We have just got back from a very nice skiing holiday with some wonderful friends. We went to Bansko in Bulgaria – a very interesting place.
The pictures are here – I may get around to annotating them properly at some point but until now you’ll have to make do with the generic names.
I thought about leaving this post until tomorrow being Valentines day and all; but actually I’m not talking about the romantic type of poetry. The poetry I like is the type that paints a picture in your head that draws you to imagine.
Today someone pointed out a web site with lots of the type of poetry I really like. This type of poetry takes you out of yourself and shows you the bigger world and even beyond.
I suppose it must be fairly self evident as a blogger who mainly writes that I like words. I actually see words as a means to an end, I don’t love words because they are words, I love words because they have the potential to communicate something that takes me to somewhere else. I’m not talking about escaping, I’m talking about travelling and in travelling experiencing something new that broadens who I am.
The other thing that poems can do is to express something that we struggle to express ourselves. Last night one of the young guys in my Cell Group got baptised. In our church people who are getting baptised say a few words before-hand. It’s a daunting task to stand up in-front of a few hundred people and talk about yourself. So what does a young guy do – he reads a poem; it was great.
Anyway, here’s one that I really liked:
Performance for an Audience of One by Gerard Kelly
If you had been the only one:
Yours the only ticket sold;
Your solitary bottom
Spoilt for choice
In an ocean of empty seats.
If you had been
The only one:
He still would have staged
The whole show.The brooding, hovering chords
Of the overture
Unfolding
For your ears only:
Stars spinning out like Catherine wheels
Across a dark but lightening set,
Until dawn was uncorked
On green home.Act 1: the building of a nation:
A people wooed and won
And lost
And won again.
For you alone the whole cast
Weaving and turning through dances
To fill a joyous expanse of stage.Act 2: the cry of a child
In a vastly empty universe;
The adventure of hope and betrayal;
The seat-gripping climate:
Triumph diving, death defying,
Through the fiery hoop of tragedy.
The clamour of the crowd scenes
Building
Toward an unimagined finale –
A cosmos, purged of guilt
Restored,
Dressed for dancing.If you had been the only one,
Your grimy pounds
The total take:
He still would have staged
The whole show
And wept for joy
At the warmth
of your applause.
Some times you need someone to say something or do something that gives you a different perspective on things. I have been struggling with these posts a little because, to be honest, I haven’t had anything to say. Nothing has stood out as something that was worth writing about.
Today I read an interview that Adrian Warnock did with Tim Challies. Tim said this:
I blog as part of my spiritual disciplines. If I stop walking closely with God I very quickly run out of things to say. And so I blog to ensure that I continue to read the Bible, I continue to seek after God and continue to read good books. If I become lax in these activities my blog suffers. It really is a thermometer that measures my spiritual temperature. If that sounds selfish, so be it!
Now that’s a different perspective. The issue isn’t the blog, the issue is the rest of my life. So I contemplated what it was that might not quite be right and the answer was quite plain when I thought from this new perspective. I’ve been reading this book as my ‘spiritual’ book and to be honest it’s a bit too nice, perhaps safe is a better word but I think you know what I mean. For my other reading I’ve been reading Grumpy Old Men and to be honest I’m most of the way through and I’ve reached the point where there isn’t actually anything new; there’s only so much of someone else’s grumping that you can take.
This evening Sue and I (with Jonathan tagging along too) went out for a drink to the local book shop and I bought myself a new book. I don’t think this will be as nice, safe or grumpy as my current books; hopefully it will be a lot more inspiring.
Interestingly Adrian seems to be suffering from a bit of bloggers block to.
The other day I stood under three trees and looked up at them and the blue sky beyond. These were tall slender trees going straight up. I wondered what it would be like to be sat at the top of one of those trees. As we walked further on we saw a buzzard sat at the top of one of these tall slender trees observing everything that was happening around searching for some prey; a completely different perspective.
Sometimes different perspectives are exactly what you need. How do you find your different perspective? How do you know it’s a good perspective?
So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ–that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life–even though invisible to spectators–is with Christ in God. He is your life.
Now there’s another perspective.
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