Forget about the other six, says Pride.
They’re only using you.
Admittedly, Lust is a looker,
but you can do better.

And why do they keep bringing us
to this cheesy dive?
The food’s so bad that even Gluttony
can’t finish his meal.

Notice how Avarice
keeps filling his glass
whenever he thinks we’re not looking,
while Envy eye’s your plate.

Hell, we’re not even done, and Anger
is already arguing about the bill.
I’m the only one who
ever leaves a decent tip.

Let them all go, the losers!
It’s a relief to see Sloth’s
fat ass go out the door.
But stick around. I have a story

that not everyone appreciates–
about the special satisfaction
of staying on board as the last
grubby lifeboat pushes away.

~Dana Gioia, The Seven Deadly Sins

This cruise-liner is named PRIDE… and it is going down, those who choose to stay will ride it straight to Hell.

I first heard Dana Gioia speak as part of the Mars Hill Audio journal. I was taken back a bit by his decision to step down from the head of the National Endowment for the arts in order to pursue of all things, poetry. He made a statement to the effect, and I paraphrase…

I want to pursue the writing of poetry while I have the strength and vigor to fully attend to it.

I had never read any of his poetry until I discovered this little gem snuggled in-between the articles of First Things. Looking forward to reading more of the fruits of his poetic vigor as he focuses on this good work and art. He puts to poetry what Lewis laid out in prose…

The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride–just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains (rash) cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

~C.S. Lewis; Mere Christianity, The Great Sin

• 
  Mere Christianity
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Categories: Sin, Hell, Pride, Poetry, First Things
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Standing on a boulder you cast a line,
Your bare feet rounded by the flickering water
Of your native river thick with water lilies,
And who are you, staring at the float
While you listened to echoes, the clatter of paddles?
What is the stigma you received, young master,
You who are ill with your apartness
And have one longing: to be just like the others?
I know your story and I learned your future.
Dressed as a Gypsy girl I could stop by the river
And tell your fortune: fame and a lot of money,
Without knowledge, though, of the price to be paid
which one does not admit to the envious.
One thing is certain: in you, there are two natures.
The miserly, the prudent one against the generous.
For many years you will attempt to reconcile them
Till all your works have grown small
And you will prize only uncalculated gifts,
Greatheartedness, self-forgetful giving,
Without monuments, books, and human memory.

~Czeslaw Miloscz, A boy

• 
  New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
  Author: Czeslaw Milosz

Autobiographical? Perhaps, but still full of the common experience of childhood desire, selling out, and then redefining value after a few hard knocks of wisdom.

It’s true, there are early mistakes we make as “young masters” that are hard to shake, envy can follow you for many days.

The fight between the natures, both so compelling… was it miserly behavior or was it prudence that I pit against generosity?

Those things most appreciated do grow small with their authenticity and intimacy; even desire for posterity will taint it.

Categories: Innocence, Czeslaw Milosz, Poetry
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Thus, brother theologian, here you are,
Connoisseur of heavens and abysses,
Year after year perfecting your art,
Choosing bookish wisdom for your mistress,
Only to discover you wander in the dark.

Ai, humiliated to the bone
By tricks that crafty reason plays,
You searched for peace in human homes
But they, like sailboats, glide away,
Their goal and port, alas, unknown.

You sit in taverns drinking wine,
Pleased by the hubbub and the din,
Voices grow loud and then decline
As if played out by a machine
And you accept your quarantine.

On this sad earth no time to grieve,
Love potions every spring are brewing,
Your heart, in magic, finds relief,
Though Lenten dirges cut your cooing.
And thus you learn how to forgive.

Voracious, frivolous, and dazed
As if your time were without end
You run around and loudly praise
Theatrum where the flesh pretends
To win the game of nights and days.

In plumes and scales to fly and crawl,
Put on mascara, fluffy dresses,
Attempt to play like beast and fowl,

Forgetting interstellar spaces:
Try, my philosopher, this world.

And all your wisdom came to nothing
Through many years you worked and strived
With only one reward and trophy:
Your happiness to be alive
And sorrow that your life is closing.

To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.

~Czeslaw Milosz, Poet at Seventy

• 
  New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
  Author: Czeslaw Milosz

If you could look into the future and grab some wisdom from your future self, perhaps something like this would be the best you could hope for.

In this way of appreciation, looking back through the eyes of others has the power of looking forward with your own… perhaps even better. Then it is just a matter of listening, learning, and applying… living even.

