(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
I’m trying to understand the Bible’s cosmology (esp. in Genesis, but also in the New Testament) as metaphor. Despite the fact that I’m a poet, that’s not easy for me. This poem is a pushing, a shoving, a determined attempt to see God’s loving.
Here’s the passage I was looking at when I wrote the poem:
[1] As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, [2] in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. [3] All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. [4] But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, [5] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. [6] And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, [7] in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:1-7 NIV
Despite how it may sound, I don’t pretend to understand much of what I wrote in this poem. I’m playing by ear, attempting to work out God’s melody. When I was younger, I despised the pompous blather of “poets who, in fact, don’t mean a thing.” But I excuse it now as a “thinking out loud.” Pondering, not so proud.
ABOUT THE THIRD STANZA
I’m not real happy that I resorted to just mouthing what Scripture says as though I understand it. The already/not yet, de jure status of believers is every bit as mysterious to me as how to deal with a cosmology that is foreign.
ABOUT THE LAST LINE
I’m going to just admit…. I was pushing for a rhyme to “was.” But I do like the unintended puzzle that the last line presents, and it’s always possible that my subconscious was “on to” something.