Meditating on the Coming of Christ: A Trilogy of Advent Tanka Poems
Tanka is a cousin to the popular poetic form of the haiku. The word tanka translates to short song. Originating in medieval Japan, it is a free verse poem consisting of 31 syllables. Early Japanese writers composed these in one unbroken line; contemporary Japanese tankas are now written in three lines. English tankas are also 31 syllables but in five lines and a 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllable/line pattern.
Read More ›Hearing Scripture Anew, In a Chorus of Poetic Voices
Poetry helps us see things in a new light. Whether the subject of a poem is a thing, an experience, an emotion, or something else, the care with which the poet chooses her words helps us to see that subject in a completely different way. Poetry cannot be read fast; a poem challenges us to sit with its words, to pay attention, to contemplate what the poet has offered us in these words carefully woven together. Of course, none of these tasks come easily in our technological world, where speed and efficiency reign supreme.
Read More ›The Habit of Hope
On most weekend afternoons the year I turned seven, you could find me in my room pacing the purple shag rug while a library record spun on my old turntable. That summer, the last track on the b-side of a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was on heavy rotation. It’s the first time I remember hearing the story of Pandora’s Box, and I was enthralled.
Read More ›She Slays in Mysterious Ways
The Faerie Queene is an epic poem written by Edmund Spenser in the late 1500s. This pioneering work of world-building inspired writers like William Wordsworth, John Milton, James Thomson, Alfred Tennyson, John Keats, George MacDonald, and L. Frank Baum, and it was a favorite of C.S. Lewis.
Read More ›Piers Plowman and the Possibilities of Poetry
During this past summer season I had the joy of taking an aimless stroll through St Albans, in Hertfordshire, England. History was everywhere on display. From the remaining Roman walls of Verulamium to the riches of a tightly woven Christian past, it is a town that provides a fair field full of folklore, a storehouse of what has gone before.
Read More ›Call It Good: Propaganda, Carolyn Arends, Andrew Peterson, & Pete Peterson
New to the Rabbit Room Podcast Network is Call It Good: Conversations on Creative Confidence. Hosted by Matt Conner (host of The Resistance), Call It Good is a limited series of conversations with authors, artists, and pastors about the invitation before us to join with the Spirit in the act of re-creating the world.
Read More ›An Interview with Hannah Hubin
Have you listened to All the Wrecked Light yet? It’s a gorgeous, collaborative album of music, a lyrical exposition of Psalm 90, and a meditation on Holy Saturday, all in one. Wait until it’s dark outside, light a candle, put on some headphones, and press play. And then, when you’re ready to dig deeper, read this interview. As you’ll soon see, creator and lyricist Hannah Hubin is full of insight and eloquence, and her observations here will assist you in savoring All the Wrecked Light for all it’s worth.
Read More ›Branching Out: Galahad and the Tree of Tales
Tolkien has rightly described the world of story, and especially the mysterious world of fairy tale, myth and legend, as being like a great branching tree: deeply rooted in the past, rooted in the very origins of language and the earliest mysteries of our creation as human beings, but branching out from the past into the present as each new generation absorbs the sap of the old tales and puts out branches, unfolds leaves—which are themselves new creations, new developments and yet rising out of the earliest stories, organically related to the whole, not so much inventing novelties as teasing out and opening up seeds of potentiality hidden in the earlier telling.
Read More ›A Liturgy for Gardening
In anticipation of the full arrival of spring, here’s a liturgy from Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1 for those of us who are contemplating what we should grow in our gardens this year. Download the liturgy at EveryMomentHoly.com/liturgies or in the Every Moment Holy app.
Read More ›Ash Wednesday: An Exhortation Making Space to Speak of Dying
In the season of Lent, we devote special attention to the ache of incompletion, suffering, and trial. Lent begins with the dust of mortality on Ash Wednesday and ends with the broken bread of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday before leading into the great hope of Easter. This Ash Wednesday, we invite you to join us in praying this liturgy as we begin our Lenten journey.
Read More ›On Poetry, Programming, Chaos, and Cosmos
A few years ago at Hutchmoot, Pete Peterson said something that has been enriching the leaf-mould of my mind ever since. Quoting Walt Wangerin, Jr., Pete talked about how the Sanskrit word cinoti “makes of the poet ‘a heaper into heaps, and a piler into piles.’”
Read More ›How to Read Seamus Heaney (Part 2)
In this short series of posts, I am hoping to encourage the reading of poetry for all it’s worth—to foster confidence in those who love to read poems, but perhaps feel a little intimidated by tackling the work of some modern poets. My case study is Seamus Heaney, the most significant poet to emerge from Ireland since W. B. Yeats.
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