A book of poetry!

Book Club April, 2020 – Boundless Light: Let There be Light: Poems of Healing

A book of poetry!

I am not a great one for poetry, I muse.

Don’t think I have a copy in my un-book-cased library.

I have a bit of a look.

It's not easily to hand.

Put the idea aside for a while; might delve deeper later.

“I have a copy,” my daughter says, “We can share it.

You have it for a couple of days.”

So. Here it is to hand – such a handsome production.

Even a bookmark printed with the pattern of the end-papers of the book.

My eye travels over the index –

Peter Henniker-Heaton. That will be good.

Doris Kerns Quinn. That is a name that has puzzled me in the past.

There is a famous historian and biographer in America: Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Could they be one and the same?

I read a couple of poems in the 'Qualities That Heal' section.

(There are several sections:

God’s Supremacy, Man, the Expression of God, Thought Opens to Healing,

Qualities That Heal, Prayer, The Healing Power of Divine Love,

Regeneration and Restoration, Trials, Proofs of God’s Care,

Praying for Others, Safety, Now is the Time.)

Althea Brooks Hollenbeck provides excellent advice in On Gentle Word:

  OH, let it never bear a sting---

  the thought you think. Make it a bird!

  Oh, feather it with love, and wing

  it carefully on gentle word.

  Then it will rise and sweetly sing,

  And bless wherever it is heard.

But, that was just in passing. I found in the Index: Ananias*.

Ah! Wisdom from Rushworth M. Kidder of ethics fame!

“Ananias is in the Lesson this week; could be a good one to start on.”

A good one indeed! It is in the section 'Regeneration and Restoration', I note.

Let us quote it here in full:

  Ananias *

  by Rushworth Kidder

  “I HEARD you, Lord: ‘Heal him,’

  But . . . may I say a word?

  This Saul---haven’t I heard

  about Jerusalem

  and how he scorched us there---

  the violence, terror, despair?”

  Ananias,

  what matters to us

  nineteen centuries since

  is that you shattered such logic

  and listened.

  Routing your own resistance, you trusted,

  freeing the verse of your heart

  with the rhythm of intuition.

  Love-led, you dared face hatred with compassion.

  Not that you didn’t question---

  we all have. But out of that blaze

  you came, wide-eyed and childlike,

  to uncritical innocence.

  Without your kind, the Sauls would be

  nothing

  but blind.

  *See Acts 9:10-18

I find myself in awe at Ananias’ trust, intuition, daring, compassion,

innocence, attention.

And then – the ultimate verse throws it back to me.

How am I going to put this example into practice?

Joyce Voysey