Religion and Poetry

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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There is a deep connection between religion and poetry. Both seek to explore the deeper aspects of human existence, express deep emotions, and offer insights into life’s mysteries. Receptivity to one enhances the appreciation and understanding of the other, for both involve a certain openness to the profound and the ineffable. Many religious scriptures, including those of various traditions, use allegory, symbolism, and mythology to convey deeper spiritual truths. However, issues arise when these narratives are interpreted too literally, leading to a more rigid and exclusionary understanding.

Acceptance of ambiguity and openness to the nuances of rhythm and language contribute to a deeper understanding. Both mediums often use symbolism, metaphor and layered meanings that may elude a strict, literal interpretation. It’s in the spaces between the lines, the pauses and the unspoken, that the richness of meaning can emerge, inviting the reader or listener to engage with the text on a deeper level. This willingness to embrace ambiguity allows for a deeper and more personal interpretation, fostering a connection to the deeper essence of the message being conveyed.

Other religious traditions have a more open acknowledgement of the symbolic nature of their stories, allowing for a broader and more flexible interpretation. Embracing the inherent ambiguity often present in religious and poetic language fosters a more inclusive and tolerant understanding of spiritual teachings.

Literalism can result in a narrow, dogmatic interpretation that may miss the intended metaphorical or allegorical meanings embedded in the texts. This approach can lead to exclusivism and legalism, where adherence to specific doctrines becomes more important than the underlying moral or spiritual messages. Interpreting religious texts with an awareness of their allegorical nature and appreciating the metaphorical layers can lead to a more profound and enriching spiritual experience, allowing for diverse perspectives and interpretations to coexist.

To truly be devout, embrace
The poetry within life’s grace.
It hides in chaos, both man-made and wild,
Till the words, “Let it be,” reconcile.

Life’s poetry enlightens, unfurls,
Revealing perspectives and new worlds.
Curiosity leads, senses keen,
Unveiling beauty, even in the routine.

In the hush of silence, after storms and fears,
“Meet your God!” it softly cheers.
Winds subside, tears blend with rain,
Hope emerges, washing away pain.

Love becomes an option, a stark contrast,
In a world where hate can amass.
A listening ear, a helping hand,
An embrace, a womb where we understand.

So to be truly religious, it seems,
You discover poetry in life’s streams.
In chaos and calm, let the words decree,
“Let it be,” and find divinity.

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I like what Socrates was after if The Republic is correctly decoded. It wasn’t all poetry he wanted to abolish. It was the sophistry that mangled & commercialized the truth—took advantage of folks’ deepest vulnerabilities, hungers.

I like what C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkein had to say about the true myth.

It is not good, beautiful, or authentic (true) to be inclusive of that which violates & fails to recognize & acknowledge self=other.

Something tells me this is more your speed:
pillars.taylor.edu/cgi/viewcont … 20happened.

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“A Footnote to All Prayers”

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

4

Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeley, saying, “I don’t remember the features perfectly, but what I do remember of it is that wonderful myth of the charioteer and how our souls before they were incarnate in our bodies would gather in the wake of the Gods, and travel up to this place which Plato calls the Hyper Uranian Plane, whatever that is, and at the apex of the universe, they would look and they would see and depending on how good of a glimpse they got, and how much it warmed their souls, is how much they remembered of it, until they fell back into their bodies.” This is what Lewis writes saying what he remembers about the Phaedrus.

What was it about?

His being steeped in mythology breaks out into Lewis’s writings continually, whether it’s his Apologetics whether it’s his Surprised by Joy, in which a Boethian eternity - life, illimitability (and hence duration), and absence of succession (or timelessness) - reappears under the guise of Joy, but there’s a sort of deep platonic wellspring in both the Apologetics and in his fiction, which, once you have the eyes to see it, is stunning and surprising when you think of Lewis as successful as a writer of Apologetics in children’s literature. Not despite his day job as a medievalist but because of it.

Of course, he said that “the great myths—especially the myths of “the dying and reviving god”—attracted and moved him “provided [he] met [them] anywhere except in the Gospels,” but the Gospel had to be something different for him. He knew that if you just read a passage from an old Christian, you could make some modern Christians feel that you’re reading a passage from a new-age pantheist. He tried to give it all a rational basis because that is what our age is about. In his life, though, he was confronted by the irrational and brought to tears.

