a tender tapestry of music, silence, poetry and prayer...

One of my deepest dreams - spiritual, artistic, and political - is to create a small ensemble of musicians and poets willing to take songs, poems, silence, and the Scriptures of various spiritualities and blend them together to evoke both contemplation and conversation. I suspect some good food would be essential, too. The Irish poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama, said, "I have turned to poetry throughout my life to make sense of difficult times. I have found myself in grave need of language to soothe or to confront or to make sense or to make meaning or to make connections. And poetry has been that scripture for me to turn to." That has long been true for me, too. 

It is, of course, counter-intuitive to dream such a dream: creating a mystical encounter with one another that weaves together a tender tapestry of music, silence, poetry and prayer at this moment in contemporary America almost invites Philistine violence and ridicule, yes? Such an event would be the polar opposite of a Trump rally - and maybe that's all the more reason to go for it. In a season of despair, the words of theologian Walter Brueggemann resonate. It is only when we have grieved long enough to empty our hearts of hubris and expectation that the Lord's new song has enough space within us to take up residence. We cannot sing the songs of Zion quickly by the waters of Babylon. It is morally impertinent to those in exile and creatively impossible for the artists. The prophet Ezekiel gets it right when he tells us that: "It was in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, that the heavens opened, and I saw visions of God." (Ezekiel 1:1

For years I explored doing something like this within the confines of ministry and worship. We pushed the edges and explored some creative directions. But that experiment came to a close four years ago with my realization that we had exhausted the possibilities of a traditional faith community. So, like Ezekiel, I have been watching and waiting with a grieving heart. To be honest, Ezekiel was way more patient than me. I had to try out a few other small experiments before I was ready to really wait. Maybe that's why the words of the poet Malachi Black hit me. He is referencing George Steiner's essay entitled "Silence and the Poet." 

So much of God's power lies in God's silence... What lies beyond man's word is eloquent of God.’ For Steiner, the boundaries of speech are manifest in ‘three other modes of statement—light, music, and silence,’ which, in reaching beyond language, together ‘[give] proof of a transcendent presence in the fabric of the world."

His poem, "Entering Saint Patrick's Cathedral," is a playful "inversion of Stiener's thought." 

I have carried in my coat, black wet
with rain. I stand. I clear my throat.

My coat drips. The carved door closes
on its slow brass hinge. City noises—

car horns, bicycle bells, the respiration
of truck engines, the whimpering

steel in midtown taxi brakes—bend
in through the doorjamb with the wind

then drop away. The door shuts plumb: it seals
the world out like a coffin lid. A chill,

dampened and dense with the spent breath
of old Hail Marys, lifts from the smoothed

stone of the nave. I am here to pay
my own respects, but I will wait:

my eyes must grow accustomed
to church light, watery and dim.

I step in. Dark forms hunch forward
in the pews. Whispering, their heads

are bowed, their mouths pressed
to the hollows of clasped hands.

High overhead, a gathering of shades
glows in stained glass: the resurrected

mingle with the dead and martyred
in panes of blue, green, yellow, red.

Beneath them lies the golden holy
altar, holding its silence like a bell,

and there, brightly skeletal beside it,
the organ pipes: cold, chrome, quiet

but alive with a vibration tolling
out from the incarnate

source of holy sound. I turn, shivering
back into my coat. The vaulted ceiling

bends above me like an ear. It waits:
I hold my tongue. My body is my prayer.

During Lent I am going to have a few conversations with some poets and musicians I love to see where we might go together. There's enough on my plate right now being present with Di's health concerns as well as some trips up to L'Arche Ottawa before Easter to expect anything more. But then...?