat.com.
This is quite a lovely post (I was going to write your name, and you told me once. I’m sorry to have forgotten. Laura, maybe?) I agree with Fox, that deeply listening, changes us (whether listeing to nature, people, music or other myriad sounds great and small). And I think you are right: God does murmur, whisper, or even shout, and a good way to hear Him is in silence and in poetry. When you mentioned the “flapping sounds,” they immediately conveyed me to a frigid December afternoon, just six months after my beloved father’s death, at his gravesite. Overcome by grief on what would have been his eightieth birthday, I listened for God in the silence of a desolate cemetery and in the silence of ny cavernous heart-turned-cold, Try as I might, I couldn’t feel or hear God at all. Then, suddenly, I heard a raucous flapping–a throng of geese honking over me in what seemed like a joyous birthday song. Listening for “something” and then hearing this unexpected jubilation gave me hope that my father was celebrating, still. I knew that I longed to. Later that night, I penned a poem describing this encounter, lines outlining just small enough a container to hold a modicum of my grief–just enough to let some of it escape my soul, without completely engulfing me in despair. In just that tiny healing-space of a poem, I was able to house some of my bewilderment, before it ate me alive. I breathed a little easier that day.
Thank you again for this exquisite, thoughtful post! My father will be gone seven years in just two weeks. I’m glad your post prompted this remembrance.
Bless you.
Lynn
This is such a touching piece …. and this part here: “Listening for “something” and then hearing this unexpected jubilation gave me hope that my father was celebrating, still.” I find that, too. When we listen we find amazing unexpected solace/assistance/wisdom.
Isn’t that the truth, Donna? I’m so grateful for all these suggestiongs, including yours, to listen. Hoping your listening will bring what you most would love to hear.
L.
What a sweet remembering, Lynn. It’s interesting how a word like “flapping” can stimulate our mind to remember something totally different from what was said. We have a cloth awning in a west window that we can raise and lower with a tie thingie from inside the house. But I heard it flapping in the wind.
This makes me smile, Sandy! =] Ah, you need to write a awning-flapping poem and let your fancy take wing!
🙂
A beautiful remembrance, Lynn. Yes, it is Laura, but I go by L.L. in public spaces 🙂
I love that the sound of birds in this piece (which was really the sound of a burden on the back) transformed itself into your memory of the geese and the healing of words.
THank you for these kind words, Laura. I do love where others’ words can take us. Thanks for being faithful to write.
L.
in my right ear
silence rings
in my left
a fan hums to cool
this summer-like spring day
my dog laps at his water
to cool his just walked self
and the sound of a truck rolls by
So sweet . . . this has a Haiku-feel to it, Donna.
L.
I like that silence rings. 🙂
And I love summer-like spring days.
J typing and tapping, searching for news for tomorrow’s 1A
Deep-voiced D explaining something
sharper-voiced A asking questions
P sliding his stylebook back in its place, opening drawer, stowing
pen, unfurling plastic bag to take home his tupperware
The church across the street chiming nones
The printer snapping to attention
A different J calling S gramma though he’s really a grampa
S loping in his sneakers
Someone laughing
C, who almost died in the desert last year, laughing
R’s gentle “Hi there” as she passes behind and touches my back
A phone ringing
The men’s room door to the left
and the stairwell door to the right
being opened and shut in stereo
And when four conversations end at the same time,
the silent period and paragraph return
Oh, you put me right there in all that action. I wasn’t quite ready for the silent period. 🙂
I remember when C almost died in the desert… I’m glad she’s there with her laugh.
And R’s gentle “Hi there” as she touches your back makes me smile.
That soda poem has been one of my favorites for years. This piece is print-worthy to read time and again.
Thanks, both Sandra and L.L. for the wisdom, inspiration, and fun!
I love that poem, too. And I love how she snapped, crackled, and popped! (I loved popping off those tops in those machines.) Hey! Is that where we here in Michigan picked up the term, “pop” for soda?”
The ceiling fan whirring above my head, the smaller birds tweeting more and more slowly as the sun sets, the crows shouting, way off in the distance. Tonight I am grateful not to hear the wind – perhaps tomorrow will be cooler than today’s 92.
I’ve been very warm the last two or three days as we’ve been in the 80’s. Now way am I complaining. Nope. Not after this winter. I’m as happy as a birdie with a filled feeder.
Sandra, I’m so glad you’ve hosted LL’s lovely words here in this space. I remember when I read this chapter, too; it prompted several poems about listening and looking. Here’s one I wrote about a bottle of olive oil on my kitchen counter:
Pressed into Joy
Golden oil in
a bottle
liquid light
refracting sun in shimmers
a mirrored shape
reflects on the surface
and I wonder at the
drop, drop, drops
of light as they
drip, drip, drip
down.
All this tasting
joyfulness because
something was crushed
and pressed,
leaving light.
Whoa, Jody! I love that… Liquid light. Tasting joy because of crushing and pressing. Bravo!
so gorgeous and especially hopeful in times of pressing
I needed to read this a few times. Poetry is indeed the most intimate experience with words that I have found and often my devotional ends with a poem…or begins with a poem. God spills His poetry everywhere allowing us to, not seek to be great poets but perhaps brush the hem of great poetry from the greatest Poet of all!
Recently I read Rumors of Water, laughing and crying through L.L. Barkat’s words of wisdom, artistry, humor.
I love the Psalms and I love the poetry in Job as well. In this fast-paced world it takes true resolve to slow down and listen deeply.
Thank-you for sharing your thoughts.
Love Rumors of Water! But then I love everything L.L writes. 🙂