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Dreich. Dull. Damp. Dark. On the exercise bike for a while to energise a day seriously threatening an emotional slump.For those not native to Scotland and some of our Scot's words, "dreich" is a particularly handy adjective.

Think of mist and drizzle combined to form mizzle.

Think low thick clouds with not the slightest hint of the sun, all day.

Think temperatures hovering just above freezing, with a North Sea breeze blowing the mizzle in your muzzle!

Dreich is a word that sums up the kind of weather that might trigger a duvet day with a good book, intravenous tea and buttered toast. Except if it lasts more than a day it's a hioghly effective joy suppressant. You need strategies for dreich days. One of mine is the exercise bike with music that helps transcend the boredom that is concomitant of the benefits of uphill pedalling and not going anywhere!

Today I listened to a Chris De Burgh CD. I know, you like his music or you don't. I do. Not least because he has a social conscience, and much of his music is aimed at those emotional levers that make us care about the world, about other people, about wrongs that need to be made right, and rights that are too often violated, suppressed or ignored. Halfway through my circuit his song No Borderline came blasting through. If I'm in on my own I like my music to be, well, assertive in a loud kind of way. Listen to the track here ….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNr3FxLbLPc

War, borders, national interest, the claims of the nation state on the lives of mostly young men; each of these woven into what can only be called a modern lament of heartbreak, separation, lost innocence and far too often lost opportunities and lost lives. I found myself thinking about a world of walls and borderlines, and what the role of the communities of Jesus Christ in such a world. Each local church an Embassy of King Jesus, with ambassadors of Christ who represent the interests of the Kingdom of God. 

Paul was a citizen of Rome, and of the world, and of heaven. And as a citizen of heaven he saw beyond the limited horizons of our own history and hopes. Paul's Gospel challenges the deeply dug foundations of divisions throughout human society and across national and ethnic and religious borders, while also acknowledging that those political realities exist along with 'powers, principalities and authorities' which are actually subservient to Christ as Lord. The Hebrew Prophets also looked for both eschatological fulfilment and historical change. The Chris De Burgh song is about those divisive and dangerous borderlines that are territorial markers, and the cost and consequences of defending them. Thus looking forward to the days when there are no borderlines, it is one of my core convictions that the Body of Christ anticipates and gives credence to such hope by embodying in its members and in local communities of the Gospel, the peacemaking, reconciling Good News of Jesus incarnate, crucified, risen and Lord of creation and of cosmic history. As followers of Jesus live out the truth that in Christ dividing walls of hostility are already broken down, so borderlines begin to dissolve and deep foundations of division come under pressure from the unsettling truths of a reconciling God, a love that challenges hate, a life that defies death, and a hope that serves notice on the status quo of borderlines.

And all this started with a song, which started me wondering about the church, and borders, and walls, and fences, and exclusion zones, and that dehumanising descriptor "no man's land". After my shower, I read some of the more subversive texts of Isaiah and John the Seer and was reminded of what I shouldn;t have forgotten, even for a day however dreich, they day is coming when there will be no borderlines…..

BORDERLINE, Chris De Burgh

I'm standing in the station
I am waiting for a train
To take me to the border
And my loved one far away
I watched a bunch of soldiers heading for the war
I could hardly even bear to see them go

Rolling through the countryside
Tears are in my eyes
We're coming to the borderline
I'm ready with my lies
And in the early morning rain, I see her there
And I know I'll have to say goodbye again

And it's breaking my heart, I know what I must do
I hear my country call me but I want to be with you
I'm taking my side, one of us will lose
Don't let go, I want to know
That you will wait for me until the day
There's no borderline, no borderline

Walking past the border guards
Reaching for her hand
Showing no emotion
I want to break into a run
But these are only boys, and I will never know
How men can see the wisdom in a war

Several times in the past few days I've found myself becoming protective and defensive about the National Health Service. It started with the predictions of crisis in the A&E departments. My emotional responses were intensified by listening to the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, apologising for the cancellation of elective surgery for a whole month. The apology was itself an example of refusing to accept responsibility while seeming to care deeply about consequences for which he and the current Government are largely responsible. I know that previous Governments have contributed to the decline of funding and the growing crisis, but since 2010 the decline towards collapse has sharpened. The Prime Minister also climbed on the apology bandwagon, using the customer services apology approach whereby the inconvenience and indeed suffering of patients is a matter of regret, but not our fault. In other words the apology is being redefined as a defusing and diffusing device, used to give the appearance of empathy and support, but which never reaches those deeper levels at which decisions are made, policies changed and resources restored to adequate levels.

