It's book spine poem time...

Having recently declared my own leave of absence from this blog, I am now breaking the "temporary silence" I decreed in honour of my friend Erin, who got me onto this fun little thing to do when you feel like doing something, you know, fun.


Winter indoor activity #1: Book spine poetry
(Please forgive the name, Erin. I realise it isn't winter where you are. But it seems just the sort of thing that Melburnians should lap up when stuck inside in the cold.)


The rules are simple.

• Create a book spine poem (examples here).
• Take a picture.
• Post it on your blog.
• Link back to this post.
• Tag another blogger, or two, or ten.

I have to admit, I'm not exactly sure which other bloggers to tag, since I do a fair amount of my blogging in a vacuum, unaware of the blogosphere that I inhabit. So I tag all of you who read this post and have a blog. Make your own. It's fun, and was a wonderful way to start the day.

What fascinated me most about the exercise was the psychological side to it. I'm sure there could be studies done on it to identify what subconscious traits are brought to the fore in this kind of exercise. Somehow, constrained though much of it had to be (book titles had to be somehow related, and I personally rejected too many single-word titles), I ended up with a poem about the troubles of Christian perseverance, a subject almost always in my mind and often in my own writing. How odd. I'm sure there's a PhD study in this somewhere...

The Swelling Year: Watch this space

Having finished my Lent Poems project and finding the challenge of regular, disciplined writing to be of great value, I am now embarking on a more serious challenge, one which will take me a bit over a year to complete. You can read about it here at The Consolations of Writing, where you can also find what I have written so far. It'll be an unusual and difficult project so please feel free to cheer me along and offer thoughts or encouragement along the way as you see fit!

A Year of Writing Liturgically: a project in the making

Good Friday: Via Dolorosa

I

In the garden you

Sweat in drops of blood, you who

Made the earth blossom

II

And then a kiss

Betrays you with the violence

Of a close friend’s sword

III

By dark, the council

Meets and seals your fate. You let

Your own reject you

IV

While, by firelight,

Your close friend lies, denies you

To keep himself warm

V

In the morning sun,

Amid the screams, the prefect

Washes his hands clean

VI

Scourges eat your flesh

The soldiers taunt you, laugh and

Crown you now with thorns

VII

On your back you bear

The curse of all the world. You

Fall; it crushes you

VIII

A stranger by the way

Shares the weight of the cross, but

Cannot drink the cup

IX

Women weep, lament

But do they cry for you or

For the brown, dead tree?

X

The nails are hammered

You fill your lungs with anguish

While night takes the crowd

XI

But one sees through it:

A thief who sees your kingship

And dwells now with you

XII

Then, last words to she

Who gave you life; the Life, you

Now prepare to leave

XIII

With a cry, you give

Up your spirit; It’s finished,

You proclaim, and die

XIV

Down we take your body,

In the thrall of darkness, to

Its tomb in the garden

Poetry for Lent

In my last post I mentioned, a little dismissively, that I had considered the possibility of writing 40 poems for Lent this year. It has become a little more than a possibility, and if you look at The Consolations of Writing you can track my progress or, as the case may prove to be, failure at this fairly ambitious project. I'm up to three now, with a few in the wings, so we'll see how it goes. I hope they can be helpful for thoughts/prayers/devotions during this season.

Petalshower and Windfall

An anthology of my poems written from 2006-2012 is now available from the Kindle store at this link:

Petalshower and Windfall: Poems by Matthew Pullar

If you do not have a Kindle reader, the free Kindle app can be downloaded to iPhones, Android devices or iPads to allow you to read it. Hope you enjoy it!

The Kernel: A Poem

John 12:20-33

An insect buzzed around Andrew’s head

And the words of the Master made a similar sound,

Humming round and round in the noonday bustle,

My countrymen still waiting somewhere in the sidelines,

Our question not really answered,

The issue – as always – made a little less than clear.

Had he heard, or taken in, our request?

They had phrased it so simply –

Sir, we would like to see Jesus –

But protocol had somewhat baffled me;

They had come to me for ease of access: the face of a stranger

Somehow familiar, in a sea of unfamiliarity,

But I did not hold the clout, never did,

And so turned to Andrew who, it seemed to me, did,

But together we got nothing clearer.

Only this made sense: The hour has come

For the Son of Man to be glorified.

Yes, that much was clear.

But with budding fans

In the background, he did as he always did:

Taught us that which we could not see,

In words and figures which we could not grasp:

Unless a kernel of wheat falls to soil,

It remains only a single seed.

