I need your help: vote on which poem you prefer

Hey friends! This week, I wanted to try something different. I wrote a couple poems about the same experience and every time I’ve gone back to edit them, I’ve gotten stumped. There are pieces of each that I really like but I can’t tell whether one is better than the others or whether I should meld them into a totally new poem. After a while of reading and rereading your own work, you get blind to what’s working and what’s not. It either all looks brilliant or it all looks like crap.

So I’m calling on reinforcements: you guys. Would you read through these poems and vote (there’s a poll after the poems) on which one you like best? I’d love if you shared why you voted the way you did, too, but of course there’s no pressure.

First, some context. I’ve tentatively titled these poems evangelion, based on the Greek word for “gospel” or “good news.” About a year and a half ago I was volunteering somewhere and had a fascinating conversation about faith and life with a fellow volunteer who was exploring Buddhism. He was thoughtful and receptive to my thoughts, questions, and experiences. But when I left, I felt heavy. Disquieted.

He’d grown up in a Christian home and was carrying scars from that, many of which I deeply resonated with: the moral scrupulosity, the constant questioning of one’s heart and motives, the never-ending feeling of failure, the barbed-wire wall of rules, the nauseating hypocrisy. Who wouldn’t want to throw off those chains?

But at the same time, his description of what he was looking for in Buddhism reminded me of the best of what I’ve found in my faith, of what Jesus really offers. And his answers to my questions about what made his life meaningful weren’t satisfying. There’s no ultimate good or bad standard, he said. It’s freeing, to not be judging things by their righteousness all the time. And oh, I get the appeal of that.

Yet here he was, giving up an entire Saturday to help strangers. Why did you choose that instead of staying home and sleeping in or playing video games? I asked him. What made you pick this over that? Surely there must be some sense that this is better in some way. But better how? And why should you even pick what’s “better”?

He didn’t really answer. He pulled a book of Buddhist meditations out his cargo pants pocket and talked about the peace they’d been giving him. I could see his relief, and also his continued angst and longing. I too feel angst and longing. I think I always will.

So what do you do when someone hands you their story like that? When there are answers to some of their questions that you want desperately to share but don’t know how? When there are questions they ask that you too have asked and keep asking?

It’s a strange thing, this business of faith, and sharing it might be even stranger.

I cringe at even the phrase “sharing your faith” because I’ve heard it done so poorly. I want to avoid anything close to the insensitive, bombastic, manipulative, or just downright clumsy versions of evangelism I’ve seen.

I think what I dream of is a revelation moment, where something I say sparks something in him, an “oh! I get it now,” and all of a sudden we are seeing the same thing. The scales falling off of Paul’s eyes. That moment where mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss. Where it’s not a “phew, I did a good deed and got you in the club” but a “you see the same beauty I see!”

There are a lot of motives in this desire, I know, and not all of them defensible. There’s so much pride wrapped up in it, and so much fear. How much of my angst over sharing what I believe is a lack of trust that God can actually change people? How much of this is a genuine care for another human being, versus a self-focused need to prove to myself that I am my ideal self (someone who has all the words, all the right answers, who changes people’s lives through their wisdom and wit)?

But this isn’t supposed to be an essay on evangelism. It’s a little group of poems I wrote as a way to process our conversation. I keep thinking of this guy—I don’t even remember his name. I pray for him, sometimes. Not as often as I ought.

Some notes: The first poem has the lyrics of chorus of Bastille’s “Silence” woven into it. The quote is from Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. The end of poem two is from Ephesians 5:14.

Okay. Here we go! If you actually take the time to read through them all and vote—thank you. I know you don’t have to spend your time this way, and it’s incredibly encouraging that you do. I hope in the process you can feel a little more seen.

i.

It is not enough to be dumbstruck

you run your hands through your hair and speak of 
love you could never feel, speak of 
a noose of fear, leeches of guilt on young and fragile 
skin. i huddle my arms across my chest
because I don't understand, because I do. 

Can you fill this silence?

there are quotes I have quoted to others, about
how our words are not needed. there are verses about 
lack of eloquence and strength in weakness and all 
my dreams bely my belief in them. the atrium around us
is vast and we are like islands in the middle,
little sprouts of spruce in some cold mountain lake.
my shirt is too hot and i keep hugging myself.

You must have the words

i say something about intellect and emotion, something 
about the message not the messengers. i speak
like there is peanut butter in my mouth and i can't 
look at you. i ask questions because i am searching for 
the rosetta stone between your language and mine. 

