Writing Myself into a Corner

I wrote the poem (previous post) about delight and belonging yesterday morning. I reflected on it later in the day and again this morning.

I don't claim to be a premier poet. I don't write poetry in order to be profound or to publish poetry. Mostly I write for myself. I write what bubbles up within me. Sometimes the act of writing poetry is a way to get onto paper what my inner landscape looks like at that moment. Most of the time it's not noteworthy, but is simply a helpful exercise for spiritual reflection.

Every once in a while something I write resonates very deeply within me and feels like a truth that I hadn't yet considered in my head. My soul tells me something about life and reality that my head has blocked out and my ego has resisted. While it may feel new, the words imagine a reality my soul has tried to tell me about for a long, long time.

I noticed yesterday one way this often happens for me in poetry: I write some words into a poem that paint me in a corner. The words trap me. And to get out of the corner, I must gently let myself down into a deeper, more interior listening in order to hear the voice of my soul. In some ways it's like giving myself an ultimatum, then listening to see how my soul responds.

Yesterday in the middle of the poem, I wrote, "This you must get / and come to believe / with your life: . . ." And I didn't know what the next line would be. I wrote myself into a corner in order to listen for what would come next.

What do I believe you must "get, and come to believe with your life?" If I thought about it long enough, I'd probably respond with several things. I wasn't interested, though, in what my mind thought about what I must believe and live. I wanted to hear what my gut said, what lives in me at the level of soul.

Then I wrote almost immediately as I listened: "The energy of delight will carry you home." I don't recall that I've ever thought that before consciously. I hadn't read those words anywhere. I don't often think about delight . . . though delight has been with me more than usual since working with the Genesis 1 - 2 accounts recently for a spiritual formation study. I don't do delight very well. I'm much more accomplished at earnestness. That delight arose in the poem was a surprise to me.

The more I listen for what arises from that well of soul, the more familiar I become with the voice that is uniquely mine, the voice which God has planted within me, and with which I am invited to speak into the world. This is one of the ways I'm learning to attend to that voice.