Talking with my favorite poet
Six months ago, I liked a poem for the first time.
Okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration; I liked The Waste Land in college. But this year, when I read a short poem by Bonnie Thurston called “Miracle story,” I took to this blog to proclaim it as The Best Poem Ever Written. I was mostly kidding, as I’m the last person qualified to make that assessment. Suffice it to say, I liked the poem.
Fast forward to now, when the Christian Century (a progressive magazine where I work) has published another poem by Bonnie. This one, “The church’s one foundation,” is as relevant to the Harbor community as the last. Where “Miracle story” focused on the nature of belief, “foundation” considers the journey of those who continue to stay connected to organized religion in some way (and those who don’t).
I’ll share a few brief thoughts, but first I invite you to engage with the poem yourself. You can read it here, and you can also watch this video where I TALK WITH THE WONDERFUL POET HERSELF:
(A dream come true for Jon.)
This poem is already really good, I think, if you consider it in light of “normal” churches. But I find it absolutely fascinating when I ponder it alongside Harbor—a community that is both church and anti-church, that has a name already rich with similar ship-related imagery.
Are the folks at Harbor the “not rats, but certainly escapees” who have fled from the church? Or are we those “who remain, / not confident, but at least / hopeful she isn’t going down”? In either case, we continue to pursue Love—but are we pursuing God’s love inside or outside the hold of that crumbling conveyance?
I don’t know the answers (though we are technically a church, for the record). Perhaps we are both the ship and the raft floating away from it. Both the sailor and the refugee. Or maybe we’re building a new ship, one that both is and isn’t the same ship as those that have sailed these seas.
Wherever we might individually and collectively find ourselves in this poem, thank you to Bonnie Thurston, and thank you to all those poets who use words to connect with our hearts.
