Dear Friends,
Winter turns to spring. “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…”
Lory, Carlyn and I are looking forward to Spring Break. The day after Easter we’ll take our annual trip to Florida to visit Lory’s father and step-mother, and to frolic in the sun, sand and surf.
I’ve talked with the Board about a sabbatical. It’s over due. I’m thinking about three months next winter, from January 1 to the end of March, which happens to be Easter Sunday. That would be ten years from my cross-country-in-the-van sabbatical. Nothing has been decided, but we are exploring possibilities.
Three months would allow time to do some of the writing I’ve wanted to tackle.
The poetry project I told you about is proceeding nicely. Jonathan is the sound engineer. I’ve used the Thursday night classes as an opportunity to record a half hour of poetry each time, which will provide two hours total.
Jonathan tells me that a CD holds seventy two minutes. There will be a half hour each of Frost and Whitman, a half hour of Sandburg and Cummings combined, and a half hour of hour of other poets. Our plan is to print the poems in the order they can be heard on two Compact Disks, or two cassette tapes.
The next step, if we get that far, will be to write reflections on poetry as theology, using the poems in the anthology, and to publish that separately. We’ll see.
Poetry is like religion–it requires endless interpretation, it’s never completely understood, and it’s always ready to surprise you with some new insight. Poetry and religion open doors to deeper places, inviting us to enter, and inspiring us to soar above the earth for awhile, hopefully coming in for a smooth landing.
Of course there’s the other side to poetry and religion. The taste it leaves in our mouths depends on who serves it up.
I had some teachers of both poetry and religion who made each seem complicated and tempted me to stay away from both. But something in me persisted and I kept coming back to the poems and to religion until I could marry them. The nautical term to marry means ‘to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their stands.’ I have a lot of loose ends of both poetry and religion, so their marriage shouldn’t be too difficult.
I guess we all have some loose ends to weave. That’s what we’re here to do, together.
Cheers,
Frank
