I must confess that when I see neatly laid out text in the form of a poem I
am tempted to immediately skip down past it. I became an avid reader in my high
schools years but mainly read science fiction especially what was considered
“hard” science fiction where the science itself played an integral part of the
storyline. C.S. Lewis once said something to the effect that to be an atheist
you had to be a careful reader. I was very careful it seems and never really
read anything that challenged my world view. But God does work in mysterious
ways and even reading pretty much only in the genres of science fiction and
fantasy I noticed that the characters and heroes I admired most were those that
were virtuous and had the highest moral standards.. I contrasted that with
myself and and saw how much I was lacking in either.
Coming back to the
main point of this post, Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli roped me in to starting
to try to read poetry. I started reading his blog because of his insights into
the writing of St. John of the Cross and then he started sneaking poetry in.
Other blogs that I admire also would regularly post poetry and I started to
wonder if maybe their enjoyment of poetry also gave them insights into the
spiritual life and the reading of scripture. If the Holy Spirit could inspire
someone to write the Song of Songs and inspire King David to write the Psalms
then there must be something in this poetry thing. Anyway, thanks for those
bloggers out there posting poetry and helping me to get over being a
stanzaphobic; even though I have a long way to go.