The image I knew; I had seen kernels

Sown in the soil, and had seen harvests

Burst forth in vast, bright golden splendour.

But harvests of wheat? This wasn’t the time

For a lesson in wheat-growth. There were some men

In the fields, waiting, ripe to be reaped.

He lost me, I think, after the seeds,

The buzzing insect now down Andrew’s arm,

My new friends in the distance, checking their watches,

The Master pausing, once again, to pray.

Now my heart is troubled, he said; but why he did

I was, myself, too troubled to hear or understand,

And only the voice of thunder above could snap me

From my impatience, the anxiety of waiting,

And the buzz of the fly, or whatever it was –

I have glorified my name; I will glorify it again –

The crowd in hysterics, and the Master aglow

With the glory of the moment and the height of his call

And, his eyes lifted up to the heavenly source

Of the voice that had thundered, they seemed then to shine

With the tears that I had hardly noticed him crying,

And in the glow of the teardrop, I fancied I saw,

Two pieces of wood, crossed one on another,

And the glorious Son lifted up on each one.

Calvin in Elfland

I don't normally write poems inspired by articles posted at DesiringGod.org but this article by John Piper about G.K. Chesterton and Calvinism really tickled my imaginative fancy, specifically this statement:

Here’s the reason Chesterton’s bowshots at Calvinism do not bring me down. The Calvinism I love is far closer to the “Elfland” he loves than the rationalism he hates.

He would no doubt be baffled by my experience. For me the biggest, strongest, most beautiful, and most fruitful tree that grows in the soil of “Elfland” is Calvinism. Here is a tree big enough, and strong enough, and high enough to let all the paradoxical branches of the Bible live — and wave with joy in the sunshine of God’s sovereignty.

And so here is my little offering in response to Piper's intriguing declaration. I like to think that, if John Bunyan had written a poem about a visit to Elfland with Calvin as his guide, it might have gone something like this. It's written 30% with my tongue in my cheek and, I suspect, 70% with my hand firmly placed on my heart.

Calvin in Elfland

…and in the forest I saw two trees

each representing different heresies

which had driven the trees rotten at the roots

and sickened the ground wherein the trees stood.

The first, a wizened, stunted thing, curled around

a sign labelled “Free Will”, stuck in the ground

where the roots most needed life and space.

“This tree,” my guide said, “has taken the place

of the tree of truth which once grew bountifully

and sheltered all in its branches, til foolishly

the gardeners cut it down and put

their shrivelled righteousness where it stood,

leaving only truth’s stump.” Thereat, I wept

at the thought of beauty once strong now kept

locked in this sickened, deadly ground.

The second tree, which I then found

beside the stunted one, was named

“Reason”. The name, though grand,

betrayed the rot that lay below

the seeming beauty. Although

it blossomed and grew pleasing fruit,

my guide drew my eyes to the roots

which were grey and lifeless.

“Why,” asked I, “can this bless-

ed tree of reason be so dead?”

“Ah, because,” my learned guide said,

“reason unsanctified is but wand’ring

proudly in the dark. The rings

of this tree declare its ancient age,

yet years that pass do not make sage

the folly of a mind enclosed within

its own ignorance; therein

lies all the blindness of our race.”

But my eyes drew then apace

to where another, grander tree

stood shining, tow’ring sovereignly

over all else in the deathly wood.

I took my guide to where it stood

and gazed wond’ringly at its leaves

and branches through which the breeze

was wondrous gentle, and I knew,

without my guide’s words, that here You,

the mighty God, had let Your grace grow

splendidly; whereat, my guide show-

ing me the sign there, which proclaimed,

“The Sovereign God Has Made His Fame

Known”, we stood in wonder and both prayed

that all might know this splendid shade…

Even His Own Brothers - A Poem

Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him. (John 7:3-5)

1.

He shook off the taunts of the well intentioned:

The right time for me has not yet come.

Had he not said the same to his mother

A few months ago, when the wine had run dry

And the master of the wedding had asked

For assistance? Had he then, any more than now,

Been concerned with social niceties or

The demands of public life? Had he courted

Then, or now, the limelight?

Yet that day the best wine had flowed:

Wine to gladden the heart. Though

Evading the piercing glances of

A public who demanded to know each step he took,

Whose clothes he wore and which brands he would support

When he overthrew Rome, or those who poked him

With sticks and said, Show us a miracle, Christ,

He would not neglect the work he came to do:

The bringing of new wine, the birth of a new kingdom,

In and yet not of this world that he trod.

