I had coffee with a friend this week, and we talked about our love of poetry. We are both Spiritual Directors who use poetry as a tool to gently step into new understandings of the Divine and self. Poetry tiptoes around the rote into fresh new ways of seeing and being with ourselves and others.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Sifter” did this for me when I read it years ago. “Sifter” is a poem about a flour sifter that continues to invite me to let the bad days “pass through the tiny holes.” It also causes me to wonder, what other lessons are hiding in my kitchen drawers?
….
What I could not know then was how being a sifter
would help me all year long.
When bad days came
I would close my eyes and feel them passing
through the tiny holes.
When good days came
I would try to contain them gently
the way flour remains
in the sifter until you turn the handle.
Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time
and no one ever knew.
-Shihab Nye, Naomi. “A Maze Me: Poems for Girls.”
Poetry ignites and invites new ways of seeing and being in the world.
My 14-year-old daughter reminded me this week of a poem she wrote last year. Her untitled poem explores the challenges of being human in the world and offers, at the end, gentle wisdom for how to live.
The assignment was to write a poem inspired by Clint Smith’s poem “Something You Should Know,” which is about his life. Delana said, “I wanted to write about a human truth, not just my own life.”
I’m sharing her poem, with her permission, today.
May the words, insight, and wisdom of a young teenage girl land softly and guide you; may her words offer spiritual direction and gentle insight.
Something you should know about life
Is we all have a monster
Not the kind that live under your bed
Threatening to grab you
Not the kind that haunts your closet
Ready to pounce in the dark of night
But the kind
That roars in the back of your head
Telling you everything
You’ve done wrong
The kind that
Make everything seem scary
But we all have this monster
And perhaps
It’s not a monster at all
Maybe it’s just a feeling
Hiding behind the mask
Of a monster
Perhaps if we just become friends
With our monster
It will quiet their growl.
By Delana Hoppock (14)
Delana used the inspiration of another poet to write her poem. Ler her poem, or another poem you’ve seen recently, inspires you to write your own poem.
What is something about you, your life, your belief, or experience that is “Something You Should Know.” Try writing a playful poem of your own.
What kitchen utensil might offer you some advice on living?
“We read a poem differently than the way we read a newspaper or novel. Poetry slows us down and moves us into a different way of knowing. Poetry changes our breath and demands a more attentive presence. Poetry is one way the soul reveals itself beyond the boundaries of reason and logic.”
-Christine Valters Paintner and Betsey Beckman in Awakening the Creative Spirit; Brining Arts to Spiritual Direction.
“Poetry’s meditative power in spiritual practice awakens you and makes you more skillful as you navigate life’s rapids. It connects you to me and others. Through poetry, you also carry on the two most intimate conversations of your life-the conversation with your Supreme Being and that with yourself.
-Robert McDowell in Poetry as Spiritual Practice; Reading Writing, and Using Poetry in your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions.
‘A poet’s role is to reconnect with the sense of wonder they felt as a child seeing something for the very first time, like the giant moon on the horizon, and saying, “Wow – look at that!”. To adults many things seem ordinary and everyday, but of course nothing is ordinary.’
Pascale Petit
“There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.”
― Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, The Poets Project at Casa Grande: A Colorado Anthology
Learn more about Spiritual Direction with me here!
Sifters and Monsters .... Love it! Both are going up on my tag board!🤗