Categories: Wisdom, Czeslaw Milosz, Adulthood, Poetry
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The hypothesis of resurrection
Drawn by an eminent scientist from quantum mechanics,
Foresees our return to familiar places and people
After a billion or two billion earth years
(Which in the beyond-time equals one instant.)
I am glad I have lived long enough to witness the fulfillment of
predictions
About a possible alliance of religion and science,
That was prepared by Einstein, Planck, and Bohr.
I do not take too seriously scientific phantasies,
Though I respect graphs and computations.
The same was expressed more concisely by Peter the Apostle,
When he said: Apokatastasis panton,
The renewal of all things.
Yet it is helpful: to be able to imagine
That every person has a code instead of life
In an eternal storage room, a supercomputer of the universe.
We disintegrate into rot, dust, microfertilizers,
But that code or essence remains
And waits, till at last it takes flesh.
And also, as the new corporeality
Should be cleansed of evil and afflictions,
The notion of Purgatory enters into the equation.
Not different is what the faithful in a country church
Repeat in chorus asking for life eternal.
And I with them. Not comprehending
Who I will be when I wake after enduring.

~Czeslaw Milosz, After Enduring

• 
  New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
  Author: Czeslaw Milosz

Milosz is quickly becoming one of my favorite poets, which is easy right now… because I know so few. Regardless, every time I open up this collection and flip to a random page of verse, I feel like I am hit with a glint of transcendent sunshine. Poignant and whimsical in the same stroke… and always dignified in its humanity.

I found this one especially germane to my recent readings along with N.T. Wright as he seeks to articulate an orthodox understanding of the resurrection to modern Christians, that would be me…

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.

~NT Wright, Surprised by Hope

• 
  Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
  Author: N. T. Wright

Categories: Resurrection, N.T. Wright, Czeslaw Milosz, Hope, Poetry, Theology
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Haven’t you figured it out
There’s a world outside of Hollywood
A world outside the Bright Lights
the Glamor
That Blinds everyone, Forces Jealousy
to their sight

Don’t forget, You’re Hollywood
You mask your pain with Beauty
With the complex Lyrics, the illusive poetry
Their beauty Lies beyond even your sight

That’s what you are, You’re Hollywood
You’re the Factory of all the movies
the hope of all the people who live, who thrive
off pretending to live a life you’ll never live
to blind the world to see what you’ll never be

I once was Hollywood, but that didn’t last
and for that I am Glad
I no longer need to Hide the mysteries, the complexities
that dwell within my being

Never Again Will I be Hollywood or Admire
its beauty and bright Lights
For I would Rather be
Lost, Alone, in a city strange
than Surrounded by a world of Fakes

~unknown poet, found April 2006 Henry Ford Estates

I do a fairly regular bike ride down Hines drive and occasionally I will dip in behind the Henry Ford estate on the east end to hang out for a contemplative moment with the waterfall.

>			>
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About 4 years ago I stopped in there when the water was especially low, I think there was a bunch of debris damning it up. Anyway, the stepping stones that usually have a water cascade on top had become visible and dry.

Someone had inscribed the above poem on one of the stones.

It felt like a message just for me.

At that time I was in the moment of trying to begin everything that was an indie film career, well I still am… but anyway, it hit me like this transcendent little drop of what I would normally consider quite conventional wisdom… worthy of a nod of agreement, but perhaps nothing more.

>			>
		>

Somehow the poetic format and the first person tone brought me in touch with this cliche truth in a profound way.

This endeavor… telling stories through a visual medium, film making…

… well, it has a long history of eating people up and dehumanizing them in an especially brutal way.

Bight Lights, Glamor, and Forced Jealousy… was that what I was going to end up creating? Is that what Detroit was courting with the film industry?

>			>
		>

To be sure, I have met dozens of the most generous and kind people I know through the local indie film groups in Detroit… in many ways it is these people that I fell in love with when I started down this path and entered into this world of would be film making.

>			>
		>

I still have no idea what the future holds for the success of my film making aspirations, but I do hope that myself, my community, and all of Detroit can take this trite message to heart and see beyond the beauty that is within our sight.

I am hopeful that such personal injury to one’s soul is not inherent to the medium of film or the story telling process, and perhaps it can be done while leaving Hollywood behind…

Categories: Hollywood, Advice, Poetry, Challenges, Film Making
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This year I took my first crack at writing some of my own poetry. I did not go to the pen willingly; I was forced to out of desperation, dragged there actually by a 67 year old woman with a well tended garden. Once I got there I found at first an oasis of relief in bloodletting, and then slowly, a new world of imagination to explore everything that has ever moved me to think or feel. Carl has been living there for years. I remember reading a smaller collection of his poetry about 5 years ago, in my mid 20s. I identified with certain poems about the doldrums of the work life and some of the searching out of faith, but to be honest… I was barely aware then, and now I feel like I am just waking up out of what seems like a shamefully long sleep. I didn’t need poetry then, sure I could be inspired by the lyrics of a song, but I didn’t need it to survive… for my soul to breath, to be a “soul survivor”.

