Archives For Poetry

The Cruciform Heart of the Arts

May 30, 2013 — 5 Comments

beretPart of the challenge of addressing the topic of Christians and the Arts is that Art and Beauty are some of the biggest idols in our day. Consider the fashion industry, movies, video games, theater, and popular music. Even sports have enormous aesthetic angles with their paraphernalia and nicknacks. You can tell the gods a culture worships by the cathedrals it builds. We build stadiums and shopping malls. What are the stadiums for? For fashion galas, concerts, games, various sorts of artistic events most of them thoroughly sexualized and commoditized to serve our modern Aphrodites and Mammons. What are the shopping malls for? For outfitting our idolatries, for imitating and serving the gods.

And at the same time, there’s nothing whatever wrong or evil with making beautiful clothing, stunning movies, inspiring plays, or fun music. Nor is there anything sinful about building indoor, climate controlled markets to buy and sell in. Three cheers for stadiums and shopping malls. And so you see part of the challenge.

Add to this the fact that if kids grow up on the standard cultural catechism, they grow up venerating the pantheon of cultural icons: Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, and marinating in the general cinematic milieu. And then comes along a guy in the youth group who tells you he wants to be rock star when he grows up. His favorite band is Imagine Dragons, and he can play a few old Aerosmith riffs on the guitar his grandmother bought him. His favorite movie is Transformers 3. Or the college girl who wants to be a theater major. She’s done Shakespeare a few times in high school, and Michelle Pfeiffer is a real inspiration. Or maybe it’s the guy who’s studied the work of the Coen brothers, Tim Burton, Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and he can talk story telling and camera angles and green screens. He’s following some no-name indie guys too. They’ve got something coming up at Cannes next May. He smokes cigarettes so you know he’s really sincere. You might even say authentic. Continue Reading…

In Art, Bible, Church, Creation, Culture, Evangelism, Grace, Movies, Music, Poetry, Wisdom
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Peter Hitchens on his brother, Christopher

December 16, 2011 — Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Hitchens writes of his brother, Christopher Hitchen’s death:

Two pieces of verse come to mind, one from Hilaire Belloc’s ’Dedicatory Ode’

‘From quiet homes and first beginnings, out to the undiscovered ends, there’s nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends’

I have always found this passage unexpectedly moving because of something that lies beneath the words, good and largely true though they are. When I hear it, I see in my mind’s eye a narrow, half-lit entrance hall with a slowly-ticking clock in it, and a half-open door beyond which somebody is waiting for news of a child who long ago left home.

And T.S.Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ (one of the Four Quartets)

‘We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time’

These words I love because I have found them to be increasingly and powerfully true. In my beginning, as Eliot wrote elsewhere in the Quartets, is my end. Alpha et Omega.

Read the rest here.

 

In Funeral Meditation, Misc, Poetry, Wisdom
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A Prayer for Russia

August 19, 2010 — Leave a comment

By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our Father All-Merciful!
Don’t abandon your own long-suffering Russia
In her present daze,
In her woundedness,
Impoverishment,
And confusion of spirit.
Lord Omnipotent!
Don’t let, don’t let her be cut short,
To no longer be.
So many forthright hearts
And so many talents
You have lodged among Russians.
Do not let them perish or sink into darkness
Without having served in Your name.
Out of the depths of Calamity
Save your disordered people.

In Poetry, Prayer
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Falling and Singing

January 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

“When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

HT: Remy Wilkins

In Literature, Poetry
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Doubting Rene

May 23, 2003 — Leave a comment

I know nothing in deed and all in thought
says Descartes, without a tongue of sense
or a cheek of meaning.
No aspirated syllables or hands with fingers
to write or spell insanity in
Latin words–curses–faceless and disembodied
like smoke to meet the sky.

I’ll not believe your matterless musing
until I put my hands through your side
and see your body part to my fingers.
I’ll not believe until I know you’ve rid yourself
of skin and bones forever.

In Poetry
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A Valentine Break-Up

February 14, 2003 — Leave a comment

It’s not too much to hope for more,
When God’s love is unending.
I’ll go in strength what e’er the chore
Though chocolate still be pending.

My love, I’ve sought to love you true.
I’ve given without taking.
Alas! My soul grows dim to you,
Unless there’s chocolate baking.

I swear with tears! No oath I void!
My agony you’re sowing!
My battered heart you’ve cruelly toyed!
No chocolate. So I’m going.

In Poetry
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February 1, 2003 — Leave a comment

Cain Shrugs

Cain shrugs his shoulders;
his name is not in vain.
The sweat that turned the bolders
no longer shines to feel the pain.

Remus should have known
his cross would bend the sky
-for all the mercy Christ was shown-
it’s still the single greatest lie.

But voiceless cries the sin
from Hitler to the Flood
(unless one rose again).
Every city must be built in blood.

In Poetry
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