2.

For you any time is right,

Said the brother whom they did not understand,

The eldest, the crazed one, the public magician who

Refused to turn up to his most glamorous gigs.

The world cannot hate you,

but it hates me because…

By now they had tuned out. They played a flute for him

Yet he would not dance, a dirge but he would not mourn.

There was no pleasing this one.

Back to their homes they went,

To the regularity of wood shaped with chisel and plane,

While in Judea he hid himself until just the right time

To shake up the self-congratulating party with

The harsh, dissident cymbal of the truth.

Boxing Day Poem

A brief scan of Wikipedia to find out about the origins of Boxing Day led me to this interesting tidbit:

In the UK, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older English tradition: in exchange for ensuring that wealthy landowners' Christmases ran smoothly, their servants were allowed to take the 26th off to visit their families. The employers gave each servant a box containing gifts and bonuses (and sometimes leftover food).

Interested by this, I decided to write a poem about Samuel Pepys and his family Christmas. It's quite silly but I feel like the seriousness of my posts of late warrant something a bit more ridiculous.

Christmas with the Pepyses

Thence by coach to my shoemaker’s and paid all there, and gave something to the boys’ box against Christmas. (From the Diary of Samuel Pepys, 19 December 1663)

In honour of age-old traditions

Wherein, at the festive time of the the year,

Those who had much would generously share

With those in less fortunate positions,

Mr Pepys took his coach to the shop

Of his shoemakers and there paid the lot

Of his bill for the year, and before he did trot

Away in his coach, he chose then to drop

Something to the boys’ box against Christmas.

The expression is odd, though Pepys too was odd

And his diary haphazard: that year he forgot

To write about Christmas Day, which must

Have been a riotous day for the Pepyses.

In one other year, his diary declares that he passed

Christmas Day with his wife and the boy whom he asked,

Or instructed, to read from Descartes before sleepses

And play for his master upon his sweet lute.

His wife sat undressed until ten, at the task

Of fixing a petticoat. (One has to ask

Why Pepys went forth in his waistcoat

That morning while she stayed boxed up at home.

His sympathy for her is clear, however.

Poor wretch he called her, and in such cold weather

A man deserves a vest of his own.)

Pepys slept soundly that night, his mind

In mighty content, he declared.

And ask though we might, if the others all shared

His content, the answer we sadly can’t find.

The light shone bright - A Poem (Advent #12)

The light shone bright, Bethlehem-ward, but

There was little else to guide them: no signs on the door,

No royal procession, no red carpet.

Watch out, the guides might have said, for the smell of cow dung:

Not a fragrance, perhaps, befitting a king,

But such was – and is – our King.

A newborn, no doubt he slept when they came to the door.

What did they say, I wonder? Is there a king in the house?

The teenage, virgin bride flushed, post-labour, almost certainly tired.

The mother will not yet be ready to receive visitors, our modern-day

Matrons would no doubt pronounce.

Yet, strangers – aliens – that they were, they

Found their way into the stable, and gave the humble

Child-king the reception he deserved.

Not that this would set the tone for the rest of his life.

Yet in this moment he was – almost – acknowledged in a manner

Befitting his natural state. But was that really the point?

Surely he could have commanded a royal party every night, if he chose.

Instead, his final night he spent in a garden, just

A few close friends (they fell asleep later on that night),

A kiss in the moonlight, a shaky prayer; Father, take this cup…

Does the story end there? We wait, on the edge of our seats.

Yet we’d prefer it, I suspect, if that was the end.

He’s easier to take, as a baby, or – dare we admit it – when dead.

Alive, a broken king, his life defies all onto which we cling;

And rightly so, yet awkward for sure. There’s no option,

Before such a king, but to bow: all else is treason.

He knows, of course, that most of us won’t.

His brow was crushed by ones like us – the ones, I suppose,

Who would not find their way to the stable no matter

How many stars there were to guide the way.

When we no longer know

I think I'm a bit late in coming to Wendell Berry. An article about him in Christianity Today five years ago declared that he was growing in popularity amongst evangelicals of my temperament - and I only really got into him last night. But never mind. There's no such thing as "too late" for these things.

