Although a vast body of poetry celebrates the natural world and addresses issues concerning the environment, it can be overlooked in the discourses of environmental activism. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the unique contributions that poetry makes to a thoughtful, and in this case, theological, engagement with our present environmental crises. Here, we create a conversation between two poets of two different religious traditions. Cheyenne poet Lance Henson’s poem “we are a people” reimagines humanity’s self-conception in light of earthly interconnectedness from the perspective of his own Native American spiritual sensibilities. Christian poet Wendell Berry’s poem “Sabbaths IV” (1983) relocates our understanding of Sabbath beyond its liturgical designations and practices, asking us to attend to “the true world’s Sabbath”. We offer close readings of these two poems that mark the distinctions that emerge from and interact with their respective theological visions, but also where they find common ground. Through this work of reading literature theologically, we argue that these poems both refine our attentiveness to the earth as the site of religious import and consequence, and call upon readers to enact other ways of being in the world amidst the climate catastrophe that are inspired by faith and spirituality.
Born Charles Walter Stansby Williams in London on September 20, 1886, Charles Williams spent his entire life as a city dweller. Not surprisingly, “the image of the city,” as the title of one of his essays renders it, would form one of many reference points for his unique blend of Christian theology and literature.
This article explores how poetry can shape our biblical reading practices by examining three poems by three well-known contemporary poets—Scott Cairns, Mary Szybist, and Lucille Clifton. Paying particular attention to form, it considers how the poetic devices of each offer creative ways of reading the biblical text and open up fresh consideration of meaning and meaning-making. One of the features of these poems is how they relate spatially to the biblical text each regards: beside the biblical text, inside the text, and beyond the text.
Giffin celebrates this movement beyond tragedy on the part of White's characters and points out that his novels often end with characters such as Ruth Godbold in Riders or Mary de Santis in Eye of the Storm, "whose background-in an explicit or implicit way-is associated with the Christian imagination. These Christian characters are always poised, waiting to be launched-or perhaps thrown-into their mysterious future" (267), a future perhaps suggesting soteria, a kind of wholeness that may possibly be achieved even in this life, and even in words (22)(23). But other aspects of White's work he finds more problematic. Near the end of the "Future Directions" chapter, Giffin writes, White's belief in a creator God who can make mistakes-a God who made us, and we got out of hand, like Frankenstein's monster-comes from Mary Shelley's reworking of the Prometheus myth . . . . [But] as Benedict points out, the claim that God is free to change his mind and do the opposite of what he has done, posits a voluntarism that allows for a capricious or fickle God who can change his mind and undo what he has done. The idea that God's freedom does not bind him to his word-or to truth and goodness-renders his covenants with humanity, on Sinai and in Christ, meaningless and undermines the idea of humanity as an authentic mirror of God. This is why our understanding of logos requires concensus. This is why the west needs a conversation between Benedict and White. (295)
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