While on the topic of Donald Miller, I thought that I should confess to having a soft spot or two for "spirituality" myself. I've long been a fan of Annie Dillard and recently got introduced to Scott Cairns who considers himself Dillard’s slowest student. Cairns has a harsh view of poetry in America:
"As for the place of poetry in America, or in the American church for that matter, I'm not so sure that it currently has a place. Until America and its church folk develop a greater hunger for the apophatic, the parabolic, the vertiginous mystery of the God in whom we live and move and have our being, I don’t suppose that those constituencies will ever have much of a taste for the poetic, which is, at its heart, a way of leaning into the apophatic, the parabolic, the mystery. I hope that sounds neither too glib nor too dismissive. There are, after all, lots of items that look like poems, earnest anecdotes and sentiments that make both the common culture and its Christians happy; I'm not, finally, interested in wrecking that pleasure for anyone, even if I can't consider it as approaching anything like a poetic pleasure. That said, I pray that the American church will one day—sooner than later—overcome its addiction to narrow certainties. Thereafter, its people might recover a taste for enormity." (From an interview at The Other Journal.)
I'm not versed enough in these matters to fully understand Cairn's assessment, but I'm pretty sure that I differ with him at several critical points. Nonetheless, something about his critique of America (and its church) rings true. I can certainly recognize, among some of my own favorite songs or poems, those "earnest anecdotes and sentiments that make both the common culture and its Christians happy."
As a sample of Cairn's poetry, here is one that works well with Easter coming up (because the poem is, in part, about Christ's dead body). It also happens to be the first poem by Cairns that I came to know. (It was published most recently in Philokalia.)
Finding the Broken Man
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.
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Forgive my inability to appreciate such sentences as:
ReplyDeleteUntil America and its church folk develop a greater hunger for the apophatic, the parabolic, the vertiginous mystery of the God in whom we live and move and have our being, I don’t suppose that those constituencies will ever have much of a taste for the poetic, which is, at its heart, a way of leaning into the apophatic, the parabolic, the mystery.
Of course - I'm probably the one to whom such sentences are aimed.
Thanks for the frank response. It's refreshing, like morning dew. Yes, Cairns is harsh. And I'm leery of language that pushes God off into "apophatic mystery."
ReplyDeleteAt the same time as reading a collection of poetry by Cairns, I'm reading God at Work by Gene Veith which argues (in part) that we have far too mystical a concept of how God works in our lives. Veith points out that we have God very directly to thank for every simple and tangible good that we enjoy: God feeds us with the hands that stack the bananas in our grocery isle and comforts us with the minds who design the machines that manufacture a Halls cough drop. At bottom, however, I think that Cairn's talk of sacramental living has a lot in common with Veith's intense sense of God's immanent presence in His providential work through us and all creation.
Lest anyone worry (as if you would or I should care) that I am too enamored with intellectual siren songs (which I am), I recommend: Common Genius: Guts, Grit, and Common Sense: How Ordinary People Create Prosperous Societies and How Intellectuals Make Them Collapse by Bill Greene. He builds a strong (and fascinating) case (and delightfully lampoons academic overuse of colons within titles).
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