Mark Vernon wrote in his book The Secret History of Christianity about the sort of sad, emaciated conditions of Christianity, in which Christians are finding it difficult to make what we say we believe appealing. The idea of the Numinous, the idea of a category of Holiness, which has nothing to do with my ability to behave and is wholly different, seems to have taken a backseat to a fake emotionality and a literalism that assumes the Bible can explain things. Why would reality be made exclusively to present itself to the human intellect? We have to see how weird our ancient forms of Christianity are.

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The whole thing is communication. The whole point is dialogue. Revelation. How could you talk/care about myth & miss that?

The hiddenness is mercy. The revelation is grace.

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This comes across as a list of words, not coherent communication:
communication; dialogue; revelation; hiddenness; mercy; revelation (again); grace.

You cannot address the issue - you are completely incapable - because it is not the propaganda you have been told. Lewis had a complicated personality, which reading any of his academic works indicates, and the person who spoke on the radio after the war and followed up with books was fulfilling a task presented to him. He was addressing the public, an audience he was not used to, so he changed his whole approach. Lewis’s great gift as a writer about Christianity was not as an academic theologian, says Rowan Williams, but “in what you might call pastoral theology: as an interpreter of people’s moral and spiritual crises; as somebody who is a brilliant diagnostician of self-deception; and somebody who, in his own book on bereavement after his wife’s death, really pushes the envelope – giving permission, I suppose, to people to articulate their anger and resentment about a God who apparently takes your loved ones away from you.”

The 1993 film Shadowlands told a romanticised version of the story of Lewis’s marriage late in life to an American fan, Joy Davidson (the title of Surprised By Joy, published much earlier, started to look prescient). It both increased, and somewhat distorted, his reputation. The problem, says Wilson, is that “almost none of it is true. There’s only one stepson, not two stepsons, and so on. Anthony Hopkins, a brilliant actor, is immaculately clad in a dark suit, while Lewis was a filthy old man dripping beer and tobacco everywhere. But apart from all that, it makes out that this big thing in Lewis’s life was the marriage – and in fact it was just a little thing that happened at the end. For 33 years, he shared his life with the woman he called Minto, Jane Moore [the mother of one of Lewis’s boyhood friends]. She was the love of his life – she was the main thing. I want to write a screenplay for Helen Mirren to play Minto.”

AS Byatt (actually Dame Antonia Susan Duffy DBE HonFBA), who listened to Lewis’ lectures early on, said, “I did have the feeling that he was a very clever schoolboy who had never grown up. He was sheltered. I didn’t feel he knew anything about the world I was in, with babies and nappies and money problems. I think he didn’t like women. There was a terrifying moment in The Screwtape Letters where the devil is trying to tempt somebody into thinking milk is disgusting because it comes from somewhere in the cow quite close to excrement. I think that was a personal thing of Lewis’s. I think he didn’t like milk because he didn’t like females.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/19/cs-lewis-literary-legacy

Around 1947-48, a young and up-and-coming philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, arrived at Oxford. In 1948, she presented a paper in response to one of Lewis’ arguments in Miracles at an Oxford group called the Socratic Club. The club had been founded in 1942, with Lewis as its first president, as “an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular. Lewis had offered in Miracles what’s called the Argument from Reason, which said a naturalistic view of the world without God in which the human mind is the result of chance is self-defeating since it would require rationality emerging from non-rational causes, undermining the very mechanism by which a person arrives at naturalism. Anscombe’s response accused Lewis of making several important category mistakes.

Lewis’s friend Sayer and others say that the older, famous Lewis lost the debate to the young, unknown (at the time) Anscombe, forcing him to rewrite the Miracles chapter in a future printing. The public loss was so humiliating, they claim, that it shook Lewis’ confidence in apologetics, so he turned to writing fiction instead, focusing on his Narnia series for the next decade. That should show that CS Lewis, despite being the author of my childhood with the Narnia books, was complicated and not undisputed in his time.

