The Presbyterian novelist Frederick Buechner once quipped that the frequent conflict between science and religion is akin to the debate between a podiatrist and poet. "One says that Susie Smith has fallen arches. The other says she walks in beauty like the night. In his own way each is speaking the truth. What is at issue is the kind of truth you're after."
We Presbyterians are after divine truth. Truth that rings true. Truth that outlives another Tucker/Maddow news cycle and transcends the time it takes to tweet another tweet. Truth that comforts when you lay your heavy head on that familiar feather pillow; truth that challenges when you grab your car keys and go forth again into an insane world. After all, insists our Teacher, "you will come to know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8). That's the kind of truth we're after.
Furthermore, in the search for such truth, who wants a podiatrist preacher? Truth that has the power to set us free surely begs for more than a 3-point book report on neatly hole-punched paper. How did Presbyterian preachers get the notion that holiness is somehow verified by monotony? Too many sermons seem like overhearing your nephew's cousin report his friend's girlfriend's brother's experience of a Bowl Game. You may get some of the truth of what happened in Miami, but three points for podiatry.
So it is that folks of Biblical faith have long been friends with poetry. Poetry steps in when book reports fail to inspire. Poets take Mary Magdeline's hand, and then take ours, and being led themselves they lead us to an inexplicable empty tomb. Poems are the only way fourth- and fifth-hand overhearers of a divine encounter can in any truthful way experience it for themselves.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" prays the psalmist. He could have said, "sometimes lived experiences cause a deficiency of our monoamine neurotransmitters and require the introduction of serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors." That may well be true, but that kind of straight-line speaking in the middle of the night is likely to leave us all flat-footed come the morning. If we want to love God (dressed in mystery) and want to love neighbor (dressed in annoyance) and want to love ourselves (dressed in nakedness) we need truth that sings a song. Banal explanations from a Podiatrist Preacher, however accurate, are not enough to get us out of bed in the morning with the same skip in our step that once raised a crucified Jew.
So says Walt Whitman:
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their works.
After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologists.
Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name;
The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.
So to some poems we turn as we turn the page of a new year — a year prefaced by the lowest collective expectations I've sensed in my lifetime. I'm calling our next study Poems for Presbyterian Pilgrims, during which we will wade into the waters of at least half a dozen poems that teach us to sing the song of the Good News afresh. We'll explore themes about creation, praying, wrestling (with faith), and witnessing (speaking poetically about the prose of life). And although there is never anything wrong with enjoying the beauty of beautiful words that "walk in beauty like the night," we will want to see through these poems (as with a good pair of bifocals) to catch also another glimpse of the goodness of God.
Is such a study an indulgence in such a time as this? Should we forsake the luxuries of reflection and conversation while troubles seem to abound all around? Should we fiddle while Rome burns? Fair enough. A virus lingers. But perhaps a good poem is precisely what our piety needs right about now. In such an ugly hour, in the din of 24/7 chatter, amid the boredom of two years worth of isolation, let us seek the booster of Beauty in the clinic of meaningful words. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
So says the poet.