I decided to read him primarily because I knew he had written about economics, and I've decided that I care too much about things like fair trade to pretend that I don't care about economics. Separating the two hardly makes sense any more. That said, I can't read economics without a soul. So instead I go to a Southern farmer-poet economist, because that's just about as soulful as it gets.

Of course, if you approach Wendell Berry in this manner, you will almost certainly become sidetracked. You will start listening to the lilt in his voice perhaps a little more than his words, and when you discover his poetry - well, then, economics will be far from your mind.

Here's a little something from him to bring some peace and beauty into whatever kind of day you are having:

The Real Work (Wendell Berry)

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

The Apologist's Evening Prayer

About a week ago, I was defending the Trinity to my housemate, who is a kind of Unitarian. I offered the best arguments I could, and some of them seemed to at least challenge him a little. But in the silence as I went to sleep after the conversation (it finished very, very late) I found that I could not rest trusting in a God I could defend with my own words and arguments. But a God who was far beyond anything I could hope to understand, a God in no need of my defence: such a God had arms I could rest in.

While in the mountains over the past few days, I found this beautiful offering by C.S. Lewis, in a book of his poems. It struck a real chord with me, and I hope it can mean something to some of you:

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more

From all the victories that I seemed to score;

From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf

At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;

From all my proofs of Thy divinity,

Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead

Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.

From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,

O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.

Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,

Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

Beggar's Prayer

I have been recently compiling a unit on "World Poetry" to teach to the Year 10s at my Melbourne school next year. This has led me through many cultures, mostly African and Indian, to find the best poems that are out there. I also had the great joy this week of sitting with one of the indigenous students from my school in Tawau - a gentle-spirited, godly boy who writes poetry - helping him to translate two of his poems from Bahasa Malaysia into English. I won't share any of his works here, because they are not mine to share, but along the way on my journey through the world's poetry, I found this beautiful offering by Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian poet. His particular blend of mysticism is, I am sure, often quite divergent from Christian belief, but I think I could say this poem word for word and mean it all. I picture Lazarus, the poor man from Jesus' parable, begging at the gates of heaven, and being let in with all the mercy of our mighty and humble King:

Beggarly Heart (Rabindranath Tagore)

When the heart is hard and parched up,

come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,

come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from

beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,

break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,

thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

Divided Loyalties

I mentioned in my post of a few days ago that there are a few different emotions that are brought up by returning to a place that was once very familiar to you. A major part of that experience, I think, is the feeling that there is often an aspect to your personality that is powerfully connected to that place - a part that may not feel connected with anywhere else. Strange and mystical as this might sound, it can actually result from a variety of quite everyday reasons: the people you love who live in that place, or the unique sensations and experiences that stem from living there. While, for instance, I may be able to eat Malaysian food even when not in Malaysia, there's nothing quite like the feeling of actually eating it in Malaysia, with the sultry heat and tropical downpour, soaking in the smells and the colours around you as you eat. This, I think, is an experience that I do not have outside of Malaysia. It awakens in me something that is not awakened anywhere else.

Then there is the love I have for the people, for the school I am visiting, for the whole, gloriously imperfect experience of being here, with them, doing what I'm doing. While I may have comparable feelings in Australia, at my school there - and I certainly do - I am someone who tends to become consumed by whatever situation I am in. While in Malaysia, my mind is almost exclusively on Malaysia. When back teaching in Melbourne, that's where my mind is once more. The effect? Not necessarily what R.D. Laing or William James would mean by the "divided self", but perhaps a more everyday approximation of it. I am still me in any place where I go, and I can be both happy and sad in equal measure wherever I find myself. And, more to the point, God is the same wherever I am, and never leaves me or forsakes me. Yet I am conflicted. I long to stay here, yet I long to go home.

Isn't this, I wonder, what we should feel about Heaven? Yet the feeling, in that case, should be more intense in the conflict it causes, while also more clear-cut in where the lines are drawn. Heaven, unlike Malaysia or Melbourne, is perfect, and we will only ever be happy there, never sad. Going to Heaven will be the true act of Going Home, where there will be no sadness or regret. Yet the Apostle Paul captured the tension perfectly when he wrote these words:

"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body." (Philippians 1:21-24)

Perhaps, when we feel these inner conflicts, they are because our divided loyalties result purely from division between earthly motives. If our desires and hearts are fixed on our true Home, then we will feel conflict, but not the conflict of a divided heart. Whether here or with Christ, our hearts will be with Him and His kingdom.

