We start off the new year hearing a voice as insightful as it is gentle, as familiar to us as it is challenging to our everyday assumptions. The Rev. Gordon Wiersma continues to cultivate a poetic voice that addresses the pain of those who hurt even while they may still be connected to the loving flow of God’s grace. His puns bring us laughter, his presence through our varied experiences of stress and difficulty, “a little Sabbath,” a “rest-note” perhaps just before some brand-new thing “silvers” us brightly onward. What a gift to have a shepherd like Gordon who attends to his love of poetry in ways that bless us all so richly. ~Randy Smit
(Quotes taken from poems featured below.)
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As far as a favorite poem, I’d like to share “The Door” by Jane Hirshfield.
It is simply one of the most remarkable pieces of invitation and mystery, beauty and imagery, wisdom and hope, that I have ever come across.
I am in awe of both the artistry and the content of the poem, and it delights and intrigues me that such a poem can be written.
The Door by Jane Hirshfield
A note waterfalls steadily
through us,
just below hearing.
Or this early light
streaming through dusty glass:
what enters, enters like that,
unstoppable gift.
And yet there is also the other,
the breath-space held between any call
and its answer––
In the querying
first scuff of footstep,
the wood owls’ repeating,
the two-counting heart:
A little sabbath,
minnow whose brightness silvers past time.
The rest-note,
unwritten,
hinged between worlds,
that precedes change and allows it.
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This poem was written at a time of particular personal struggle, and is also a reflection on the challenging realities I hear and see in those around me.
Flowing by Gordon Wiersma 7/07
flowing, always flowing.
eyes open inward
feel
the tender stone
broken,
from which
a woven stream
of tattered strands
flowing, always flowing
– filling.
source from
within and beyond –
given sight to
feel
each unraveled thread
join the broken flow.
(I will often sit on the banks and watch:
amazed that such a river
once begun
claims so much
for its persistent current)
I am broken open
and within and beyond is
flowing, always flowing.
broken stones
are sharp
and tattered cloth
frays rough;
but river rocks
grow smooth
and moistened strands
lay soft –
in the stream a wisdom
not its own –
flowing, always flowing.