It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
-- Carl Dennis, The God Who Loves You
Awakening & Epiphany
Our poet friend Dennis presented us with a copy of one his favorite books last year, Practical Gods, the Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poems by Carl Dennis (www.poetryfoundation.org). The book's publisher notes that many of his poems "involve an attempt to enter into dialogue with pagan and biblical perspectives, to throw light on ordinary experience through metaphor borrowed from religious myth and to translate this into secular terms." These are poems, the publisher says, meant to help us name the everyday, available gods that are easy to ignore, both those that frustrate and those that sustain life and make it rewarding. I think I would agree that this poet's work stands apart because it nudges us gently but firmly beyond accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving. Which is of course, why I am a writer and probably why you are too. Or why you want to be a writer. What's the point of poetry and prose after all, if we aren't nudging our readers and ourselves into some kind of awakening and epiphany?
Befriending The Gods
Dennis (our friend, not the Pulitzer Prize winner Dennis) is about 68 years now and he used to be a hotshot healthcare exec in New York at a prestigious hospital/medical school. It was science by the book for him every day. Then he had a massive brain hemorrhage, had to retire to Arizona and relearn how to do everything from scratch. That's when he got into poetry. He began writing poems and joined a writer's organization that every year holds a national writing contest. So far he's taken several first prize awards and garnered seconds and honorable mentions too. His poetry is delightful and he himself is a very fine guy to be around, slower and not as steady as before but probably lots more compassionate and observant than he was in his high flying NYC days. He has a couple of parrots now that he dotes on and he can always be counted on to try something new and expansive. Dennis is one of those people who, despite a major health setback, is aging gracefully and well because he's learned to befriend the gods who sustain life and make it rewarding. Today I'm sharing with you one of my favorite poems from the book Dennis gave us and maybe you'll be as intrigued and moved as I was the first time I read it. Maybe you will seize upon one small but luminous thought and, like Dennis, maybe you will begin to open the door to your own epiphany today. I hope so.
The God Who Loves You
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
-- Carl Dennis, The God Who Loves You
Awakening & Epiphany
Our poet friend Dennis presented us with a copy of one his favorite books last year, Practical Gods, the Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poems by Carl Dennis (www.poetryfoundation.org). The book's publisher notes that many of his poems "involve an attempt to enter into dialogue with pagan and biblical perspectives, to throw light on ordinary experience through metaphor borrowed from religious myth and to translate this into secular terms." These are poems, the publisher says, meant to help us name the everyday, available gods that are easy to ignore, both those that frustrate and those that sustain life and make it rewarding. I think I would agree that this poet's work stands apart because it nudges us gently but firmly beyond accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving. Which is of course, why I am a writer and probably why you are too. Or why you want to be a writer. What's the point of poetry and prose after all, if we aren't nudging our readers and ourselves into some kind of awakening and epiphany?
Befriending The Gods
Dennis (our friend, not the Pulitzer Prize winner Dennis) is about 68 years now and he used to be a hotshot healthcare exec in New York at a prestigious hospital/medical school. It was science by the book for him every day. Then he had a massive brain hemorrhage, had to retire to Arizona and relearn how to do everything from scratch. That's when he got into poetry. He began writing poems and joined a writer's organization that every year holds a national writing contest. So far he's taken several first prize awards and garnered seconds and honorable mentions too. His poetry is delightful and he himself is a very fine guy to be around, slower and not as steady as before but probably lots more compassionate and observant than he was in his high flying NYC days. He has a couple of parrots now that he dotes on and he can always be counted on to try something new and expansive. Dennis is one of those people who, despite a major health setback, is aging gracefully and well because he's learned to befriend the gods who sustain life and make it rewarding. Today I'm sharing with you one of my favorite poems from the book Dennis gave us and maybe you'll be as intrigued and moved as I was the first time I read it. Maybe you will seize upon one small but luminous thought and, like Dennis, maybe you will begin to open the door to your own epiphany today. I hope so.
The God Who Loves You
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
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