Now there is every reason for every one of us to be protective and defensive of our NHS. Amongst the strongest arguments for the NHS is the basis on which it was founded, the vision that gave impetus to its formation, the politics and humane principles that underlay its creation.

Aneurin Bevan envisaged nothing less than a revolution in social care and community responsiveness to illness, vulnerability, suffering and human equality. The idea of a universal health service free to each at the point of need was always going to be a major budget cost needing realistic funding policies and a commitment to paying that expense because the NHS is worth it, because the people it serves are valued.

And right there, is one of the primary pressure points 70 years on. The worth of people is increasingly being set against the cost of their care. The evidence for this is now pervasive, and I would say corrrosive of the central vision of a National Health Service. The commodification of health care, the introduction of multi levels of highly salaried management over several decades, the value for money mentality that cannot see that profit is not the goal, the bottom-line obsession as the driver to budget cutting, resource scarcity and salary erosion our nations; these and other policies and principles are at odds with the fundamental nature of the National Health Service.

This is all aggravated by the layers of competing departments throughout Government where the Health Service is one amongst many loud voices arguing for its priority status. That requires a Health Secretary who is committed to the health of the Health Service. In his recent 'apology' Jeremy Hunt reiterated his frequent claim to want to create the best Health Service in the world. Which raises the obvious question, asked ad nauseam by Health Service Staff across all levels of medical and ancillary care, why then cut the funding? Why contribute to the crisis? 

The politics and economics of running a National Health Service cannot evade issues of cost, affordability and long term viability. But that was also the challenge in the late 1940's when a post-war impoverished Britain nevertheless launched a health service which they knew would be expensive, and would therefore require the commitment and the financial sacrifices of a population prepared to pay the necessary taxes for the extraordinary benefit of health security. I am not arguing, I don't know that anyone is, that the NHS should have unrestrained access to public funding. Of course there has to be a sense of realism, legitimate constraint, acknowledging that not everything can be afforded, accepting that advances in medical technology brings new therapeutic benefits that have to be weighed against other demands from within the Health Service.

So not everything is posssible, but we know that. But that's not the same as cancelling a month's operations because a crisis has been created, even manufactured, by economic policies and Government funding decisions that are ideologically driven. And all this in a culture where truth, facts and realities are besmirched and befogged by a rehearsed vagueneness of content in rhetoric redolent of concern, but empty of substance and possessed of an adamantine commitment to market principles in a Health Service that was always going to be non-profit, would always run at a loss, and was formed as a national co-operative of medical care funded by taxes, and valued as worth it. Because behind that vision is a view of human community in which each human being takes responsibility for the care of each other. That's worth paying for.

And yes, efficiency and best use of resources is an absolute requirement. And yes, there are other areas of human flourishing that also need funding from the finite resources of a population's wealth and taxes. And yes, it will always be possible to improve, become more efficient, make better choices, cut back on wasteful practices, manage resources more effectively and deploy those who work in the NHS in ways that exploits their gifts and skills well, but without exploiting them.

In the end, the National Health Service is a loss maker if the thing that matters most is money.

But the National Health Service is this country's most profitable organisation if people matter more than money.

It is absolutely value for money if health is a life good to be pursued, enabled and delivered whenever needed to whoever needs it.

It is a national treasure, an experiment in social compassion withour equal across the world.

It is a major contributor to the nation's wealth if that is measured in social security, community health, and life quality for our most vulnerable, and for all the rest of us who, at some time in life, will become amongst our most vulnerable, and therefore most grateful for an NHS that is there for us.

This lovely Delft tile was a gift from a Dutch friend – recently reframed. Curiously the text given is wrong – it should be Matthew 14.29ff. Something happened in the proof reading, copy ediiting and textual transmission

In any case the scene of Peter being helped out of the water by Jesus seems to suggest Jesus is on the shore giving a helping hand to a soaking Peter.

Which in turn suggests the artist's recall of the Gospel stories may be a conflation of the three stories – Jesus calms the storm (Mark); Jesus walks on water (Mathhew); Jesus appears after the resurrection (John).

