Verse and Universe

By Shirley Anne Leonard

My wife Shirley Anne, editor of WestWard Quarterly, wrote this piece for the Summer 2009 issue of the magazine.

In his book The Pursuit of Poetry (McGraw-Hill, 1960) Robert Hillyer observes that the word verse means a turning, and since the turn must come full circle on itself, it is a repeating rhythm just as in music. He also observes that the word universe means a concerted turning. "We walk, we breathe, our hearts beat in recurrence; the sun and moon, the stars in their courses, the changing seasons — all these are recurrent: we are metrical creatures in a metrical universe" (pp. 8-9).

Ancient musicians looked out on the universe, noted the ratios of the different planetary cycles, counted the rhythmic periodicities in nature, and calculated the ratios of the human body. They put together a geometry, a set of mathematical ratios and proportions. They believed that these ratios, if used in the sounds of music, would resonate with the life forces of the universe and thus enhance life. These particular sounds and rhythms, they thought, would make life healthier and more abundant. Such ideas were handed down to the composers of Baroque music. Musicians in that era were trained to use these particular numbers and patterns for harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and tempo in their music. This "mathematical" Baroque music was supposed to affect a synchronizing of our minds and bodies to more harmonious patterns. But is there more to that?

Musicologist Julius Portnoy found that not only can music, "change metabolism, affect muscular energy, raise or lower blood pressure, and influence digestion," but "It may be able to do all these things more successfully ... than any other stimulants that produce those changes in our bodies" (David Tame, The Secret Power of Music, Turnstone Press, 1984, p. 138).

An intensive series of studies carried out by Dorothy Retallack of Denver, Colorado, demonstrated the effects of different kinds of music on a variety of household plants. The experiments were controlled under strict scientific conditions, and the plants were kept within large closed cabinets on wheels in which light, temperature and air were automatically regulated. Plants grown in scientifically controlled chambers were given concerts of different kinds of music from rock to Baroque. All the plants that were next to the rock music leaned away from the speakers, trying to get away from the music! And to show that it was not just the noise itself, the plants next to the classical music leaned toward the speakers — actually trying to get closer to the music. In the end all the plants next to the rock music died!

What has this to do with poetry? you may ask. It occurred to me that, if music could have this effect, then what about poetry? Could it be that the lack of interest in poetry in our culture is because much of it has been written without harmonious rhythm, and some with intentionally discordant rhythm? The reader who thinks he does not care for poetry may be reacting to the type of poetry that is written today.

As Featured Writer Leland Jamieson stated in his article in the Spring 2008 issue of WestWard Quarterly, "My outlook on writing poetry is this: the healing incantatory energy of meter and rhyme is the reward for both the poet and the reader. There will be no resurgence of readers of poetry until poets give them sufficient reward for their effort. In giving reward to readers, they will give it to themselves as well. . . . It is necessary along the way, of course, for poets to rediscover their roots in an English language tradition going back past Shakespeare to Chaucer. There is plenty of good poetry to serve as a model."

Why This Blog Doesn’t GetUpdated Very Often

If you visit this page occasionally, you’ve noticed that this blog sometimes doesn’t get updated for weeks at a time. Perhaps you’d like to know why that’s the case.

I know there are people who live for their blogs. One can picture the dedicated blogger, pajama-clad till mid-afternoon, religiously pounding away at the keyboard in the fervent belief that the cyberworld awaits his latest mind dump with bated breath. But that’s not who we are. We’re under no illusions about the size of our audience or its eagerness to absorb what we have to say. (Google Analytics makes that clear enough.) So we aren’t under constraint to provide something novel every day, or even every week.

But that’s not the main reason our blog is relatively static. The main reason we don’t update it regularly is, frankly, that we have too much else to do. Here’s a rundown:

We manage and regularly update a group of web sites — those of several churches, a missionary in India, our local library and Chamber of Commerce, our personal ministry and publishing activities, our family, our poetry magazine, and our railroad hobby interest. All told, we’re responsible for maintaining 29 web sites if you count all the separate components of our Rail Archive. All these web sites are linked at our server operation site, ForeCyte.com. If our blog isn’t regularly updated, these other sites are.

