Dear fellow storytellers and thresholders:
It was a highlight of my summer to be able to see you again or to meet you for the first time, to share a few meals and stories and laughs and serious conversations with you, and to learn from you. All in the lightning capital of the west--very illuminating.
Some of you brought personally significant poems or readings with you to share, others sent me some by email. I have begun to gather and organize my own supply from out of the welter of my home library.
I want this blog, one of the ugliest words I know, to be about some of the most beautiful words I know. As storytellers, we develop a curatorial relationship to the words we love, entrusted to us, that we yearn to share and pass on to the others in the circle, whom we grow to love. For example, a few of my favorite words: "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever." I am hoping that by introducing and sharing the words that have mattered to me about the themes that matter to us, you will join in the sharing as you feel led, and also join with me in dialogue through the comment threads that can follow each entry. Someday I would like to move this activity off of Google's Blogger (even uglier!) and onto a separate webpage that would link to my personal trainer information on the Godly Play website. But that is beyond my current competence level. For now, developing a weekly spiritual discipline of sending a poem or passage off into the E-ther is challenge enough.
As I have begun to compile these "best words in the best order," the question has arisen: how to organize? Often, a good poem might resonate on several different levels, not all of them germane to the work with children. Guiding me vaguely in my organizational thinking have been two beloved anthologies that steered me through some tough times in my younger adulthood: English Romantic Writers, edited by one of my college professors, David Perkins, Harcourt Brace, 1967; and The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade, Harper Perennial, 1993. The latter, particularly, has been influential in its organization by theme, with wonderful short essays introducing each section.
So, I have begun by casting my net pretty wide, gathering all the themes that I could think of that might inform our work and our play, among them sacred story, parable, liturgical action, silence, aloneness, freedom, meaning, death, belonging and identity, mystery, core metaphor, the silent child who teaches, the God who plays hide-and-seek, the adult-child relationship (which, thanks to Jerome's latest book, now includes high and low views, indifference, ambiguity, ambivalence, and the child as means to grace), the task of getting ready, Creator, Redeemer, Holy Spirit, the developmental planes of early, middle and late childhood, and adolescence, sacred space, nature, threshold, circles, the power of story, the power of words, the power of the nonverbal, wonder, the creative imagination, prayer, feast, blessing, teaching and learning, environment, children's spirituality, and on and on. I have considered audiences for poems and passages, and where a reading might be useful in a training or introduction: Opening ? Closing? Plenary? Mid-Point?
In Colorado Springs, Jerome spent some time elucidating the contents of Rebecca Nye's latest book, Children's Spirituality: What It Is and Why It Matters, and I have added her acronym SPIRIT to the list of ways that a poem might reflect or enrich a specific aspect of our guiding of teachers and children. Jerome also spoke of moments of "significance"--our way, as adults, of trying to come close to childhood from the inside by an act of memory. I have found that many of the poems and passages that I carry with me might be categorized in this way.
I have also found that over time the poets, the novelists, the memoirists, the teachers who write, can become beloved voices that we grow to recognize and trust. Some more ambitious entries here might attempt an overview and appraisal of a particular poet or author or educator. But mainly I hope that I can add to your store of these voices, and that you will add to mine.
Whenever possible, I will link readers to websites where recommended poems have already been published. When I am brazenly copying a poem or passage out of a book in my collection, I will include the publication information. I figure, perhaps erroneously, that most poets would welcome an anonymous someone sharing their work around a bit. We all might end up buying a book or two! On the other hand, choosing this format for assembling these readings allows me to be the sole party responsible for copyright infringement. In any case, this is a private site, with a very limited readership, so will probably be flying well under the radar.
That's enough words from me. I'll leave you with this short invocation, "To the Holy Spirit," from Wendell Berry, the Kentuckian farmer poet.
O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate. [i]
[i] From Berry, Wendell, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Counterpoint, Washington, DC:1998.
There is a lovely choral setting for this for four voices by the American composer, Malcolm Dalglish. recorded as part of his Hymnody of Earth, available through Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Hymnody-Earth-Malcolm-Dalglish-Ooolites/dp/B000008TTD
You can find out more about this piece, and read some more Wendell Berry poems, here:
http://www.ket.org/education/guides/hymnody.pdf
I can try to scan the music I have for the poem and send it to those interested. Dalglish favors children's choruses for this piece; the old recording I have features the American Boychoir.
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