Ever since I read the remarkable book Dakota. A Spiritual Biography, I've had a lot of time for Kathleen Norris. I spent a lazy couple of days in the sunshine reading The Cloister Walk, beside the barn in Lyme New Hampshire. One of her later books, Amazing Grace, a kind of spiritual lexicon in the form of brief essays accompanied me through a chunk of Lent several years ago. She is a poet whose roots are in South Dakota, and whose more porpular writing today tends to be on spirituality. But given the level of dilution the term 'spirituality' has undergone, more needs to be said about Norris's writing. Indeed it might be truer to say that Norris has made writing itself a process of contemplative and communicative spirituality. I came across her name by accident today when reading an essay by Denise Levertov, another poet in my personal canon. One of Norris's poems features in the lecture, and I was so intrigued and moved by its simplicity of content and form. She simply 'collages essential words and phrases from what Jesus is recorded to have said'. She has made a poem out of the ipsissima vox* of Jesus, the essential recognisable voice that speaks in the unmistakable cadences of the Kingdom.
Imperatives
Look at the birds
Consider the lillies
Drink ye all of it
Ask
Seek
Knock
Enter by the narrow gate
Do not be anxious
Judge not; do not give dogs what is holy
Go: be it done for you
Do not be afraid
Maiden, arise
Young man, I say, arise
Stretch out your hand
Stand up, be still
Rise, let us be going. . .
Love.
Forgive.
Remember me.
Few poems I've read have the to-the -pointness of this one – I could pray this for weeks, and hear that imperative Voice spring cleaning my motives and adjusting (yet again) my life values.
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* ipsissima vox was a phrase used by Joachim Jeremias in his Theology of the New Testament volume 1. Sadly he didn't live to complete his project. Dated now, but this volume is still in my view one of the finest expositions of the teaching of Jesus, and one that takes with utter seriousness the inbreaking and transformative power of the Kingdom. This year I am aiming to reread several biblical books that changed the way I read the NT – this is one of them.
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