Poetry and Redemption

Today I have the opportunity to do two of my favorite things: attend a book discussion with Bishop Laura and co-host a poetry sharing group loosely entitled Love in the Time of Covid. Little did I know that there would be for me an almost perfect convergence of the themes: Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God by Kaitlin B. Curtice is the book and Redemptive Resources: What is Saving Us In These Times? is the poetry theme. 

Native dropped into my lap several weeks ago as one thread of research on white privilege led to another and voila! Redemptive Resources was inspired by Krista Tippett bemoaning that journalists failed to attend to redemptive features of our landscape. 

Imagine my surprise and delight when Curtice not only uses poetry to express many of her stories and memories and insights, but also speaks of the redemptive power for Indigenous people of the land and ancestors and memories. And so I offer one of the excerpts which particularly wove these themes together and yes, saved me!

“When you break the connection that binds you to money, time, obligations, expectations and concerns, the land enters you. It transports you....expressed only in words that have rhythm and movement and life to them....

When the wind blows, we imagine she is erasing every injustice,

sweeping misdoing from the east to the west,

making room for something new, a more whole world.

Instead, what we don’t realize is that she is rustling the tree branches

to sing us a song.

Instead, she is sowing seeds across the landscapes,

seeds that tomorrow will become the beauty that restores us.

Instead, she is whispering for us to hold on, to keep going,

to water those seeds, because one day, they will show us the way home.” (p.66)

Our world as troubled as it is is filled with the redemptive glory of God. It doesn’t always glisten but it does always radiate. May we all find and embrace the sacred language which speaks to us of our ancestors, our memories, our individual and common stories. May it infect us and may we communicate it to others.