Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life. Nathaniel Lee Hansen
Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life
Poems
Nathaniel Lee Hansen
Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life
Poems
The Poiema Poetry Series
Copyright © 2018 Nathaniel Lee Hansen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4113-8
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4114-5
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4115-2
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Hansen, Nathaniel Lee, author.
Title: Your twenty-first century prayer life : poems / Nathaniel Lee Hansen.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | The Poiema Poetry Series.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-4113-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-4114-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-4115-2 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—21st century.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/05/18
Amy
The Poiema Poetry Series
Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.
These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.
—D.S. Martin
Series Editor
Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life
Your most frequent requests:
300 safe interstate miles,
night of sufficient sleep, a liner
sturdy for the class’s ocean.
Names you speak again, again—
bless Andrew, bless Lynne.
You wonder how saints
master discipline, currents
of communication in crackling
lines, sparking from sender
to receiver, back again.
You can count on one hand
when prayer blossomed
organically without desire’s
weeds crowding petals,
stealing sunlight, robbing
soil of water and life.
Your petitions persist,
abundant (overflowing)
with me, my, and I.
You forget, if you want
to live you must lose
your life.
Some Sundays You Consider Leaping from the Ship of Church
I.
No faith crisis,
no desire for licentiousness
(no prospects for an affair),
no compulsion for the NFL.
Rather the cardinal’s song,
the wren’s coloratura,
the mockingbird’s imitative chirp,
the mourning dove’s childlike coo.
To lay in bed, listen—
wouldn’t that be sufficient?
Who needs the dressing up
of clothes, of disposition?
II.
Church bell marks eight o’clock,
harkening to monks’ measured days,
time for measured prayer.
It interrupts your slothfulness.
You ready yourself with wrinkled shirt,
khakis, and hope—your wife
and two kids waiting for you
and your faith at the threshold.
Reading Scripture
You approach with suspicion yanking
on his leash, sniffing everywhere—
disbelief already dropped at the shelter
(though you haven’t finalized papers).
You expect words will admonish:
deeds you didn’t know you’ve done;
deeds you’ve done that you know well.
No matter your hiding, you will be rescued.
Bad Sermons
You’ve suffered your share. The worst
aren’t the predictable and cheap,
forgettable as newsprint—noble attempts
at the Trinity; ignoble attempts
to discredit evolution in twenty minutes;
bellowing about non-essentials as if they
equal Christ’s body and blood.
1. A minister confesses that he lacks
a poetic bone (reason to be scared).
Solomon read as Christ. The lover’s
“dark skin” evidence of her sin.
He ignores the obviously erotic.
You and your wife scribble notes
screaming out ridiculous exegesis.
2. A minister diverges from Scripture,