All of which makes the picture even more evocative, and a reminder that when you are in deep….seawater, Jesus isnae far away

I started this blog 11 years ago. The aim was to stimulate thought, discussion and engagement with other perspectives and other folk's ways of looking at the world. My own perspective is Christian, with every attempt at being open, respectful and helpful through my writing.

Over the years the blog platform has become much less popular as social media has moved on to formats that are more immediate, integrated and demand shorter time to write, read and respond to. The down side of that is the move away from longer more considered pieces, impatience with carefully constructed argument, and habituation to the transient immediacy of alternative smartphone friendly social media.

All of which raises the obvious question of whether a blog is worth the bother. Who reads it anyway? Why write when the number of hits on a given day is now low enough to force the questions of why bother, who reads it anyway, and is there a better use of my time? I'm not the only person asking these questions. I have a number of blogging friends whose blogs are now all but dormant and who have moved on to other things. Maybe blogs have had their day.

But. Writing is for me an enriched form of thinking. It is an act of self discovery as much as self expression. I write to think, and to think through, and to think again. More deeply still, to write can move from thought to reflection, and now and then to enter that stream of meditative movement towards understanding, which moves towards wisdom, and the eventual and occasional joy of discovering what you did not think you knew, and wouldn't have known you knew if you hadn't sat down, started writing and thus started looking!

I write as a theologian, as a Christian minister, but also, and just as importantly, as someone whose values and life passions are deeply rooted in whatever enables human life to flourish. In that sense I am a humanist, whose educational focus both in learning and in teaching, has been the humanities, and who since I read the words as a boy, has tried to "look humanely forth on human life".  

This post is not to announce the end of Living Wittily. But it is to reiterate the "end" of Living Wittily, that is, its goal, purpose, and what makes it worth my while doing the writing, thinking and sharing. Eleven years ago I wrote my rationale for keeping this blog and doing the work to maintain it with fresh writing and thought. You can read it over here. I don't see the need to change any of that, but it does remind me of the possibilities and opportunities of having a place to think, write and seek the fellowship of other readers.

To those who do happen by this blog, regularly or occasionally, thank you for the time and interest, and feel free to leave a comment. Shalom, and may peace grace your life and your living.

 

 

The incarnation of our Lord lies at the heart of Christian faith. When the arguments for and against virgin birth have been faithfully spoken and honestly heard, there remains a residue of truth, a core of mystery not amenable to explanation. A small part of that mystery is the faith of Mary who was able to say, 'Be it done according to your will,' and the faith of Joseph prepared to live with consequences he had no way of foreseeing. Clustered around the divine miracle of annunciation and incarnation are a number of smaller miracles of human trustfulness and openness to the coming of God. Perhaps we can be helped in our appreciation of such miracles of faith if we do a little reverent prying into the emotional rationale behind Joseph's reaction to Mary's own disturbing annunciation.

 

 Sleep on it, Joseph.

Every time one of our old Rabbis conducts a betrothal, or a wedding ceremony

he tells the joke about the angel who gives just one wish.

He told it at our betrothal reception, when Mary and I got engaged.

One day a man did an act of great kindness.

As a reward he is visited by an angel.

" Heaven has sent me to reward you, whatever you want done, heaven will grant."

After thinking carefully the man said, " Build me a bridge from Jerusalem to Rome

so I can visit my family whenever I want to without going the long way round."

" Wait a blessed minute ", said the angel. "Have you any idea what that costs?

Fifteen hundred miles of bridge! Give or take.

Even angels have to stick to spending guide-lines

and work within the constraints, imposed on the miracles budget.

Austerity, you know?

Choose something else. Give me another option. "

The man replied, " O.K. Help me to understand how a woman's mind works."

After much thought the angel asked, "How many lanes do you want on your bridge?"

 

The rabbi told it as a joke.

But hard as I've tried, and long as I've thought, I still don't understand the mind of Mary.

What she thought, and what she felt about what happened to her, and what it did to us.

I didn't understand why Mary disappeared for three months to visit her cousin Elizabeth.

I didn't understand when she came back and said she was three months pregnant.

I didn't understand when she said " I've never been unfaithful. The baby is God's gift."

I didn't understand why she, the woman, should be the one who got to decide on the name.

I couldn't believe her story about being visited by an angel, who told her that,

of all the women in the world, God had chosen her as his point of entry into human affairs

I didn't understand, and I don't understand, in fact,

I'll never understand how a virgin can be pregnant.

