I fell in love with poetry when I began graduate school for my MFA in creative writing. Looking back at the poems I was reading and writing ten years ago, I can connect the dots among my relationship with poetry, my faith, and my rejection of the patriarchy.
Most poems felt like prayers to me back then; they still do. I often say the word “poem” when I mean to say “prayer” and “prayer” when I’m trying to say “poem.” Half the time I don’t even notice that I’ve misspoken because the words and what they represent are so tightly woven together. If I don’t sense much of a personal connection to the themes of a poem I’m reading, I view it as I view a psalm that doesn’t feel especially resonant at the moment–I know that somewhere someone will feel seen and known by the words, and I am in some sense reading on their behalf, as I hope that on my harder days, people are reading and praying on mine. I trust the collective, the mystery, the power of words to connect souls and minds across time and space.
Putting myself in the way of poetry became a spiritual practice while I was struggling to find my place in the conservative evangelical denomination my husband and I had been members of for almost 20 years. We had engaged in conversations about women in the church, racial healing, mercy and justice—topics that we viewed as intimately connected to what it means to be a Christian in our everyday lives. We pushed for change. We led small groups without shying away from difficult conversations. We brought in speakers and coordinated film nights. We tried so hard to make our local church something it wasn’t–something it would never be.
Continue reading “Spiritual Direction for Writers by Charlotte Donlon”
