Unbound - Setting the Inner Compass

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. This monthly column, ‘Setting the Inner Compass’ is intended to share poems that nourish the soul. All of the poems resonate on their own. Sometimes, I’ll put poems together because they share a common theme.

In his book, Concern for the Church, Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner offered this memorable and well-known quote, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.” It is a bold claim. I believe that mysticism is an essential component of the future of Christian faith alongside social justice activism, theological reflection, and interfaith understanding. By mysticism I mean an openness to an experience of The Sacred/The Holy/God. Dorothy Day writes of one such mystical experience in prison. Howard Thurman, who was called the mystic of the civil rights movement, engaged in contemplative practice. He believed it was important to have experiences of God, which could be found within one’s self or in conversation with nature.

Thomas Merton was a mystic who wrote about a mystical experience in Louisville, not far from the PCUSA offices. It is found in his book, Conjectures of an Guilty Bystander:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” 

There are poems about mystical experience and poems that invite us into those experiences. I share two poems in this column and suggest two others: “We are a Tribe” by Alberto Rios and “Feather at Midday” by Sr. Dang Ngheim.

Peace,
Dave

The Poems

“A Blessing” is based on an experience James Wright had while driving home one late afternoon with his friend Robert Bly.

“A Blessing” by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs. 
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me 
And nuzzled my left hand. 
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

from VACILLATION by William Butler Yeats

IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.


While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.


“A Blessing” is from Collected Poems © 1971 by James Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Reprinted with permission.

from Vacillation: IV by William Butler Yeats is from The Collected Works of WB Yeats, Volume 1: the poems.  © 1933 The MacMillan Company.

The Thomas Merton quote is from, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton and was first published in 1966 by Doubleday Image Books.

“We are a Tribe” by Alberto Rios is from his book Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance published in 2014 by the Texas Review Press.

“Feather at Mid-day” is by Sister Dang Nghiem from her book, A Woman’s Journey from Doctor to Nun published in 2010 by Parallax Press.

Rev. Dave Brown is the creator/host of Blues Vespers and a member of the PCUSA Public Education Roundtable. Dave along with Rabbi Ted Falcon and Imam Jamal Rahman offer programs about interfaith in the Pacific Northwest as the PNW Interfaith Amigos. He is the former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Tacoma.

Poem: Once Upon a Time There Be… A Tale of the Doctrine of Discovery

By Rev. Ellie Stock

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

Once upon a time there be . . .
There be a Doctrine of Discovery,
Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex, and Inter Caetera, three decrees,
Papal bulls of the 15th century (lead bulla sealing
with the heads of Peter and Paul, two saints they be),
Promised Land conquest, Christendom, and Crusading legacy
charging European royalty
to commission explorers to sail the seas
to New (empty, nulla terra, they presumed) promised Worlds to gallantly
“discover”, conquer and claim territory, and demand fealty
of “unchristian” civilizations who already for millennia lived there free,
free upon the mountains, plains and valleys,
free on rainbow deserts and among woodland trees,
free, in eon-carved canyons, cliff side caves and kivas deep,
free along shores of rivers, lakes, and seas,
free to net salmon and hunt deer,
free to pick berries and to plant seeds,
free to grow The Three Sisters—squash, corn, and beans,
free to sew buffalo-skinned robes and wampum beads
free to live in long houses, hogans, pueblos, and tee pees,
to weave patterned rugs and kiln molded pottery,
to create fringed medicine bags and turquoise and silver jewelry
to raise totem poles and follow eagle’s wing,
free to chisel kachinas from cottonwood rootings,
free to roam, to follow seasons’ bidding,
sun’s warmth, stars’ behest, and moon’s tiding,
free to exist, to quest, to reverence Turtle Island’s fecundity,
free to self-determine in tribes, nations, clans, bands, and confederacies,
free to self-govern with councils and chiefs,
free to honor Great Spirit’s Mystery,
through Life Ways, shaman, and sacred ceremony,
free to sing, to dance to flute’s lilt and drum’s beat,
free to celebrate, to give thanks for All Being,
In Beauty walking, walking in Beauty…

