Why Poetry Became the Medium of My New Message and Voice

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When I began my Substack, I had the intention of this becoming the space where I would write with my new voice—a voice I think I have been trying to find; trying to speak with and trying to offer to whomever would want to listen. As I look back these days, I think like, Soren Kierkegaard, I have always been about becoming my true self. His prayer says it all, doesn’t it:

“And now, Lord, with your help, I shall become myself”

When I found Substack, almost two years ago now, I found a way to make this convergence happen. Substack would be my place to give my voice to poems. An ever growing number of you are with me in this good space. You’ve found me here shedding old graveclothes that no longer fit me. In this space, you are a witness to me becoming myself.

Poetry became my new medium—my new way—of giving voice to my heart.

It was the American poet, Robert Frost who wrote:

A poem begins

with a lump in the throat;

A homesickness or

a love sickness.

It is a reaching-out where an emotion

has found its thought

and the thought has found words.

The lump in my throat was discovered in the COVID years—a dark time where in shut-down, something deep and significant happened in me. Though I had felt the homesickness and love sickness in years past, the COVID years helped me morph and discover a new voice. This happened for Gwen as well. She began working with water-color. It was a new way—a new expression for both of us to get things out—that needed and were somehow begging to come out.

It was oddly in the COVID years, that I was fully repositioning my life from being a retreat master; speaker, spiritual director, working with a staff team and writing books. My repositioning was my own efforts to build an “off-ramp” from the 8-lane freeway I was on at that time. I wanted off. I needed to get off. I wanted to live the life I had written about and described in my books.

I was deconstructing. We were all deconstructing. Many of us were coming apart theologically, politically, socially and relationally and in about every way we were as a people become unglued. Nothing was working for any of us, it seemed. Out of this great, dark abyss, my voice, new courage and an invitation to integrate my voice with my new heart—a heart that moved from a self-diagnosis of a stump like, dried out “thing” to a greening inside begin to happen.

It is from this new space and place of greening that these poems are being birthed.

These words from poet and author, John O’Donohue greatly helped me:

"The poet wants to drink from the well of origin; to write the poem that has not yet been written. In order to enter this level of originality, the poet must reach beyond the chorus of chattering voices that people the surface of a culture. Furthermore, the poet must reach deeper inward; go deeper than the private hoard of voices down to the root-voice. It is here that individuality has the taste of danger, vitality and vulnerability. Here the creative has the necessity of inevitability; this is the threshold where imagination engages raw, unformed experience. This is the sense you have when you read a true poem. You know it could not be other than it is. Its self and its form are one.”

- excerpt from Beauty

Substack became the way for me to reach down deep—way pass chattering voices to find my own inner voice and learn to listen and trust and write from these four messy chambers inside my chest.

Substack has been my own experiment to discover that I can write what John O’Donohue calls a “true poem.”

Your affirmation, encouragement and cheering me forward and onward—as well as upward has just meant the world to me.

Thank you dear Substack Community.

Well, I have news.

One of my goals for 2025 is to move forward and publish my book of poems. I now have an editor—someone skilled and seasoned to look at my poems and help me; collaborate with me to bring this book to the world.

My first assignment is to narrow down all the many poems I have written and sift through them and let the ones that need to rise to the top of the pile—rise up. I’ll also let the ones who feel like chaff, blow away back into my hard drive of my computer where they will either die or find a new life in another time. (If you have an idea of a particular poem that you feel NEEDS to be in this book, NOW is the time to tell me. Leave a comment.

In our first conversation just this week, my new editor and I talked through the idea if this book would be my “naked” poems—poems without any introduction; poems without commentary; poems without me hand-holding the reader to explain and explain what I really meant and what I didn’t mean.

When I brought this up to the editor, our conversation moved into the sphere of a spiritual direction session. She asked me if I could trust my poems—trust them to readers and let the reader be invited to find the meaning they needed; they saw for themselves and gleaned insights and pearls that might be just for them.

I explained to her that in all the books I’ve written; talks I’ve offered; sermons that have been preached, that poetry just felt, well— “different.” It is my attempt, as I’ve said here many times, to say in fewer words and in a new voice what I felt compelled to say.

So, the book of poems will be my naked poems. Naked. No prose to cover them up or make them look better than they actually are. Naked. Raw. Vulnerable. Exposed.Just me and my new way of giving voice to the world—where my soul meets the world.

So, today, right before sending this new Substack to you, I sent her the file with the “maybe” poems—the ones that felt like there was some fire, some life; some light in them. We shall see.

During this time, I’ve been exploring Celtic Christianity and found a homeland here—a space that somehow invites me in my greening; in my deconstructing; in my own “Critical Journey,” to be ever moving; ever spiraling upward and onward.

Lately, John Phillip Newell’s work and the 11th century saint and “Doctor of the Church”, Hildegard of Bingen have aided me, helped me and affirmed me to keep becoming my true self. I’ve found great hope and comfort in reading their works.

So here, I will invite you to read my new poem. It’s the poem where I try to just say, what has happened in me during these past few years. See for yourself and leave a word or two if you somehow reasonate or find this interesting to ponder a bit more.