Whatever we think our stories mean we have all happened into a story  that's been going for a while.  By the accidents we call history,  geography, and birth  I came to read English poetry. By similar accidents, my ancestors in Sweden,  Germany, Scotland, England  came to be called Christian.  My parents came to marry in a church in Coulee City, and thirteen years later  I came to be baptized in that building.  And this, it seems, is pretty much exactly  how we experience science and tradition.  Neither one is done alone, more like inheritance than individual choice, a community through time embodying a memory of how things are. And they both bring us to encounter what we don't expect, a source of renewable surprise and culture shock.  That counterintuition makes science and tradition less subject to the vagaries of generational preoccupation,  personality, or fashion.  Thus, from withi...

I saw her move the tops of Douglas firs and heard her laugh in aspen trees. I heard her rush around corners of our house and saw her chase the rain up underneath the eaves. She draws curtains across the moon and breaks the sun's reflection into pieces on the lake. Sometimes she smells of sage and fresh turned earth; some nights she piles cars and scours ground. She brushes against my cheek and musses hair and whips the ocean waves. Previous  §  Next

This breaking through of otherness is called love in relationships in science is called evidence and in language and narrative is called poetry. In “Poetic Diction,” Owen Barfield observes  the narrowing of meaning in modern language,  influenced as it is by the growth of scientific thought.  He argues languages earlier in their evolution,  are less scientifically precise  and more naturally poetic.  The poet's task then is  something like re-enchantment,  re-creating those slivers of meaning  lost as words become more technical.  And meaning, as I imagine it,  comes to distinguish and connect experiences and persons and things.  The poetic then is not reducible  to what we call emotional or spiritual because we must speak about real things  if we want to mean anything at all and because we are embodied beings.  Thus, poetry challenges and renews  our understanding of the world...

Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Oregon coast I write to feel the ocean crash cliff faces in my heart, To love the crunch of fallen snow and see my moonlit breath, To hear the wind and answer back and pray I'm not alone. Previous  §  Next

It is modern to think life can be lived to one side  of subjects, such as poetry or geology.  It might not be reasonable.  In "Reason, Faith, and Revolution," Terry Eagleton points out  "[Richard] Dawkins makes an error of genre...  about the kind of thing Christian belief is....  Life for Dawkins would seem to divide neatly down the middle  between things you can prove beyond all doubt, and blind faith.  He fails to see that all the most interesting stuff  goes on in neither of these places….  It is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster  we can forget about Chekhov.” I was doing something similarly odd.  When at 14 my love for nature crashed into the way I read the Bible,  Following young-earth creationists,  I found a way around the “materialist” rejection of the “supernatural” but didn't question whether Genesis spoke in materialistic terms.  One need not conclude the fir...

Mom would tuck us into bed. Then we'd hear the faint crackle vinyl records make, then Alexander Scourby's voice in King James's English would paint the stories of Adam and Eve and Abraham and Job in my imagination. There were two Christmas stories. "The First Nowell," in " Christmas Carols New and Old, " edited by Rev. H.R. Bramley and Dr. John Stainer. Public domain, courtesy of Christian Classics Ethereal Library . Both  Christmas stories — St. Luke's and St. Matthew's—appeal to Hebrew authority. Matthew begins with genealogy—with Abraham—picking up almost as if where the Chronicles of Israel's kings leave off. Matthew cites Hebrew prophecies fulfilled. Luke starts with the temple in Jerusalem, a priest named Zechariah, and his wife, Elizabeth. They were both “righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”  Zechariah's Silence The angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah as he burnt incense. “You...

An elm stands by the trail dead But for two ravens and a hawk Perched on brittle branches Recoiled as at the shock of doom. Trunk shrouded now in tattered bark Once took its shape from wind and sun When with its autumn leaves It testified of springs to come. Previous  §  Next

Poet Dana Gioia describes the experience of beauty  in his talk “Why Beauty Matters,”  first as “an unexpected slowing down  to saturate ourselves in a...phenomenon.” The writer of Psalm 104 imagines God in terms that feel like slowing down: covered “with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.” Gioia distinguishes beauty from prettiness:  “We see beauty in a hawk swooping down to seize its prey,  in the swirling cone of a tornado,  or in a thunderstorm....” We kids who marked birthdates before or after Mount Saint Helens find complicated comfort in the psalmist's lines: “Who but looks down to earth, and it trembles, but touches the mountains—they smoke,” Gioia describes us feeling joy: “a complex emotion...unlike pleasure...  beyond our power to summon, control, or possess.”  Then, “a heightened awareness of the shape...of things.”  The psalmist continues: “When you send forth Your breath, th...