While researching for a blog post, I found and read a poem. There was an old temptation not to read it because it was a poem. However, I read it three times and went through different sections several times. The poem was titled “Avery.” It was written in 1853 by William Dean Howells. You can find it in The Niagara Falls Poetry Project. (FYI, the Poetry Project is a collection of poems about and related to Niagara Falls and the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, its daredevils, and everything else Niagara.)
I came across the poem through the Library of Congress, looking for information on Joseph Avery. Mr. Avery had gone row boating on the upper Niagara River in a drunken misadventure with two friends. The boat was swamped, and two of the trio were rapidly swept over the edge of the falls to their crushing demise by the rocks hidden in the mist below. Avery, however, managed to find a log jammed by the current between two rocks. The poem is about the attempts to rescue him.
But this blog post is not about that tragic but captivating event! It’s about realizing something has changed in me. In high school and college, the required literature class always had a module on poetry. From Beowulf to Chaucer to Shakespeare to Frost, I fought to see what the professors saw in the lines, but always ended up only mimicking their insights.
As a result, I seldom read poems. I would say, “I just don’t get poetry.” It seemed too laborious to me.
While I did not recognize it as poetry, I sang the hymns of my faith all my life and liked them, even if we sang them at a hypnotically slow pace.
As a pastor, I began to see the hymns take on a new significance as I allowed the Holy Spirit to develop me in the Faith. It was in mid-adulthood that the hymns– the poetry — began to sing to me. I began to discover my story identifying with that of the hymn. My brain was now sympathetically connected to the hymn; my heart and soul were caught up in the message of the lyrics, carried in the meter. The melodic ideas began to flow through me, not just from me. The poetic words became my words, my testimony.
The chaos of life’s difficulties was and often is more than I could fathom. The raging waters of circumstance drowned out the Divine significance of written word. I staggered. I fell. I crawled and clawed. I doubted the love of God, even the existence of God.
In the twilight of belief, I began to read the Bible in desperation. Slowly, subtly, a change came. The best way I know how to describe the change is that I began to read the Bible to be with God, not to get help from God. For decades, my parishioners suffered in the drudgery of my searching Holy Scriptures for something to say to them, to challenge them out of their passivity, or their passionate insistence on Baptist convictions of policy and practices.
That is no longer true. I’m not even sure that my public speaking can be called “preaching.” I do not see myself as a preacher. I see myself as a witness to what God is doing as He shapes my new identity in Christ Jesus.
I still read with a sense of desperation, for I am not yet saved from the raging currents common to everyday life.
What the poem, “Avery,” made me aware of is that the poem was reading me more than I was reading it. The Holy Spirit has altered my mindset in the mystery of the art of reading. In the past, reading has always been a technical skill for gaining information. Reading has now become a deliberate search for truth or, more accurately, The Truth. I didn’t need better information to navigate the whirlpools of conflicting ideologies; I needed Truth. I believe that Truth is a person!
This is what I have come to understand: There is a difference between reading the Bible and allowing, even insisting on, the Bible reading you. That’s not just a Fred thing; it’s a follower of Jesus thing. I pray it becomes your “thing.”
Photo – Sunrise at Saint Simon Island, Georgia, this past summer.
Baldwin Heirlooms 