 

What I did understand, was that the Mary, who was promised to me,

now belonged to someone else.

What I did understand, because I'm not just a man, I'm a just man,

was the need to protect Mary, from public shame and legal penalty.

What I did understand was that our future stops here.

No marriage! No shared joy! No family of our own!

Just this unwanted pregnancy forcing us apart.

And what I did understand, and felt as a life-defining ache

was the sense of opportunity lost, grief at the wasted possibilities,

the concrete-hard certainty our dreams had ended.

 

But the dreams weren't ended!

I thought, just like the just, sensible, supposed to be unimaginative man I am,

I thought, I'll deal with this rationally, quietly divorce her, and get on with my life.

Still, before doing anything I decided to sleep on it!

But it wasn't a slumberland sleep. It was restless, anxious sleep;

my mind and body tossing and turning, in synchronised uneasiness.

Then through my confusion and hurt, a shining clarity.

Interrupting my scheming and dreaming, a voice that shook my whole being awake.

 

An angel, not like the one in the rabbi's joke.

He didn't ask me what I wanted more than anything. Not that it would have mattered.

I wanted the one thing I could no longer have… Mary, uncomplicated, faithful,

understandable Mary, my Mary.

Mary before all this angels and God nonsense.

But before I could think of what to say, the angel spoke.

 "Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,

because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus,

because he will save his people from their sins."

 

I no longer doubted Mary. But what it must have meant for her,

what it does to a woman to have others question her integrity as a woman,

while all the time she is being faithful to God by receiving the gift of the Almighty.

That I have not, I cannot, understand.

I don't understand how Mary, carried the burden of truth, that she would mother God's son.

I don't understand her openness to God, her obedient humility,

or her determined brave yes to the purposes of God.

Like the child she carried, she nurtured and nourished

the truth of God's loving purposes for us and the whole world.

 

I don't understand the ways of God, not even when angels tell me.

In my dream a deeper reality than I ever imagined had come close to me;

And in Mary, the deepest reality of all was coming true.

God coming close to the world in an inconceivable conception.

God with us, love made flesh, borne and born through Mary.

The Rabbi's joke about bridges and a woman's mind?

To unimaginative, rational patronising men,

perhaps understanding a woman is miracle enough.

But when it comes to bridges,

through the faithful intuition,

the imaginative love,

the trustful yes of a woman,

God built a far, far bigger bridge than a Jerusalem to Rome flyover.

The promised bridge between heaven and earth,

through the faith of a woman, and the birth of a baby.  

That's a miracle of love that exceeds all budgets,

A gift so generous it ends all austerity,

A mercy of such kindness it wipes out the deepest deficits of our costliest sins.

And like much else in this story of my sad so joyful life,

As just a man, reasonable, sensible and scared of too much emotion,

I’ll never understand it.

Sometimes days don't start well. Then they get worse. Then you get ambushed by the realisation that how you look at the world is far too me-centered. Last Friday was an example of a day that started as a catena of inconveniences, and ended with the discovery that I'm not the most important person on the planet, or the country, or on the road. The cliché "wake up call" has become a cliché because it is overused and overstated, usually. But last Friday was a personal wake-up call, loud, piercing and for the past several days persisting in the memory.

Here's how the day went. It had been snowing, and the 2 or 3 inches of snow had melted and refrozen twice, and it was snowing again. It was the day for the Community Cafe in Montrose, and if the weather was ok, and the roads passable I'd do the 80 mile round trip. The first challenge was clearing the ice and snow from the car, without landing on my back. The road was wet ice and any purchase on the ice scraper channelled the energy to the legs which went sliding without permission in various directions. But I got it done. No way to drive the car up the slight incline. Only way to go was reverse very carefully to the junction behind, then take the car out the bottom way onto roads that were at least driveable. Managed all that and on my way.

Took the road through the city as the roads likely to be clearer. They were, but not much. By the time I got to Stonehaven, with about 22 miles to go I knew I'd need petrol in Montrose. At Inverbervie, with about 12 miles to go I came up behind several cars held back by a huge tractor and even huger dung spreader! No safe place to pass so 30 miles an hour all the way to Montrose. Except there had been an accident across the bridge on the north entry to the town and the traffic was queued back. No alternative route so just wait….and wait. Anyway, eventually got to the cafe, late but still plenty scones and coffee and folk.

