I want to follow up on our Sunday gathering with a few reflections, some poems, some encouragement, and some invitations. First, I continue to be astonished, moved, and blessed by the quality of persons who find their way to H&H either again and again or for the first time. As a loosely formed community of noble nomads, we are like a coat of many colors. The diversity of life experiences, religious traditions, and places we come from is a wonderful gift.

I want to reiterate, for both the scholars of literature and the poetry-phobes among us that this is not a poetry class (not that that would be so offensive or criminal).

In a similar way to how we used films a few years ago to illuminate matters of life and faith, we will use the words, wisdom, and wit of poets to continue to explore what we have always been pursuing in H&H: the burning questions and the deep yearnings of our heart; ways of cultivating the mystical and prophetic dimensions of faith, and the deeper meanings of Jesus’ invitation to abundant life within a community of learning and mutual care united by the common desire to listen and respond more fully to the presence of God in a bruised, broken, and blessed world.

Like the films, I see poetry as an icon or window through which we can explore what it means to be human and holy. The making of a poem, “how a poem means,” (Ciardi), how a particular poem may uncover something deep within us or unsettle and disturb us or dazzle and awaken us, may in the process reveal the boon and burden, summons and struggle involved in the commitment to live a life that is compatible with being an image of God.

As I mentioned Sunday, to be made in the image of God means to resemble (re-symbol) or re-present God in the world in and through the daily living of our life — in the seemingly insignificant encounter, the reassuring word or nod of the head, the anonymous gesture of compassion or generosity, the hand-written note, the honest reverencing of another be they prince or pauper, receiving the inexplicable graciousness and love of another.

When brought to the level of consciousness and conscientiousness – it manifests itself as a response to the question “how am I being called to be creative or how am I participating in the recreative reality of the reign of God?”

Mary Oliver asks,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Rabbi Heschel encourages, “remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.”

So, we are still dealing with Heschel’s challenge and insistence that human being is a given but that being or becoming human is up for grabs– is a vocation, responsibility, task, and destiny—when we speak this year of anthro-poeisis, which we might think of as meaning the poem I am writing with my life (and more broadly if not biblically the poem we are together called to be writing as people of faith).

Wednesday’s Poem

The Hug

A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen. We stop too,
with our arms around each other. The poem
is being read and listened to out here
in the open. Behind us
no one is entering or leaving the houses.

Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light
off to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding
you.  A man walks up
to us and we know he hasn’t
come out of nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how
he needs. “Can I have one of those?’ he asks you,
and I feel you nod. I’m surprised,
surprised you don’t tell him how
it is – that I’m yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love – that’s what we’re talking about, love
that nabs you with “for me
only” and holds on.

So I walk over to him and put my
arms around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He’s got an overcoat on
so thick I can’t feel
him past it. I’m starting the hug
and thinking. “How big a hug is this supposed to be?
How long shall I hold this hug?” Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behind his back, he is so big!

I put my head into his chest and snuggle
I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes
into him. He stands for it. This is his
and he’s starting to give it back so well I know he’s
getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderly
we stop having arms and I don’t know if
my lover has walked away or what, or
if the woman is still reading the poem, or the houses –
what about them? – the houses.

Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave the imprint of
a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.

© Tess Galagher

It seems to me that the reign of God, the kindom of God is a masterpiece of connection. It is a revolution that begins in the heart of God and extends out to all of creation and to us who yearn for that tender yet imprinting embrace of grace into which we can lean our blood and wishes. But not only the embrace we wish to receive but also that we (perhaps unknowingly) long just as much to give – knowing that our life has left the most unremarkably remarkable imprint of tenderness on another human being.♦

Artwork: Embrace IV, George Tooker