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What I remember from reading Lewis is he several times saying he was not a theologian or a philosopher. He was very humble. One of his books that helped me get through a serious loss was “A Grief Observed.” It was both humble and transparent, and wrestled with God like Jacob (Israel), Job…

Bob: “The idea of the Numinous, the idea of a category of Holiness, which has nothing to do with my ability to behave and is wholly different, seems to have taken a backseat to a fake emotionality and a literalism that assumes the Bible can explain things. Why would reality be made exclusively to present itself to the human intellect? We have to see how weird our ancient forms of Christianity are.”

Maybe it’s both, but the both in your mind need to get closer and sharpen away the dross? Or maybe everything you say is a tee up & you think that’s my job? Socrates winks.

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I see a massive problem in Christianity in the binary approach of fundamentalism on the one hand and historical criticism on the other, which also seems to be a problem in other religions.

If you look at Christianity as a phase of human development in which humanity’s participation in the world was originally direct, holistic, and collective. There was no separation of the elements of nature, and although human beings developed culturally, their culture reflected this “immediate participation”, as Owen Barfield called it.

The so-called “Fall of Man” was his withdrawal from this immediate participation, which meant estrangement and alienation, but also analysis and exploration. This was when philosophy began, the beginnings of science and the modern world, but also the dominance of the rational over the compassionate, the strong over the weak, and the elevation of man over nature. According to Karl Jaspers, the Axial Age refers to this pivotal period in the first millennium BCE (circa 800 to 200 BCE), during which major intellectual and spiritual developments occurred independently in different regions of the world. Jaspers identified profound transformations in the thinking of ancient Greek philosophers, Chinese thinkers, Indian sages, and Hebrew prophets during this era.

When Christianity appeared, another paradigm shift occurred. It had started with the Old Testament prophets, but Christ embodied the participation of the past, albeit now from an individual perspective. Christ brought us back to the immediacy of God, but now as the “God within” and as participants in divine grace. This new participation focused on bringing the weak back to the centre and, consequently, solidarity that involved suffering, which traditionally is the role of the “suffering servant” of Judaism and given a new meaning in Christianity. This is a major point of contention in Christianity and a reason for its weakness.

This new relationship is also controversially mystical, characterised by kenosis (self-negation) and direct, personal experiences of the divine or transcendent reality. It involves a deep and intimate connection with the divine beyond traditional religious rituals and doctrines. The acceptance of metaphor, symbolism, and evocative language provides a more flexible and expressive medium to convey the ineffable aspects of these experiences. Poets can use language in ways that go beyond the literal, attempting to capture the depth and nuance of their encounters with the divine.

Mystical traditions can be found in various religious and spiritual paths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Many mystical traditions emphasise meditative and contemplative, and poetry can be a form of contemplation. Poetry’s meditative and reflective qualities allow individuals to engage deeply with the verses, pondering the meanings and insights contained within the language. This contemplative engagement can enhance the individual’s spiritual journey and understanding.

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I’ma stop you with the Fall. If you want to interpret the Genesis narrative literally — even though you said NOT to - the beginning of science was in Adam naming and finding no complementary for himself. The “beginning” of art, if you don’t count the initial “fiat lux”… was in forming Eve. I mean, if you want to get mythical, we could get mythical.

I didn’t read the rest of what you wrote because you’re full of crap on purpose.

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Who is talking about Genesis?

But you seem to have a habit of not reading.

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Whichever narrative that is a creation narrative — many elements of which many cultures share in common. Are you going back on the interpreting things literally thing?

I did read Don Richardson’s “eternity in their hearts”.

You?

What’s going to be super funny is when the big bang cosmology becomes a creation myth.

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Beneath the broom tree’s shade he sat alone,
Elijah, weary, in the wilderness,
A prayer upon his lips, a heavy moan,
“Take my life, O Lord, in my distress.”

Slumber claimed him 'neath the leafy bough,
An angel’s touch, a whisper in his ear,
“Arise, partake, for strength I bestow,
A cake, a jar of water, do not fear.”

The journey vast, the angel spoke once more,
“Arise and eat, the path is long ahead.”
With heavenly sustenance, his spirits soared,
Forty days, nights, his steps divinely led.

To Horeb’s mountain, sacred and austere,
In solitude, he found a cave’s embrace.
The word of God, inquiring, crystal clear,
“What brings you here, Elijah, in this space?”