Once upon a continuing time there be…
There be friendship between
the giving Ancients, with hoped-for reciprocity,
and voracious new “Chosen” Settlers as they set up colonies
and sought to make “sub-human” infidels convertees.
But broken trust turned to frictioning,
and friendship medals and trading
turned to greed, and greed turned to taking
land (the land of the free,
home of the brave), and conflict and violent sprees,
with the French, Spanish, English and the Colonies,
and taking more land and trees,
gold, and slavery—no agency,
which turned to resisting
and Red Cloud Warring and paper treaties,
and treaties became broken treaties,
broken promises and nightmare dreams,
extinction of  buffalo and beaver, destroyed ecology,
no sensibility, cruel genocide of humanity,
Sand Creek and Wounded Knee,
assimilating and disappearing
through boarding school trauma and decree,
forbidding native tongues, songs, dress, culture, and spirituality,
imposing state and church calumnity, calamity, complicity,
to civilize and Christianize the killing, dead, and dying,
dysfunctional theology and gone-wild evangelizing
in the name of the One saying love thy neighbor and enemy,
and bring relief to the suffering,
starving, imprisoning,
disease, and Dakota 38 mass hanging,
reservations, shrinking, confining,
and Trailings of Tears from sea to shining sea,
Settlers, transcontinental trains and gold rushers colonizing,
wetiko, white people’s pandemic mind virus, cannibalizing,
pushing First Nations north, south, west, east,
divine Manifest Destiny’s stolen land complete…
a silenced people, a truncated history
celebrated by fictionalizing Columbus Day feat
and Indian and Pilgrim Thanksgiving Feast,
the indoctrination and incarnation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

II

 
And, shortly thereafter upon a time there be . . .
There be even more conquistadores by land and sea,
sent by the Doctrine of Discovery
to southern civilizations of Quetzel, Pachamama, and Chakana cosmology,
to lands of desert coasts, tropical forests, and oh so high mountain peaks,
to Nazca Line plains and glacier-fed streams
to llamas, pumas, and condors soaring,
to mathematic, scientific, and engineering ingenuity,
to architectural, artistic, and agricultural originality,
to pyramids, sun dials, crop terracing and irrigating,
to mounds and mortarless tightly-fitting boulder walling,
to tambo to tambo marathon relay-running chasquis
with quipus and pitutus, proclaiming and explaining,
to charangos, quenas, and chicha dancing,
welcomed by the ancients so curiously,
they greeted them with boats, horses, and swords a gleaming,
to conquer foretold cities of gold and jaden masquery,
to supplant the cross for pagan heresy,
they looted, plundered, and killed so freely,
ancient Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans marauded so mercilessly,
covered in blood as gold and the enslaved were cargoed back across the seas,
to the European home whose legacy here is continuing
through mining’s polluting and resource depleting,
exploiting poor indigenous land and communities—
caught between rebels’ and rulers’ fighting,
another incarnation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

III

And once again upon a time there be . . . 
There be sailing to this new vicinity,
from African Kingdoms to the east
adventurers also charged by the Doctrine of Discovery,
guiding boatloads of sardine-packed human chattelry,
together bound, rocking and rolling
to each wave-upon-bow beat,
crashing amidst screams and dreams
and grievous laments of  futility,
green and golden ancestor land a distant memory—
lush forests, jungles, savannah and fauna aplenty,
now dumped on New World shores unceremoniously,
chained to cages but separated from home and families,
Indian-vacated lands, now plantations, enslaving,
traumatizing generationally,
to quench the thirst of cotton and tobaccy,
sugar, rice, and coffee monopolies,
and lead and gold mining companies,
condemned to worse than poverty,
as white land owners pretended chivalry,
while denigrating, segregating, and lynching,
and contriving racial identity superiority
to maintain white racial purity,
defending to death in Civil War’s incivility,
and holding these self-evident truths—yes siree,
for all, justice, life, happiness and liberty,
codified in We the People constitutionality,
Junteenth Emancipation Day, free!—but not really,
and hundreds of years later, deferred dreams,
still entrenched in injustice duplicity,
flag-wrapped, head-hooded, cross-burning temerity,
fear and hatred-garbed brutal apartheid and white supremacy,
or separate and equal, prejudice, and white privilege—more politely,
power drenched in the blood of black chronology,
Jim Crow travesty, convict leasing,
share cropping, indentured servanting, no equal opportunity,
cartooned in minstrel and caricatured artistry,
victims of inhuman medical and scientific experimenting,
migrating from south to north, west and east
to escape and seek longed-for safety,
only finding unemployment and unwelcoming crowded cities,
and predatory lending and legal red-lining,
extending to ghetto dwellings and mass incarcerating,
targets of governmental and vigilante harassing, stalking, and killing,
sacrificial lambs to false gods offering,
dangerously navigating black while walking, driving and living,
having The Conversation with young ones to increase their surviving,
gaping divides between the poor and the wealthy,
(no GI Bill benefits or inherited family property),
between the book-educated and the life-educated, the sick and the healthy,
prevented by law from realizing innate potentiality,
reconciliatory guilt masking as reparationality,
black and white trauma intertwining,
yet two diverging tragic historical trajectories,
the Doctrine of Discovery once more incarnating,
stolen labor, stolen lives, fait accomplit!
Yet somehow there be,
there still struggling and proudly be
endurance and strength and spirit spontaneity,
passionate vitality, courage and creativity,
civil rights sit-ins and non-violent resisting—
protesting, boycotting, desegregating,
demonstrating, marching, freedom-riding,
preaching, praying, lobbying, and writing,
pushing the extremities
of suffocating, unjust boundaries,
not stopped by heckling or horse stomping,
bullets flying, fire hosing, and baton beating,
and torn apart by snarling canine’s vicious teeth,
arrested, shackled, jailed, bombed—too much killing,
Dred Scott, Harriett Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King,
proclaiming inconvenient, unsettling
Truth to evil power and status quo investing,
“We Shall Overcome” decisionally, intentionally, futurically.

