The Language of Poetry

     The language of poetry is a language of deep intimacy that is meant to touch the human spirit and awaken it to the mystery of life, all life. When a poet shares with you the words they have written, you are being invited into a world that is intimate and wondrous, one that explores the depths of all human hearts. This is a world of openness and timelessness, spiritual, which opens the eyes and ears of the human heart, and invites a person into the mystery of relationships and creation. We are called every day into a relationship with one another, indeed the reality we experience every day of our lives arises out of our relationships and the world in which we live, with all of creation.

     Poetry celebrates this and offers us an opportunity to explore the mystery of human thought, interconnections, creativity, and design, our deepest intentions, in a divine dance of words, love, and transformation. The language of poetry is ultimately transforming and expanding, rich in rhyme and reason, in symbols and images, in myth, mystery and metaphor, as each poem unveils a truth through the story it tells. A story grounded in humility, wonder and awe, humus - from the earth, as of the fertility of earth, and the gift of love, wisdom, and grace that sustains our lives.

Ron Starbuck
Copyright 2012

“Life is self-transformation, and human relationships, which are an extract of life, are the most changeable of all, they rise and fall from minute to minute, and lovers are those for whom no moment is like any another. People between whom nothing habitual ever takes place, nothing that has already existed, but just what is new, unexpected, unprecedented. There are such connections, which must be a very great, an almost unbearable happiness, but they can occur only between very rich beings, between those who have become, each for his own sake, rich, calm, and concentrated; only if two worlds are wide and deep and individual can they be combined. For the more we are, the richer everything we experience is. And those who want to have a deep love in their lives must collect and save for it, and gather honey.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

     It is our relationships with one another, and all of creation, which is the reality we experience every day of our lives. It is out of all these relationships that our lives arise, interweaving, unfolding and folding into one another, and it is in and through these relationships we encounter and come to know, and be known by God, by the Divine Mystery. Through and in and with one another, we come to know God, in a divine relationship that is creation itself, constantly creating new relationships from one moment to the next.

From the preface of When Angels Are Born.


     In his book, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, in writing about Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea of “interbeing,” Paul F. Knitter tells us that understanding God through relationships is critical and that the source and power of our relationships is driven by the presence of the "Holy Spirit." The importance of this concept is summarized by this: "behind and within all the different images and symbols, Christians use for God – Creator, Father (Abba), Redeemer, Word, Spirit, - the most fundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God is that God is the source and power of relationships."

From - Saint Julian Press - A Christian Speaks - The Heart Sutra - Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness