A few years ago, I helped lead a six-week series called the Creativity Project at my church. The aim was to open a space for people to exercise the creativity that we have all (and I do mean all) been gifted with by God. During that time, a few poems presented themselves to me. They were unexpected and arrived all in a rush, which hasn’t happened to me for some time. This particular poem came while I was wrestling with the spiritual discipline of creating prayer ropes, maintaining the patience, focus and prayer to tie complex knots over and over again.
As I enter the Advent season, God has brought this discipline back to me. Advent is about waiting. Waiting with expectation. Waiting with hope. Waiting even though things don’t seem smooth or simple.
Thus, I share this poem with you. Let me know what it stirs in you, what you see and hear… what you are awakened to or waiting for this Advent.
* * *
We seek smooth lines, swift and silken,
things uncluttered and uncomplicated. Easy
beauty, a sense of peace—the humility
of knots undoes us. No doubt even the cross
was not truly straight, although that’s how
we like to make it, right-angled so we know
our place, can trace our salvation
with rulers and thick-tipped markers.
The first symbols were more
rounded and irresolute, the tail
of the fish crossing itself, a Father,
Son and Holy Spirit less precise,
that wandered across thoroughfares
like a lost child, a secret yet to be told.
Now, we pull at our lives, seeking
resolution, understanding, something
that might make sense of the paradox,
the absences, the dying children,
while old women whose lines have long
fallen, sagged into the corners
of their eyes, their lives, comfortable
with the tangles, weave our times
into prayers, letting the loose ends
fray into supplication.