IV

Now, upon a time there be . . .
There be a continuing legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery,
stolen land, stolen labor, the foundation of our nation’s prosperity,
stolen promise, stolen hope, stolen dignity and security,
five hundred-year-old inherited edicts still defining,
presumptuous exceptionalism opining,
a City Upon a Hill, out-of-context scripturing
catalyzing nationalistic visioning,
systemic racism, religious bigotry,
xenophobia, gender oppressing, myopic redacting of history,
spawning military crusades and religious legitimizing,
winners spinning and controlling the arcing story,
domination system, corruption, and exploitation thriving,
empire’s policies and Supreme Court precedent legalities,
governmental eminent domaining
and corporation hegemonic land-grabbing,
locally, nationally, and globally, an exploding frenzy—
drilling, fracking, mountain top-removing,
fossil fueling, extraction industry pathology,
polluting, fertilizing, pesticiding, desecrating
sacred places and depleting
air, water, and soil once pristine
—Standing Rock, front-line troops, water protecting,
war and peace economies freebasing
and high on destroying and contaminating
under the guise of self-interests defending,
and consumers, like locusts swarming,
wanting, buying, devouring,
accumulating and storaging,
wasting more than needing,
constantly rat-racing and tread-milling,
run amuck social media, TV,
and movie fantasy commercializing,
and my, my, mine—me, me,
me-first hyper-individualism selfies
and Facebook immortality,
and First and Second Amendment Security,
nation-states still conquering
in the shadow of nuclear technology—
a house of cards, no accountability and no sustainability
leave systems of Earth and all that is in it collapsing
under the weight of arrogance and greed,
economic, political, cultural restructuring
—the whole ecology topsy-turvy,
society cross-purposed in paralyzed bi-polarity,
resurging nooses and flags of the Confederacy,
swastikas, nazi saluting, and Don’t Tread on Me,
domestic abuse, women and children disappearing,
epidemic alcohol, drugs, opioids addicting,
mass murders and suicides alarming,
violence, terrorism and  warring, planet warming,
climate changing, pandemics raging,
affecting the poor disproportionately,
exacerbating racial disparity,
fires blazing, glaciers retreating,
oceans rising, storms intensifying,
doubters decrying, denying and defying
scientific facts and prophets’ warnings,
populations over propagating,
swarming, frantically escaping, migrating, immigrating,
the sixth great extinctioning—
mammals, trees and bumble bees grieving,
and what or who will be next—humanity?
Stop the World, I want to get off!—lamenting grievously—
the present incarnation of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Yet always there a remnant or diaspora be,
Light through dark shadow breaking,
leaven rising, salt preserving,
virgin seeds quickening, awakening, hardened ground quaking,
New Life persisting, insisting, enlisting
Those Who Be Caring.

V

 
Possible now/future upon a time there be . . .
There be a new era choice:  business as usual, Anthropocene
or Ecozoic New World, sans the Doctrine of Discovery,
excised from legal memory,
a new Way to BE Earth Community—
a new Way of human knowing, doing, and  being,
Mother Earth-restoring policies and economies,
consciousness, care, compassion, courage, and creativity
increasing, in sync with the beat of Life’s ever emerging,
wondrous individuality, diversity, communion, and complexity,
honoring all our relatives:  animal, vegetable, mineral equitably,
partnering equally, sensibly, and unambiguously
to take responsibility for Earth’s posterity,
seventh generation integrity,
living simply (reducing, reusing, recycling, rethinking),
cooperatively and peacefully,
with clean air, water, and soil, and oceans free
of oil slicks and plastic debris,
new healing practices and learning
what is essential and necessary,
promoting well-being and health care accessibility,
creating sustainable, resilient, and vital local communities,
receiving not deceiving, using not abusing Earth’s generosity,
mana for all but not more than needing,
inviting and encouraging participatory
visioning and planning democracy,
for the Common Good,  for all, justice, life, happiness, and liberty,
rebuilding trust, healing wounds through truth, apology,
denouncing wrongs, reparationing, and reconciling,
discovering, developing, deploying,
honoring, and celebrating the gift and ability
of each human, cultural, and earth entity,
a new renaissance of guilds, sodalities, and artistry,
bridging chasms of mistrust caused by fear and enmity,
grass-roots movements—steadfast and serving,
risking and heroing in anonymity,
continuing to learn and explore within limits and possibilities,
in silence and stillness, knowing
Creation’s intimacy and stardust’s infinity,
Cosmos connectivity and energy:  Awe-filled Mystery,
Earthrise Home, our common origin and destiny,
the Universe from which we are birthed, our common story,
this is our Home, this is my Home, my Home is in me,
waiting, transforming, reborning, new every morning dawning,
twenty-first century Phoenix sunrising,
Red, Black, Yellow, Brown, Tan, and White uniting,
despite challenges and obstacles, and setback’s inciting,
hearts, minds, strength, and souls joining, dancing and singing,
sharing Earth’s bountiful grace, mercy, and hospitality
in Hope beyond hoping,
Joy and Thanksgiving unceasing,
and Love unconditioning.

Once upon a time there be . . .
There be such a Reality . . .
Dare humanity really Know, Do, and Be,
and touch, hear, smell, feel, taste and see,
risking boldly, in humility—trusting not fearing
that Life is Good, You are/I am Accepted,
the Past is Absolved, and the Future is Always Opening—
Life’s, Shalom’s beckoning Jubilee—
in Beauty walking,  walking in Beauty? . . .

SETTING THE INNER COMPASS: Introducing the Poetry Column

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. This is the first entry in a new poetry column on Unbound called Setting The Inner Compass.

In this monthly column, I will briefly introduce and share two or three poems. This column builds on the five-part National Poetry month series in April. In the wrap up to that series, I suggested using an approach similar to Lectio Divina when we read a poem for spiritual companionship.

The poems for May are by Vermont based poet, David Budbill. David’s poems are direct and clear. After he died in 2016, his obituary in the New York Times described him as “a people’s poet.” Quoting the journal Parnassus, the obituary said David was “as accessible as a parking lot and as plain as a pair of Levi’s.” David Budbill attended Muskingum College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York. He graduated from Union in 1967 with a MDIV. 

As someone who hikes on Mount Rainier every summer, the poem “Summer’s Here“ is descriptive of my experience as well as being a metaphor that reminds us that at times things that are worth doing are not easy. The last line is clear and true in many ways.

The second poem, “What We Need,” feels very connected to the realities of spring 2020. In the midst of resistance and engagement, we need to take time to nourish the spirit. 

I added a third poem when I learned that Joy Harjo was appointed by the Library of Congress to a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate. A member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, she is the first Native American to serve in that position. A musician as well as a poet, Ms. Harjo is the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate.

I am grateful and appreciative of the generosity of both publishers in granting permission to share these poems. 

The Poems

“Summer’s Here”
by David Budbill

Summer’s here and we can hike the peaks again,
have lunch and tea on mountaintops, look down

on the backs of circling hawks and laze away
the afternoon watching blue-hazy, distant hills.

Come on! Give up those winter blues. Let’s go!
Grease up those boots, find that walking stick.

Get your lungs and legs in shape. And don’t forget
what Yuan Mei, said, two hundred years ago:

If you begrudge your feet some pain
you’ll miss ten thousand peaks.

“What We Need”
by David Budbill

The Emperor,
his bullies
and henchmen
terrorize the world
every day,

which is why
every day

we need

a little poem
of kindness,

a small song
of peace

a brief moment
of joy.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here”
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So, it has been since

   creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape

     their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make

     men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh

     with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once 

     again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. 

     A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. 

     We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, 

     Eating of the last sweet bite.

---

“Summers Here” and “What We Need” reprinted from While We’ve Still Got Feet: New Poems by David Budbill © Copper River Press, 2005.  Used with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. 

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” reprinted from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Joy Harjo (c) 1994, 1996 by Robert Alter. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

---

Rev. Dave Brown is the former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, the creator/host of Blues Vespers and a member of the PCUSA Public Education Roundtable. 