On the way out, the traffic still tailing back from the bridge but eventually on our way home. A mile or two out of Montrose my petrol light came on! Oh sh…urely not! It said I had 24 miles to go – easily enough to get to Stonehaven. But the needle fell quickly and relentlessly so I'd need petrol in Inverbervie. Economic driving got me to Bervie – no petrol station! Four miles of petrol left, the clever wee digital thing warned and beeped. Too far to Stonehaven. Embarrassed, but self-justifying, I phoned the AA. Very helpful, they'd be with me in an hour. And he was – but he had no spare petrol so he went on up to Stonehaven and back for a gallon of petrol. Good, that would be easily enough fuel to get us to Westhill. Well, you'd think.

At Maryculter there's a diversion. A long diversion. Only way across the river, and the shortest way, is at Banchory. Petrol going down again, and no petrol stations on the south Deeside road till Banchory. But I make it, with dregs to spare, fillup with petrol and without any other delays get home by 4.30, only 3 hours late. Skating rink roads, outsized dung spreaders, grid locked traffic, self-inflicted petrol crisis, unplanned long diversion – plenty to complain about.

The wake-up call came within an hour of being home. Looking at the local news online, the explanation for the diversion was the death of a school bus driver in a three vehicle accident at Maryculter bridge. At that point the difficulties, problems, frustrations, annoyances or inconveniences of my own day, which had seemed to suggest some cosmic conspiracy aimed specifically at me, were put in perspective. And my self-absorbed inner rants reduced to ridiculous childishness, a mere tantrum in the face of a tragedy that was for very real.

Because this good man, a bus driver was doing his job getting young people to school. And the school they were going to was near Montrose, down the road I had just travelled. And a day that started normally, ended in tragedy. The papers tell us the driver's name, and that he was larger than life, well liked and well thought of by his young passengers. I grieve his death, and pray for his family, and those affected by an accident with widening ripples of sadness into the community.

John Donne wrote, " No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I am not an island, a self-sufficient or self-important individual. None of us are. All the time life reminds us that we diminish ourselves the more selfish we become. In all the frustration and inner resentment at having had a hard day, I was unaware that elsewhere, a fellow human being, someone who lives in the same city, had been killed while doing his job, and I was annoyed at a mere diversion, a slow moving pungent smelling dung spreader and my own motoring incompetence.

So I pray for two things. A sense of proportion about what does and what doesn't matter in the living of our lives, which can be hard, tough, challenging or whatever. And secondly, for more compassion, patience, and perceptiveness about what is going on around me. In other words, having had a wake-up call, to waken up to life and to the  people who share it with me, known and unknown. And to love life, and love people, and learn again to live with all the inconveniences and compromises that are part of the deal in any worthwhile community. Because "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."       

 

I've been reading Denise Levertov for around 30 years. That means by the time I started reading her she was in the last decade of a full, sometimes tempestuous, and increasingly fruitful yet not entirely fulfilled life; at least by her own over-hard personal standards and aspirations. Levertov died on December 19, 1997, almost exactly 20 years ago.

She was a poet, of course she was. But by that obvious observation I mean she had a deep sense of vocation to be a poet, a compelling sense of calling, an inner imperative, and with it a burden of responsibility to the world, and for the world's peace and flourishing. She was a poet and an activist, and mid-life the two fused into a poetry that addressed political and social issues from the perspectives of peace, justice and compassion for humanity. The Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence, liberation theology and El Salvador, and the first Gulf War, together these events and movements provide a political chronology to be kept in mind in the reading of her poetry.

Alongside these is the personality and personal life of a woman whose background was rich in cultural resources: Jewish parents, Christianity of an Anglican flavour, English education, American immigrant, gifted in music, in younger years ambitious to excel in ballet dancing, and always, a reader who wrote and a writer who read widely, deeply and at times hungrily.

Her personal relations with family, lovers, friends, fellow poets and artists, publishers and correspondents were complex, at times volatile, ranging in intensity from lifelong faithfulness to serial fall outs and reconciliations. She was likeable and hard to get on with, demanding and generous, mercurial and compassionate, with a long memory both for kindnesses shown and for offences given.

Her poetry reflects all of this and it is the merit of this biography that her poetry is exploited as a primary hermeneutical lens through which to view her life. At the same time her life is both background and foreground in the overall appreciation and critical appropriation of her poetry.    

