Life is a Poem

"We’re taught that poetry is some kind of elevated language about an elevated life we don’t live. It’s ordinary language about an ordinary life that we live." ~ Dionne Brand

April is National Poetry Month. I discovered this from my car radio last night as I drove home form a church meeting.

As is the case for many of us who spend time in and out of automobiles, I caught a snippet of a radio program. The program is "q" with Tom Power from the CBC and it airs on our local NPR station when I'm driving home from evening church meetings. I've never listened to an entire program, only snippets, but I usually like what I hear.

The bit I heard included the above quote from Dionne Brand an acclaimed Canadian poet. Brand, in the interview, goes on to describe poetry as where "...the music and matter of language come together..."  Her ordinary poetic definition of poetry sent my thoughts to an OEP blog I wrote last year about poetry. It also inspired me to ponder the extraordinary reality of the ordinary in our world.

The convergence of music (spirit) and matter (body) is how I have come to think of, believe in, and experience religion and spirituality. We are spiritual bodies. This is an ultimate teaching and tension in every religious tradition. Our problems seem to come when we think of spirituality as "elevated" beyond our grasp, when in reality it is forever within our reach in the ordinary. Even our rituals, sacraments, and holy days point us in the direction of talking, listening, eating, bathing, giving, receiving, living, and dying.  It's all so ordinary yet so poetic.

We are God's poetry, created in One Eternal Presence to be artisans and poets of good as we live in God's eternal poem.  Ephesians 2:10 (my translation)