Poem - Breaking News

The word is that springtime arrives late this week,
yet here on the Maine coast we have little to show for it.
There are, here and there, green shoots thrusting through
the rock hard crust of four months of deep frost,
buds are forming out there at the long naked tips
of dark branches. But the awakening tingle is absent.
That familiar ray of hope and bright anticipation
that has touched over eighty such promising seasons
has been shadowed, eclipsed in this leap of a year
by a portent, a grim tocsin that resounds in the ear
like the clattering rattle, clanging bell of a leper,
the rumbling wheels of a laden plague cart –
“Bring out your dead!”

Corona, the word echoes and re-echoes
through these days. Corona, ancient Latin for a crown –
and “uneasy lies the head…” all heads that wear it.
Recalls us, if we hearken, to another jagged headpiece
pressed brutal down across the broken brow of one
who mended lepers, bore away the festerings
and plagues that cursed our mortal race and –
in this very season – wrought a healing and a cure
that may yet bring final close to every isolation,
tear down the narrow walls of quarantine,
and seat us, newly welcomed, round
a common table where fresh bread is broken,
rich new wine is generously poured.

J. Barrie Shepherd

Poems of the Pandemic

Spring

It is spring, the season of runny noses and sore
knees from slip-sliding down muddy hills sloughing
off snow in so much rain.  The flies come buzzing
to the opening windows and the last frost snaps
even the lilies—winter is always a touch spiteful.
It is spring, and the daffodils and conspiracy theories
are tentatively blooming, splashing like handfuls
of sanitizer across the world to birdsong for twenty seconds
or whatever tune you don’t hate after the fortieth time
washing off the flu, coronavirus, fear of the elderly
and the compromised, anger of the poor that this too
will come for them and no one will stand in its way
to claim their lives matter—you see, whether they die
by bullets or bronchitis, we are still not bothered enough
to pass a bill, pay a tax, feed a child, save a life.
It is spring, when the earth stretches and yawns after
a lovely long nap, and I can only hope we listen to this
discordant symphony of change so that we, too, can
stretch beyond the life we thought was unchangeable
before the summer comes and is utterly unforgiving.

Testing

Jesus was sent—flung—into the wilderness alone
to wander.  What does a god do for forty days of waiting
for an adversary to test him?  I am locked in this house
until the virus passes over the blood on my doorframe,
fear chasing panic through empty grocery store aisles,
this desert of Lent suddenly feeling too wild, too vast.
Our adversary is not waiting forty days to ask us
if we are the children of God, why do we take all
the sanitizer and blame the foreigners and tell ourselves
that if we ruled all peoples it would be better, safer?
We do not need to be offered the kingdoms of the world
to want to reach out and take them for ourselves,
we rulers of our own castles, we gods who wait.
It has been so many days that feel like forty each
and we are starving for certainty, security, anything
resembling an Easter resurrection—but it is still Lent,
these forty days of wandering, and I am beginning to see
why the first question was about stones into simple bread.

Responsible

They have closed the schools for three weeks.
The children who are resilient go to their houses
(if they have them) to annoy their parents (if
they have them) because no one has explained that
it is okay for the world to change, that does not
mean it’s ending.  We realize that that is wrong,
that the world we built before we thought about
children is ending, must end, because in our world
three weeks will starve a child who eats once
a day (if they have that).  Three weeks will kill
a child whose parents beat her for being frightened.
Three weeks will freeze a child as spring vacillates
over that one last snow, heedless of whether he has a coat.
Three weeks will change a child, if not the world.
They have closed the schools for three weeks,
and we who built the world are only just beginning
to see that we do not need a virus to endanger the children
that we never remembered to save; we look to someone
else to feed them, protect them, take up the responsibility
of safeguarding this future we claim when it is convenient
to think about a world we do not build, a pattern we do not
control, a life where our values are no longer held with
reverence as though elders have it right simply by outliving
death for this one day, these three weeks, this breath of hope
that we will allow ourselves to be changed, be responsible
for the ones to whom no one explained that the world is ending
and it will be okay, that only means it’s changing for them.


J.D. Waggy is a part of the pastoral staff of a United Methodist Church in Portage, Michigan, who has recently been approved for commissioning in provisional membership en route to ordination.  One of many pieces of her ministry is creative writing, using the flexibility and rigidity of poetry to understand the best way to be faithful in the world.  Her poetry has been published by UNBOUND, Time of Singing, Crux Literary Journal, and Kennings Literary Magazine.