With zealous heart, he spoke of Israel’s plight,
Altars crumbled, prophets’ blood was spilled.
“I stand alone, they seek to end my light,
In your name, O Lord, my mission unfulfilled.”

Then God commanded, “On the mount you stand,
Before the tempests and the fiery glare.
The wind, the quake, the fire fierce and grand,
Yet, I reside not in these tumults’ blare.”

A still, small voice, like whispers in the air,
Penetrated Elijah’s troubled soul.
He veiled his face, in awe, in deep despair,
A voice echoed, “Why are you here, made whole?”

In silence, solitude, the answer found,
The wilderness, the cave, the mount revealed,
Elijah’s journey, in God’s voice, renowned,
A still small voice, the wounded heart healed.

13

Upon a mount, where heavens touch the earth,
Jesus sits down, disciples gather 'round,
His voice, a beacon of celestial mirth,
In teachings, divine wisdom does abound.

“Blessed,” He spoke, the poor in spirit find,
A kingdom grand, their humble souls bestowed.
Those mourning, comfort in their grief, assigned,
In meekness, earth’s inheritance is owed.

Hungry hearts, thirsting for righteousness,
Promised fulfilment in the feast divine.
Mercy begets mercy, a blessedness,
Pure in heart, they see God’s light ever shine.

Peacemakers, called God’s own cherished kin,
Persecuted souls, righteousness their guide,
In trials, their reward, a crown within,
Kingdom of heaven, a place to abide.

Reviled, persecuted for His name,
Rejoice, for great reward in heaven waits,
In slander’s face, let joy’s bright flame proclaim,
As prophets before, stood before heaven’s gates.

So stand, blessed ones, in trials and disdain,
For in your journey, God’s truth shall remain.

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Upon the right hand, the King shall declare,
"Blessed by my Father, come forth, partake.
Inherit the kingdom, beyond compare,
Prepared since creation, for love’s sake.

I hungered, and you provided repast,
Thirsty, you offered life’s sustaining stream.
A stranger, your welcome embraced me fast,
In need of clothing, you fulfilled the dream.

Sick, and you tended with compassionate care,
Imprisoned, you visited in my plight.
The righteous, unaware of actions rare,
In innocence, questioned with hearts contrite.

“Lord, when did we see you in dire need?
In hunger, thirst, or as a stranger’s guest?
Needing clothes, or in sickness, indeed,
Or imprisoned, in our humble bequest?”

The King, with a voice as gentle as the breeze,
Responds, “Truly, each act of kindness shown,
To the least of my brothers, with such ease,
You did it to me, love’s seeds were sown.”

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God is always ready,
but we are very unready;
God is near to us,
but we are far from Him;
God is within, but we are without;
God is at home, but we are strangers.

– Meister Eckhart

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s
warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.
From ‘Love Poems From God‘ by Daniel Ladinsky.

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Unfold Your Own Myth
by Rumi

Who gets up early
to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Soloman cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow on drop.
Now there’s a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he’s wealthy.

But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you’ve grown,
lifting.

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Eternal Life is gained
by utter abandonment of one’s own life.
When God appears to His ardent lover,
the lover is absorbed in Him, and not so much as a hair of the lover remains.
True lovers are as shadows,
and when the sun shines in glory the shadows vanish away.

He is a true lover to God to whom God says
“I am thine and thou art Mine.”

  • Rumi
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_
Prayers are poetry… odes to the divine.
Aphorisms too… in the delectable tales they tell.

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Quite right!

Poetry’s fascination is that it comes from something primordial, just as music evolved from the spontaneous rhythm of nature and developed more varied sounds, and language evolved as songs with their own rhythm; poetry can be seen as an expected development from there. It participates in the nature of life and echoes the many sounds of life, giving them a semantic symbol. Ancient language gives sound to many experiential correlations, the prime example being pneuma for wind, breath, and spirit. This indicates an immersive experience, with the spirit present in the breath and the wind and always present.

I breathe your spirit on awakening,
I feel your spirit on my face.
The rhythm of my lungs reminds me of you,
And your wind caresses my hair.

You go into me and out,
You give me life, which I can give others,
You give me a living soul,
To waste on my siblings and friends.

We share the breath of life,
We speak the love we receive.
We give each room to breathe,
And we laugh in friendship and love.