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cardboard angel...
by Dan McGregor

Imagination: Summary Statement from Class

Imagination is critical in shaping the soul.

We are being restored, being changed, being shaped from glory to glory. The end is to be fully, individually human, as God intended, in order to glorify and fully enjoy Him. We are not being shaped in order to throw it all away, so that eternity will be lived in a cookie cutter existence, but so that our souls, the ones will live forever, are even now being given a particular, individual shape.

A landscape of the heart and spirit is continually being built and eroded. A landscape that either better equips us to love and obey and serve and worship in both spirit and in truth, or a landscape that makes such a life problematic at best, or perhaps impossible.

The imagination, either as an independent agent, or as a co-worker with rationality, and other mental processes, is a key player in the way we order our world, the way we understand reality, and the way we live--the action we take--based on that reality.

This is not a mere utilitarian approach. It is a simple acknowledgement of the obvious. Imagination and art are inevitably present, and our "-NESS" is being shaped. The one has something very much to do with the other.

If You Saw A Woman Leaping . . .

If you saw a woman about to leap from a bridge 160 feet above a rock hard bit of water, what encouragement would you offer?

"Life is worth living! Don't do it!"
"Love is still a possibility! Don't do it!"
"God cares! Don't do it!"

In Seattle, on August 29th, just such a woman stood on one of our bridges, and contemplated a long plunge into death. Traffic, which in Seattle is horrid, was snarled and apparently came to a near halt for miles. Motorists leaned out of the cars and buses to see what the holdup was. Once they discovered it was this poor soul standing on the brink of eternity, they offered up their most logical solution.

"Jump!"
"Get it over with!"
"Just do it!"

For God's sake, don't stop the commute for your petty feelings of damnation and lostness. I've got work to do. I have somewhere to be. I have business to attend to.

By the way, she jumped.

However, by the grace of that same God, she lived, sustained multiple serious injuries, and on this, the morning after, it seems that a full recovery is possible. At least a full physical recovery. How her spirit will do is anyone's guess.

But on the good side, the city of Seattle has sent her flowers and cards and well-wishes. No doubt there will multitude of folks, mostly women it seems, that will seek this unnamed person out, and give her new hope by offering various and sundry answers to whatever questions plague her.

What answers do you have?

The truth is, there are lots of folks on the way to just such a bridge. Most will probably never climb the rails, go to the trouble of facing the wind blowing in their face, and the long fall, but they will stand in the way of your commute just the same. They will stand with their questions, and their lack of answers, and look out at the abyss as you pass by. You probably know a few of them even now.

As you lean out your window driving by, what will you yell? If you could entice them to turn away from their despair for a moment, and have them look at what art you happen to be working on, what would that art-making say to them?

"Do not grow weary in well-doing . . . "

8/30/2001
Jeff Berryman © 2001

the quiet corner...

. . . just a place where I keep various snatches of poems, lyrics, etc, that I think are worth thinking about and hanging onto. Things will come and go here, so check back on a regular basis. A little inspiration, a little wake-up call, a little something to make us stop and pay attention.

The Caged Skylark
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells--
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.

Finding the Broken Man

from Philokalia
by Scott Cairns

When I found the fallen climber caught
halfway down the slope of stunted pines,
he was already dead two days, and his body
stank; he was loose and careless as a boy.
I gave my jacket up for lost, and wrapped him
as I could, then shouted loud, hoping others,
in my group were near enough that together
we could lift him out. It's a common thing
near White Pass and, I suppose, any mountain town
to be called out in search of hikers
overdue at home. Having found one dead
is a sort of badge we wear, and one
I'd probably wear, if the others searching
had heard me call, of if I'd been
man enough to wait.

from...

Letters to a Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you togive up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a str ong and simple, "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into it most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

from...

The Eighth Elegy

from The Duino Elegies
by Rainer Maria Rilke

With all its eyes the natural world looks out
into the Open. Only our eyes are turned
backward, and surround plant, animal, child
like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.
We know what is really out there only from
the animal's gaze; for we take the very young
child and force it around, so that it sees
objects--not the Open, which is so
deep in animals' faces. Free from death.
We, only, can see death; the free animal
has its decline in back of it, forever,
and God in front, and when it moves, it moves
already in eternity, like a fountain.

from the translation by Stephen Mitchell

Elegy
by Dylan Thomas

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Until?I die he will not leave my side.

Dutch Interiors
by Jane Kenyon

Christ has been done to death
in the cold reaches of northern Europe
a thousand thousand times.
Suddenly bread
and cheese appear on a plate
beside a gleaming pewter beaker of beer.

Now tell me that the Holy Ghost
does not reside in the play of light
on cutlery!

A woman makes lace
with a moist-eyed spaniel lying
at her small shapely feet.
Even the maid with the chamber pot
is here; the naughty, red-cheeked girl....

And the merchant's wife, still
in her yellow dressing gown
at noon, dips her quill into India ink
with an air of cautious pleasure.

from OTHERWISE. New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press. 1996.

Batter My Heart,
Three-Person'd God
by John Donne (1572-1631)

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

from...

Psalms of Lament
by Ann Weems.

O God, find me
I am lost
in the valley of grief,
and I cannot see my way out.

My friends leave baskets of balm
at my feet
but I cannot bend to touch
the healing
to my heart.
They call me to leave
this valley,
but I cannot follow
the faint sound
of their voices.
They sing their songs
of love,
but the words fade
and vanish in the wind.
They knock,
but I cannot find the door.
They shout to me,
but I cannot find the voice
to answer.

O God, find me!
Come into this valley
and find me!
Bring me out of this land
of weeping.
O You to whom I belong,
find me!
I will wait here,
for you have never failed
to come to me.
I will wait here,
for you have always been faithful.
I will wait here,
for you are my God,
and you have promised
that you counted the hairs on my head.

on the site...

leaving ruin...the novel
leaving ruin...the play
the weekly hopper
the arthur cycle
work in progress
other performances
around the web
web archive
worth a look
the quiet corner
quotes
links...artists...friends
links...faith...art
about me
photos
email
home

from...

New Seeds of Contemplation
by Thomas Merton.

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.

New Directions. 1961.

from...

The Prophetic Imagination
by Walter Brueggemann.

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

Fortress Press. 1978.

metaphor...musing...

"...ravens outside my window...

Murder
This summer stuff.

The Good, elusive...
thought shuffling,
feng shui.

Honor's place...
Here?
Too high...

This frame, this duty
this love...
Where?

Faith...
Corners? Walls?

Energy piling up...
Askew
Scattering
Quicksilver.

Quick
Sweep, vacuum.
Chairs, couches...out.
Pillows, throws...in.

Wires stretched, slack,
House to house.
Unseen, power thrums.
Open-taloned drop,
Skies too high.
Rest black on black,
Stretched, slack.

No more
Shuffling.

Murder
This summer stuff.