Servicing the church-related sites involves formatting weekly sermons, updating monthly calendars, formatting and posting monthly newsletters and semi-monthly missionary reports, and regularly revising other material. On our ministry site, Laudemont Ministries, we’re currently adding some of my older sermons my wife is transcribing from cassette tapes. Our Rail Archive regularly gets augmented with new photos, either those I have taken or those other rail hobbyists send me, plus supporting commentary. Recently I’ve been posting my railroad photos not included in the Rail Archive to another site, the NERAIL North American Railroad Photo Archive.

Obviously a good deal of graphic work is involved with all these sites, for which we use Paint Shop Pro 7. We build all our sites in straight HTML; we don’t use any third-party software except the one for this blog, which we have modified to fit into this page.

I also publish WestWard Quarterly, the poetry magazine edited by my wife, Shirley Anne. I work with her in producing each issue, which we print at home on our own equipment. In January I took delivery of my third novel, New America, which I formatted for publication myself including the cover design; now I’m involved in distributing it.

I just completed a two-year term as a trustee of our local library, and two years as a director of the Greater Kirkland Area Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to all that, we’re getting ready to relocate to Hamilton, Illinois in June, sifting through our possessions to trim down for the move and trying to sell our home here in Kirkland.

We believe what we post on this blog is interesting and thought-provoking material, and appreciate those of you who read it. But if this blog doesn’t get updated for a while, you know the reasons why.

Principles of the Kingdom

Over the past few weeks my wife and I have been re-reading The Secret Kingdom, published by Pat Robertson (with Bob Slosser) in 1982. It is striking how this 27-year-old book is still so timely, particularly with respect to the world’s current economic woes. Of course, the “secrets” of the kingdom of God, as laid out by Jesus and the New Testament writers, are always timely. But, especially now, a review of these kingdom “laws” will help us to live our lives above the fray of current events. Let’s take up these principles, in brief, as Robertson discusses them.

The Law of Reciprocity. This follows from Jesus’ so-called “Golden Rule,” and his statement, “Give, and it will be given to you.” Our actions, for good or ill, will bring about a corresponding response from our environment.

The Law of Use. Like the servants in Jesus’ Parable of the Talents, if we utilize what we have we will gain more of it; if we fail to do so, it will dissipate. “Use it or lose it.”

The Law of Perseverance. Faced with a challenge, we’re tempted to give up too quickly. But, like the widow appealing to the corrupt judge in Jesus’ parable, we find that persistence in a worthwhile effort will eventually bring results.

The Law of Responsibility. “To whom much is given, of them much is required.” The more ability or wealth we have, the more we’re under obligation to look to the needs of others.

The Law of Greatness. As Jesus taught His disciples, the one who would be greatest must become the servant of all. True greatness comes from humility; whoever would enjoy the benefits of the kingdom must receive it “as a little child.”

The Law of Unity. God created mankind, and all things, in the unity of the Holy Trinity: “Let us make man in our image . . .” Prayer, when we gather as two or three in unity, brings results where a lone appeal may not. Lack of harmony frustrates our efforts to solve problems.

The Law of Miracles. God has all power, and His will cannot, in the end, be frustrated. Reliance on His mercy, and faith in His ability to work wonders, are keys to success in every area.

The Law of Dominion. God created people after His own pattern, to have dominion over their environment. This authority, seen most clearly in Jesus to whom “all authority in heaven and earth” has been given, brings with it a mandate for wise stewardship of the world’s resources. But awareness of our dominion also keeps us from becoming too timid to take the action needed to deal with our challenges.

These principles seem to turn our world upside down; they fly in the face of commonly accepted cultural values. But, as Jesus repeatedly states, “Whoever . . .” The laws of the kingdom work for anyone who will practice them, whether Christian believers or not. Through application of these principles of God’s “secret kingdom” we can weather the turmoil of our times, and be the “blessed” Jesus speaks of in His Beatitudes.