There are different kinds of biography. This one is a careful chronological study of Levertov's poetry in the context of her life, and of her inner life as revealed in the poetry. The result is a sympathetic, critical but friendly account of a poet who combines passion for social justice, integrity that acknowledges vulnerability as its price, and an approach to life that is satisfied if she can ask the right questions, and dissatisfied with inadequate answers no longer listening to the big questions. Her poetry moves between interrogative mood and affirmative mood.

Her late poetry gives the sense of having climbed the hill, and now being about to crest the horizon for the reward of the view. For that reason it is the second half of this book that gave me most satisfaction. I've read around quite a lot of the secondary literature on Levertov, including the very fine biography by Dana Greene, published almost concurrently with this one. Both Greene and Hollenberg provide rich context and lucid narrative, as in their different approaches they explore the mind and poetry of Levertov the woman, the poet, the activist and late in life, the Christian. But Hollenberg's slowed down narrrative of Levertov's turn towards Catholicism, and her exposition of that journey in the light of her poetry, is a rich and telling lesson in the importance of allowing Levertov's own voice to be heard.

From Oblique Prayers published in 1984 till her last volume published during her lifetime, Sands of the Well, Hollenberg like a good counsellor allows Levertov to tell her story and to explain her own inner life, in her own terms and words, and from her own unique and by no means safely orthodox experiences. Only then, and into the silence of trust between poet and biographer, does Hollenberg comment and seek to discern and construct a coherent narrative. I remember first reading Breathing the Water, a collection published in 1987, and including her series of poems on Julian of Norwich. The Revelations of Divine Love is a text I know well, and in which at times in my own life I have dwelt for weeks of slow reading. Levertov's Julian poems are amongst the most revealing of Levertov's own spiritual search, and are clear windows into the heart of Julian's theology. She clearly respects Julian's intellect, her courage as a woman writer in a man's world, and her confidence and intimacy even in the face of the Almighty – Julian too was unafraid of the big questions, and impatient with answers not enough to the point.

Hollenberg traces Levertov's journey through her engagement with Julian, her study of art and music, her meditations on biblical texts, late in life influenced by a long nine month daily engagement with Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. As a poet Levertov was well practiced in imagining context, conversations, relationships and the inner lives of those she studied, imagined and tried to understand. Her spiritual exercises during the long nine month engagement with Ignatius and her spiritual director, reinforced that capacity for meditative thought and imaginative writing exercised in precision of expression and spiritual integrity. Her late poetry, like Beethoven's late quartets, sound such depths of human hope and fear, love and loss, and resilience in face of tragedy, that the reader is plunged into the deep waters of self-reflection and deepened awareness of what is at stake in the living of a good, worthwhile and durable human life.

Much, in fact most, of my reading is for the joy of it. But I'm a preacher, and what I read becomes part of the furniture of my mind, both food for thought and food to nourish others. I read poetry to learn how to use words. I read poetry to have my imagination strengthened by the regular work-outs prescribed by demanding trainers. But I also read poetry because I know of very few alternative ways towards that inner enabling to see the world from multiple human perspectives so different from my own. Levertov reminds me every time I read her, of what matters in life, and why. 

It matters to me that I understand the world around me and that I should care about other people, other communities and other ways of being. War and violence, injustice whether economic, racist or religious, are too important to be left to the powerful, with no voices of dissent or reminders of accountability. And it matters that as a person of faith, a Christian who sees Jesus as the self-giving image of the love of God, I live a life that fulfils the outrageous claim of that hard to understand and therefore often misunderstood apostle Paul, that God has given to those who follow Jesus "the message of reconciliation" and a commission to be "ambassadors of Christ."

Denise Levertov moved in and out of faith for most of her life. But in that last decade she, in a deep and not to be sentimentalised sense, found her way home. Her late poetry is profoundly Christian, informed and inspired by the best texts, art and music, and often movingly, at times lyrically, expressed in the kind of poetry only she could have written. I'm deeply grateful to Hollenberg for a biography that does the usual things, but which also shows the patience of the good listener, and the love of the good interpreter.

The last sentence of this fine book is a cut gem of commendation: "Levertov's poetry enables us to see, to feel, to touch, to change, to grow. " I have found that to be true.

Donna Krolik Hollenberg, A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov. (University of California Press, 2013).