Poetic Truth?

I was just reading Brian McLaren's book " A Generous Orthodoxy", an enjoyable read, pleasant affirmation of the journey that I've been taking over the last 10 years or so, but not profoundly life changing. But one thing that I read to day struck me.  McLaren was writing about the Poetic and Mystic approaches to our faith.  It made me think of a poem I wrote a while ago:

Flying in the face of fact

Is there a freedom in writing?
freedom from constraint
   of truth or fact or what must be?
(anchors to my soul).
Can words be wings to lift a maybe,
to power up for flight so free?
   for there is no knowing in the beat of wings
   and no understanding as we soar above.

There is something in your facts
that weigh me down, that
tie me to a now and then
(holding me from tomorrow).
Something in a truth that walls me in
and blocks my view of what might be.

Your facts make turgid prose
alongside a poetry in flight.
"a flight of fancy" I see you smile,
(knowing whimsy when you see it!)
Not a mean smile, perhaps even sympathetic..
"you'll realise the truth one day, you'll understand."

.."that's just the point", I make reply
I'll realise, and so make real
tomorrow as with you I fly!

The strange thing is that I hadn't written or thought about this poem in terms of my Christian faith - it was more a challenge to my realist colleagues in the Business School - but, now I see that it might be really generative to my faith and I can see how, in other ways, I've been moving to a more poetic appreciation of my faith.

Comments

[anj]

Oh I like this poem. Yes, that is one of the ways I love writing, and faith.