Our nation, and the world community, seem to find themselves on a downward slope, grasping at straws. Foolish and short-sighted measures — at the highest levels of government and at the individual level — have been the order of the day, but in the end they will fail. Eventually the world must realize that Jesus Christ, and His inspired spokesmen, have had the only answers all along.

When Trying Harder Doesn't Work

All serious Christians are concerned about the strength of their faith in God and the level of their commitment to His purposes. The shelves of Christian bookstores sag with the weight of books purporting to guide and encourage the believer in developing a stronger faith.

And no wonder. The Scriptures and the history of our faith are laced with the accounts of men and women of God who serve as examples of deep spirituality and unshakeable commitment. Consider, among others, the perseverance of Abraham, the unrelenting vision of Moses, the tenderness toward the Lord of David, the determination of Nehemiah. Consider the single-mindedness of the Apostle Paul whose “this one thing I do” resulted in the establishment of the gospel of Christ across the Mediterranean world. The Biblical “heroes of the faith” are joined by others: Augustine, who could find no rest till he found it in God; Luther, whose “Here I stand” thunders through history as the battle-cry of ecclesiastical reform; Wesley, who logged hundreds of thousands of miles on horseback to evangelize England.

In the last century we can point to such figures as Pastor Martin Niemoller and the ten Boom family, who endured Nazi concentration camps and suffered death because of their determination to maintain a Christian witness; to Joni Eareckson Tada, who overcame depression to build a ministry of encouragement to thousands despite her paraplegia; or to theologian-philosopher Francis Schaeffer who, emaciated from cancer, stood in the cold to picket a hospital that performed abortions just three weeks before his death.

And then we come to you and me. Where is our faith compared to that of the spiritual giants of yesteryear, or even of today? Admittedly, comparisons may be inappropriate; the Lord has called each of us to serve in his own way. Still, when we consider the great examples of what can be done through faith, many of us stagger along on a guilt trip because we haven’t been so spiritually motivated, or haven’t accomplished more for the kingdom of God.

Once we set out on that guilt trip we can go one of two ways. We could just become indifferent or resigned to our lack of spirituality, and perhaps give up any effort to change. Or, we could try harder. Maybe we should pray more regularly and read the Scriptures more intently. Perhaps we shall set ourselves to participate more actively in worship, schedule a daily “quiet time,” read more of those Christian self-help books, or try witnessing to our unsaved friends. Or, if we are convicted about some habit or personality quirk that doesn’t honor the Lord, we steel ourselves to “kick it” and to amend the manner of our life. With a little more effort, maybe we too can become a “spiritual giant.”

The trouble is, if we aren’t spiritual it’s usually because, at heart, we aren’t motivated to be spiritual. A battle rages within ourselves; our inner being becomes what Joyce Meyer calls “the battlefield of the mind.” In traditional terms, our flesh is at war with our spirit; we want to become infused with “the mind of Christ,” but we want to do it on our own terms or by our own devices, in that self-assertion the Bible calls “the flesh.” So when we try to be more spiritual than we really want to be, the effort to change can just make us more resentful and discouraged with our lack of success.

Such effort also makes us a prisoner of what Paul calls “the law of sin and death,” since any “success” in becoming more spiritual boomerangs. It builds up the very ego whose self-preoccupation kept us so unspiritual in the first place. If we really aren’t motivated, trying harder doesn’t do it. Unspiritual people “don’t have a prayer” — or, maybe, the only genuine prayer for such a time is, “Lord, make me willing to be made willing.” A Scriptural version of the same prayer might be Paul’s utterance: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

When trying harder doesn’t work, the only thing to do is to quit trying in our own strength and fall back on Christ alone. I like what John and Paula Sanford wrote years ago in The Transformation of the Inner Man:

Paradoxically, we are healed by being taught to put no confidence whatsoever in our own flesh, simply to rest in Him...A self-image is something we build, in which we falsely learn to trust. A self-image necessarily sets us into self-centered striving—to live up to it, to make sure others see and reward it. . . . Christian healing comes then not by making a broken thing good enough to work, but by delivering us from the power of that broken thing so that it can no longer rule us, and by teaching us to trust His righteousness to shine in and through that very thing. . . . We do no good thing. He accomplishes all. For the soul, there is in that sense no healing— only death and rebirth. . . . The Lord wants us to accept ourselves as we are, rotten and unchanged, and then let Him express His goodness and righteousness in us through His Holy Spirit.

Not being a spiritually inclined person, I find myself too often feeling like a “phony” when trying to pray, to worship the Lord or to instruct in Christian truths. I am overwhelmed by my inner awareness of what the Sanfords call “the unbelieving heart of the believer.” For me, trying harder doesn’t do it; I only despise myself for passing myself off as a real believer. Yet, in facing this truth about myself, a strange thing has happened. The less of the phony me there is in my worship and Christian living, the more of the Lord there seems to be.

Spiritual giants of the past endured their own struggles, till the Lord set them free. Their examples are always before us. But if you’re not a spiritual giant yourself, it’s living death to strive to be one. Better to “hit bottom,” face the truth about yourself, and begin to pray, “Lord, make me willing to be made willing . . .”

Writing with a "Ring"

“In North America ninety years ago, our ancestors established a brand new governmental entity. They thought of it in terms of civil rights, and focused on the idea that everybody starts out on an equal basis.  .  . . From these battle casualties that we’re memorializing, we need to pick up their same level of commitment to the program they gave their lives to promote. We’ve got to really make sure these combatants didn’t die for nothing, and work together so that our country — under a Higher Power, of course — will guarantee everybody’s rights all over again. We’ve got to do that so that a government the people vote for, one that benefits them, won’t just go down the drain.”

Fine patriotic sentiments, perhaps, after a major incident in warfare. But consider how President Abraham Lincoln said it on November 19, 1863 at Gettysburg:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. . . . that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Compared to the Gettysburg Address the first example sounds flat and tasteless, doesn’t it? Unlike Lincoln’s words, it has no “ring” to it. It doesn’t sound very “literary.” Today’s fashion may be to make writing sound like ordinary casual or conversational speech. But if what we write sounds just like how we talk, why bother to write? Yes, there’s often a place for the colloquial and, perhaps, even the banal especially if we’re dealing with dialogue. But to compose a poem, essay or narrative that will elevate the reader’s appreciation for your topic — that requires us to write words and expressions that “ring.”

The English language, because of the way it developed, has a larger vocabulary than most other tongues. In English there are many different ways to say the same thing, a multitude of approaches to getting your idea across, a plethora of choices when it comes to how to express oneself. (You get the idea.) Writing would not be a craft if there were not such a variety of possible ways to fashion the writer’s concept. Perhaps we cannot always aspire to the level of the Gettysburg Address, Shakespeare or the King James Bible, but we can employ our craft to select our words and shape our phrases so that they “ring” with a reverberation that’s a cut or two above the mundane.

Back and Forth with Genesis 1

If we accept the Bible as the authority that defines our perspective on reality, how do we regard Scripture’s opening chapter, the account of the creation? Does the Bible teach a literal six-day creation, or can what it says be understood another way? Or, even if it does specify creation in six days — an idea that sounds ridiculous to secular cosmologists — are there some underlying insights in the biblical account that transcend the surface narrative? Perhaps these insights make sense even to someone who regards a literal six-day creation as a a discredited doctrine.

To begin with, the Genesis account clearly says, “... one day ..., ... one day ...” So it does teach a six-day sequence of creation. On the other hand, “days” as we know them are earth days — a rotation of the earth on its axis demarcated by the appearance of the sun in the sky. And according to Genesis, the sun and moon aren’t created till the fourth “day.” So how could “days,” as we understand the term, be used to mark off the successive phases of creation?

