Christspring

Eternity’s harbinger roots and stems
In the turning tulips, sunny daffodillies
Forsythia, hyacinth, and vernal egg

Budding, bursting, bounding forth
Rising – born new – from earth’s tomb
Crowned with seed jacket, clothed in green and purple perfection:

Heavensprung Champion

Words about Word

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The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.
- John 1:1 (The Message)

They can be like the sun, words. They can do for the heart what light can for a field.
- St. John of the Cross

A word is dead when it's been said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
- Emily Dickinson

Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" - Jack Spicer

I'm apt to get drunk on words. - Madeleine L'Engle

Her words were like tinfoil; they shone and they covered things up.
- Helen Cross

Step out form behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living, breathing, bad hair day kind of person.
- Beth Kephart

Green Sprouts in Spring

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I've been reading Luci Shaw's latest book, a collection of her reflections on creativity and faith. It's titled BREATH FOR THE BONES: Art, Imagination and Spirit. Her words are baptising my mind, renewing my love for creating; and inviting me to return to my love of poetry, visual art, music . . .
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Here are a couple of paragraphs that seem particularly apropos today as green shoots are sprouting in my yard, the park, and my soul:
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I find it fascinating to note that as we allow the created universe and the Scripture to illuminate us with their primary and secondary revelations, what we deeply believe will push up through the fabric of our writing or painting like green sprouts in spring, bursting the earth's crust.
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When the artist lives in the house of faith, her consciousness is suffused with and informed by Christian images, and when that imaginative intelligence is allowed freely to describe life experience, the images and words supplied and shaped by the artist will reflect Christian belief even when there is no overt effort or intention to do so.
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And so I become more aware of a number of correlations between faith and poetry. These intersections, as I call them, are elements of trusting God and making art not only as parallel to each other but as forming a network of connections that touch and interrupt, interlace and reinforce each other like the fivers in a woven fabric. For me poetry and faith are interdependent. Each affects the other as they embrace and interpenetrate. Faith in forms art, and art enhances faith.