In that head of yours

walking home, I find the words. not for 
you, but for me. words like Asher Lev’s:
“I could not be a whore to my own existence.”
one day i must have decided this was the point of me: 
the one with the words that would shatter the shutters
so you could see the sea and the vast sunrise 
and the light would fall on you. 

Can you fill this silence?

i know i do not control the light. but i fear that i 
hide it under a bushel and i would like so much
for you to be dazzled by it, and for me to have played a role.
but i who flick words continually onto the canvas of my mind 
more often than not come up empty when words really count.

---

ii.

i pray, not with faith, that he will use my stumbling. 
that even though my words obscure more than clarify, 
you will still see. sometimes when i am speaking of less
important things, i stutter. in the midst—the middle—of a sentence 
i think of a better way to say it. words are my acrylic,
flicked onto my mind like a Pollock painting. they are my
clay, fingered and spun and rolled into any number of 
playthings in my mind. but when they really count, 
they desert me. all that is left is my inarticulate longing,
bleeding from my mouth like sand through fingers.

i want to tell you about the perichoresis, the dance 
of the threefold God at the heart of the universe. 
i want to tell you how He is the only one who knows
us and loves us, the only knowing that can set us free.
i want to tell you how He makes sense and is mysterious,
all the paradox Buddhist mysticism seek, all the 
logic Greek philosophers demand. how the laws
are safe when the lawgiver is also the lifegiver, how i have
felt Him at night, like a pillar of fire at the end of my bed 
to beat back the darkness and how even when i couldn’t believe
i remembered the whisper of grace in my heart in moments
when i could never have conjured up love for myself, how the
wacky and untameable and uncomfortable words He gave us
make me want to cry and keep bringing me home.

i want to ask you if you are lonely, with no one to raise hands
next to, no row of shining heads bowed to receive the Eucharist.
i want to ask you if it hurts sometimes that your actions don’t matter,
if you miss the bitter tang of regret that means you could have
chosen differently—chosen better—that means your choices
didn’t have to happen and therefore they have meaning and therefore
there is the possibility for growth and sacrifice and pride 
in a job well done. why should you be here, serving on a Saturday,
if staying home to play video games has the same moral value?
you say you couldn’t love Him—but did you ever want to? 

if you didn't, i would give anything to press my hand to your heart 
and transfer all my wanting so you could feel the ache that must 
be answered and come alive, come alive. we must awaken,
you say, and i catch my breath, because that word has been 
haunting me recently, but i have no idea how to bridge the banks
between your slumber and mine. wake up—to what? 
i should have asked that. i should asked what’s so bad about
sleeping. i should have quoted Paul. i should have smiled
more and been less closed off and been bolder, been better.

so i guess i’ll hold your name next to mine in my prayers
and ask for what only He can do anyway:
wake up, O sleeper. rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

---

iii.

i am trying to justify my existence 
i am trying to take what is in here and put it out there in a true reflection—
not even a reflection, the thing itself. is such a transposition possible? 
and i am trying to take what is out there—in Him—
how dare i even try—and put it into me, and you, and everyone
i am trying to build bridges so we live in the same land at last
and see the same sunrise and sure, we will each see different shades
but as it is now we cannot even agree on the sun
i am trying to make connections
because maybe i am afraid that i will get lost at sea,
that the current will take me and i will get ground to pieces on the rapids
or stuck in an endless eddy if i do not lash you to myself—
if we all just hold on to each other, maybe we will make it 
it is existential, which is why when i cannot find the right words
or you question the ones i say, or i question the ones i say, 
it feels like a mortal wound
i am trying to find you here in the shadowlands
but my eyes are scaled. i am trying to find Him too
and mostly it is Him finding me but i forget and feel the current again
and panic, flail, clutch at my cords of connection
pray they will keep me safe
i need to be grounded on something
i need somewhere firm to stand
i need something to bring to the altar
i need to be held but i don't know how to say it 
so i build bridges and wait for the sun to wake us 

---

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In Other Words…

On the awaken oh sleeper instagram, I did another new thing this week and shared a poem I love with notes on things that stand out to me about it, like English class…but on Instagram stories. It was so fun! I don’t want to make this post too colossal by adding in screenshots of all my comments but I did want to share the poem itself. If it inspires you to see what stuck out to me, my notes are saved on the Instagram highlights. :)

Neighbors in October

By David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

Goodreads reviews:

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (4 stars)

My Favorite Plant ed. by Jamaica Kincaid (3 stars)

The increasingly haunting question: Where is my next 5 star book?? Will I get one this year? I used to toss them out to any book I enjoyed, and I’m glad I’ve become more discriminating but I do want to absolutely fall in love with another book before 2024 ends. Stay tuned…

to staying awake —

Aberdeen