Some interpreters nuance the account by claiming that the word “day” in Genesis means epochs of astronomical length in the gazillion-year history of the universe. But there’s no warrant for interpreting the Hebrew word yom (“day”) in that sense. Does that clinch the case for understanding the Bible as teaching a literal six-day creation?

Look again at the structure of Genesis 1, with its repeated refrain, “And God saw that XXX was good ... And there was evening and there was morning, X day.” Repeated refrains do not occur in historical accounts or textbooks of cosmology, they occur in hymns. Genesis 1 appears to be a prose paraphrase of a poetical, hymn-like structure, a hymn celebrating the Creator’s activity. Do you look into your church hymnal when you want to find an explanation of some problem in astronomy, physics or chemistry? Not likely. So maybe Genesis 1 isn’t the place to look for a description of how the world actually came into existence. Maybe the biblical account has a different purpose.

But, on the other hand, if you look at the Genesis account it starts with the creation of the most basic “element,” light. It then proceeds, by a process of division, to separate out the generalized components of the universe as the Israelites saw it: light and darkness, the heavens and terra firma, land and sea. That process of division is called analysis, the first principle of scientific inquiry.

By the way, the creation of light is a digital, or binary, separation, the basis for today’s computers. The presence of difference is the basis of information, because information is found in the difference between one thing and another — not in sameness.

The Genesis account then goes on to relate the creation of an ascending hierarchy of living things — plants, then water creatures and birds, then land animals and finally mankind. That is something like the sequence posited in the evolutionary view, though the theory of evolution itself is problematical.

Finally, one looks at other ancient “myths” of creation and notices that the creation of the earth, and of mankind, is only a byproduct of some cosmic struggle between competing deities, whereas in the Bible the universe is created deliberately in a planned and orderly sequence. The sun and moon are perhaps deliberately placed out of order to counter the tendency to worship these bodies, as was common in polytheistic religions.

Furthermore, God is not part of his creation but is separate from it. This implies that mankind, as his agent in the administration of the natural order — made in his “image,” as Genesis puts it — can approach that order in a “secular” way, i.e., without worrying about offending the god of this or that natural phenomenon.

So, in sum, one goes back and forth with the Bible account of creation. First, we accept that it doesn’t square with the scientific view, then we see how it adopts a view generally consistent with science, and finally we realize that it presents the only view that makes science possible.

Renewing the Mind Through Meditation

By Shirley Anne Leonard

My wife Shirley Anne wrote this piece a few days ago. I thought I would share it with others here.

Why don’t we have victory? We have never sat down and meditated long enough on the Word. What is meditation? Well, if you know how to worry you know how to meditate. Meditation is ruminating, working something over and over in you mind. Our minds just naturally do this all day long. Usually it is about how bad things are, about the ache in our bodies, or this or that problem confronting us.

Controlling the mind is like pushing one of those grocery carts that has a bad wheel and is always trying to swerve to the left. You have to purposely keep turning it back to the right. The good fight of faith is not always with an outside adversary, it’s more often with our own minds.

When the Word says to renew our minds, that’s not just a nice suggestion. God tell us that because He knows that if we let our minds go their natural way they take us down the wrong road — the road to sickness, worry, frustration and depression.

The Lord has another way to go. He tells us to think about ourselves and circumstances the way He does. Where does He say that? Well, He tells us to have the mind of Christ. If you have the mind of Christ then you are thinking the right thoughts. We’re victorious over the world as He was. Remember what Jesus said: “I have overcome the world.” And so can you!

So if someone asks you if you’ve ever meditated, don’t say “No.” You have meditated (worried) about all the wrong things. The solution is to sit down several times a day and purposely meditate on a verse of Scripture that tells who you are and what you can do — like the TV preacher who holds the Bible up at the beginning of a service and asks everyone to repeat the words, “This is my Bible. I am what it says I am and I can do what it says to do.”