This is a poem I wrote in April, 2005, when I was working as a college prof. Thankfully, my life isn’t like this anymore! My reading isn’t near as erudite, but much more enjoyable, and it’s easier to get outside.
Like those games in truck stops with quarters piled on flat metal trays
with the promise that, if you play, you can keep whatever falls,
so books roost on counters, tables, chairs, wherever they can find a space,
vital knowledge being held within the folds of their wings,
ready to be shaken loose. Nearby, I see Pinnock, Gerald May,
Kierkegaard and Hauerwas. Walker Percy and John Calvin
lie one atop the other on my desk; Camus is on the floor,
in a scrum of existentialists topped by Frederick Neitzsche.
How nice it is, I think, to be the type of person who reads such books
and talks of them with other priests serving in a shrine of culture.
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Outside, winter’s bony fingers pull on gloves:
azaleas have exploded
with bursts of bloom as bright as any fireworks,
dogwoods twirl white parasols,
and souls have risen from the dead.
April 19, 2021 at 1:30 am
Hi Bob, good to hear from you again! I was just thinking of you the other day, wondering how you are doing.
That’s quite an assortment of books! I’ve read some of the authors you mention, Walker Percy being my favorite probably. I tried reading Calvin but couldn’t get far without cursing 🤬😬🙂
April 19, 2021 at 5:55 pm
Good to connect, dw. I’m glad I read what I did, but not inclined to read most of those authors again! Yes, Calvin can irk sometimes. Probably Percy and Kierkegaard are the two that I would be interested in returning to.
April 19, 2021 at 6:33 pm
I haven’t ever read Kierkegaard but Thomas Merton seems to have thought highly of him.
A lot of my early thinking was shaped by Francis Schaeffer, whose writings kept me from walking away from the church altogether. However, I’ve come to see that his insistence on being ‘doctrinally correct’ left out the thinkers and writers who have been most helpful to me.
April 20, 2021 at 8:52 pm
Kierkegaard is difficult to read. I’ve read relatively little of his work. His “Sickness Unto Death” is among the 10 books that have influenced my thinking the most, though. Fifty years ago, Schaffer seemed masterful. I picked up one of his books a few years ago, and it struck me as an attempt at a grand scheme of modern thought that simplified or mischaracterized the work of many writers. Schaffer didn’t change, so I guess I did.
April 21, 2021 at 12:58 am
I met Schaeffer a few times – a wonderful man who, for conservative evangelicals, gave us hope that our minds mattered. But I agree with you that he oversimplified and, I might say, misjudged others.
I will have to check out Sickness Unto Death. Thank you for the recommendation.
April 21, 2021 at 4:21 pm
You’re welcome. I’d be interested on your thoughts about the book