Early last year, reflecting on this same conflict, I wrote the following poem, words which, now I am back in Malaysia, bring me back to the very emotions that must have prompted me to write them. I will let this be my prayer today:

The Undivided Self

(After John Donne)

I am a homeland of warring fractions.

I am a mountain pulled by opposing forces,

a mass on the verge of becoming many islands.

If you have the power,

and the love to overpower my will,

keep me as one –

or, if there is much that must be discarded,

may you leave just the parts attached to your land;

cleave them unto your shelf, your continent,

and may all else cleave away.

If I cannot be one, then make me all None,

and make my nothing All on the land-mass of

your wondrous whole.

Sabah Reflections #1: On being foreign (and not especially humble)

I’m not sure how regular my internet access will be over the next two weeks, so my blogging may well be sporadic at best. This post is being written offline while the ideas are fresh in my mind and will be uploaded as soon as an opportunity arises. It’s early evening in Kota Kinabalu – the end of my first day back in Sabah. It’s been a day of ups and downs, not helped perhaps by the fact that I did not get to eat anything until around 12:30. But it’s also been a day of wonderful rememberings and reflections. Some solitude in the afternoon afforded me a lovely leisurely time roaming the familiar streets of KK, going to old haunts and taking far more photos than I was actually aware of. You can expect to see some uploaded here presently, but I might just focus on thoughts for the time being.

Returning to a place that was once very familiar is a strange experience. The first few days, I suspect, are a mix of delighting in becoming reacquainted with it all and being reminded of things that you had not once thought about since leaving, some of them good, some of them not as good.

It’s amazing, for instance, how simply being back in Malaysia helps me make sense of aspects of my life here that had become distant memories, even beginning to take on the atmosphere of myth. My writings from the first half of last year, for instance, attest that while living here I grew in God in ways that, back home, I have come to question, even potentially doubting that it ever happened. Being back here I can see why. There is something so humbling about life here, at least for a foreigner. You could live in far less resourced places, but enough things just won’t work, or simply don’t work how you’d expect, that you either become very quickly angry, or learn that the world does not revolve around you. There’s also a gratitude for simple blessings that develops in a place like Sabah. Functioning hot water systems can come, appropriately, to seem luxuries. Drinking water can be an unalloyed pleasure. On the other hand, rarely knowing how to do some of the most basic things has a similar effect, I suspect, to being an adult who, for whatever reason, loses the ability to walk and must learn to do so again.

When faced with humbling situations, there are two choices: accepting humility, or being humiliated. The latter regularly stems out of pride and leads only to further hardness of heart. The former leads to joy and gratitude: the sort of gratitude that, 18 months ago, prompted me to write this simple poem/prayer, which I will share with you today:

My heart is full

(sweet syrup of

your love, and each

and every gift; with sap

my tree-trunk spirit fills);

my hands, though empty,

better suited are to reach

inside my heart and take

full quota of this

liquid-blessing. Full

my heart to overflowing.

(Blessed be the hands that give.)

Invocation

(Prompted by a sermon series at my church on the Resurrection...)

Come like the long-awaited wind

Sweeping over wheat-fields and hay,

The coolness of an evening kept too long in the wings

Of a wilting, overheated day.

Come like the breeze,

Come with surprises in these pockets of wind.

Come as the change

In our day’s bored direction.

Come and rearrange.

Let your wind be our re-maker.

Come like the rising waters on our parched, cracked soil.

Come like the hope of the reservoirs,

The heaven’s drenching, torrent gift.

Come like lightning, come with the skyboards

Quaking in thunderous rapture.

Come like the heralds of the air proclaim.

Come like swift-falling storm waters.

Our brittle, broken earth needs you.

Come with majesty! Come with sudden glory

Such as rainbow-gazing Noah never saw.

Come with olive-branch promises.

Come with justice.

Come with hope.

Come, fully You; no muted impersonation.

Come crowned, the sun your halo,

The galaxies your sceptre,

The vast universe no frame for your endless expanse.

Come to our vision; come burst it open

And give eyes to see

Your earth-defying, sense-exploding

Majesty.

Happy Palindrome Day

Because today is a palindrome day (11/02/2011), I decided to write a poem in honour of the occasion. So here it is:

Palindrome

Fall back, flow forth,

Palindrome, chiasmus, sway

From end to end,

Distended, pure.

May I, small atom, sit between

These equal walls of symmetry,

A point of stillness fixed amid

The sameness and the mirrored grace

Of what once was, now once again.

(M Pullar 2011)