Being asked to write this afterward to his work feels a little bit like being invited to write a review of a movie I watched with my eyes closed. I have been there, but I was barely conscious at the time. When I surveyed the bibliography of his poetry books dating back to 1996, I thought… “What did I put down in 96?”… and then I realized my kindred connection to Carl. In 1996 I wrote my senior English thesis paper on “The Meaning of Life”… can you get any more pretentious at 18? Naively ambitious, for sure, but even then I felt this strange yearning to grapple with the transcendent and still find meaning in the ordinary, in the regular, in the stuff of life. I spent the next decade hardly writing anything, I was preoccupied with figuring out equations, playing with computer software, and looking around the next corner of life. I did a fair amount of reading, but writing… I don’t think that was something I was honest or brave enough to do then. I am glad that Carl was.

And maybe this opportunity to read and consider his work is something like writing the poetry I have been unconsciously living for the past decade. All those moments that just brushed by me can be redeemed by the appreciation of the word. All those conversations that I just let go through me have a chance to penetrate now the way they should have years ago… when I read a thoughtful word, a carefully chosen phrase, a spiritually guided declaration, a soulful proclamation: It hurts now because it should have then.

In my first reading through this collection I was instantly put at ease with opening poem, Black Highway… I was first introduced to it in song form by our friend Chris Waterman several years ago. It grabbed me then and I knew it was special… slowing down with the words on that first page confirmed my suspicions, this was going to be a good ride. I wouldn’t be driving, but looking out the window as an invited passenger instead.

During that initial submission to the words washing over me, I was struck by the progression and arrangement more than anything. These felt like songs. I am hardly the connoisseur of music that Carl is, I must admit many of his references are going to take some research for me to fully appreciate. But I have picked up on the value of the album. This collection of poetry is like 7 separate albums. Those seven chapters almost felt like intentional movements of a concert or opera. Chapter one had me in the car before I knew where we were going, and by the end of the ride I trusted the driver completely. I visited some very familiar landscape, like the interior of the American soul on the open road. By chapter seven I felt like I had been taken through the whole of it and laid to rest back in the arms of faith. I would invite anyone to ride shotgun with Carl, you can borrow my copy… but it will be lent with extreme reluctance.

• Redford Cowboy
• Get Your Own Restlessness or Paperback
• Explore Something Greater Than

Thanks for creating and inspiring…

Categories: Inspiration, Friendship, Encouragement, Poetry, Books
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When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

To a saintly man
–So goes an Arab tale–
God said somewhat maliciously:
“Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you.”

“And I,” answered the pious one,
“Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you.”

To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don’t think, don’t remember
The death on the cross,
Though every day He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed

To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.

Berkeley

~Czeslaw Milosz

• 
  New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
  Author: Czeslaw Milosz

Categories: Modernity, Czeslaw Milosz, Poetry
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IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

~Rudyard Kipling, If…

Categories: Advice, Poetry
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I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother’s attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design - but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay ; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment’s hesitation.

~Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelstrom

• 
  Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Categories: Seafaring, Advice, Poetry, Books
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Thanks be to the critic
Bring your precision
That well crafted word of deflation
That righteous eye of observation
Convict us of the sin
Of settling for the lesser thing

Thanks be to the critic
The one motivated rightly
Born of pure honesty
Tempered with humility
Defending the senses diligently

Thanks be to the critic
Friend of the populous
Scourge of the callous
Seeker of the righteous

Thanks be to the critic
Revealer of beauty to us
Mindless enjoyment your sacrifice
In a pursuit zealous
For art and culture beneficent

Categories: Poetry, Criticisms
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Can we create
More than a complaint

When it’s just not right
or worse;
evil
unholy
sinful
Where do we put our fight

Does our creativity end
In line with the boycott procession

Fed up with the propaganda
Do we jump start the same old band wagon

Full of fear
Miserable anxieties
Leftover diatribes
a Homily from yesteryear

Is this all we have to offer
Still safer
Retreat into subculture

Oh holy cloister
We make our last stand fervently
Alone in a cemetery

Can we enter into
Something honest
and Sincere

Does that rug still have a tear
a Reason to prepare

More than our favorite abstraction
More than a novel invention
Oh God, please more than a duplication
Convention
Placation
Imitation
Slighted with condescension

This will so free
Certainly
an Eternal perplexity
but, Is it capable of creativity

A dimension of surrender, completely

So worried about our audience
do we Forget, it’s only You in attendance

Categories: Creativity, Poetry
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