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Spiritual Sunday
My friend and occasional contributor to this blog Pastor Sue Schmidt alerted me to “The Worst Thing” by the self-described mystic poet Chelan Harkin. Among other things, it shows the danger of relying on a single metaphor to describe God. If God is beyond imagining, then the language we use to talk about God must have the exploratory openness of poetry.
In her first stanza, Harkin observes,
The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf…
I’ll note that the idea of God as a sky deity rather than a leaf deity owes something to the nomadic Israelites, who needed a god that could travel. Some of the attraction of the local gods they encountered in Palestine—and that various of the prophets railed against—was that they were more intimate in the way Harkin suggests.
Curious about the poet, I went to her website https://chelanharkin.com/
and wasn’t surprised to learn she owes a debt to Rumi and Hafiz, two Sufi poets (which is to say, two poets from Islam’s mystic strain). Describing her book , Harkin describes her poetry collection Susceptible to Lights as
a collection of poetry that is mystical and ecstatic in nature–mystical defined as anything having to do with opening the heart to light and ecstatic having to do with anything expressed from this place. Susceptible to Light is here to remind you of your joy, to assist you in reconsidering ways of relating to your life that better serve and open your heart, to deconstruct anything about God that doesn’t feel close, intimate, authentic, and warm, and to remind your soul to break the surface and take a breath.
Then she quotes the two Sufi poets:
Rumi says, “What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest.” (Barks, Rumi the Book of Love, 2003) May this collection help you feel a taste of that sweet openness. Hafiz says, “God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” (Ladinsky, The Gift, 1999, p. 199) May this collection help you feel the possibility of that kind of laughter.
Here’s her poem:
The Worst Thing
By Celan Harkin
The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.
