"Religion is poetry which intervenes in life."

The title quote is from Dr David Tracy of the University of Chicago Divinity School.  And here's how the piece by Kurt Elling opens:

"Enigmatical beauty . . . beautiful enigma. Double-thing . . . always duplicitous, never single. Disturbing, unsettling. We do not know what is real and what is not. Imprisoned in constant change, serious, solid men do not remain (undecided). They make up their minds and in doing so die. Shiftless fools and shifty drifters are neither imprisoned nor dead. They err aimlessly in a permanence composed of impermanence. Morning and evening, arising and passing away – endlessly form an ever-dawning festival. In this playful dance, players make gay the hallucinations in surfaces." –Mark Taylor, Erring

"Why should I wish to see God better than on this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then. In the faces of men and women I see God – and in my own face in the glass. I find letters from God dropped in the street. And every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come forever and ever." –Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Please read this extraordinary piece of writing about spirituality, jazz and poetry. I think this is right on the money.

http://integrallife.com/node/208235

A Lenten Fast

I’ve given up thinking for Lent.
Too much energy has been spent
on that word ‘thought’
which always seems to come up
short.

Crazed northern lights are jazzing in my head
made mad by solar flares
and dancing like spring hares
their eyes and blood all red.

I’m just going to sit and watch the show
and care not to know why
there’s this titanic tug
between my little leaping mind
and that performing sky.

I shall just see
and feel
and be
and clap my grizzled hands
with childlike glee.

From My Mother is an Old Elephant, available here.