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Thank you. Mr President. I'm tired now. Mhm. Thank you. Mr Dean colleagues, friends in this faculty and colleagues friends, students here gathered in this room. I thank you for this privilege

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of your time. Here is a poem Written by Richard Wilbur in 1956. It's entitled Love Calls Us to the things of this world. The Eyes Open to a cry of pulleys and spirited from sleep.

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The astounded soul hangs for a moment, bodiless and simple as false dawn outside the open window. The morning air is all awash with angels. Some are in bed sheets, some are in blouses, some

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are in smocks, but truly there they are now . They are rising together in calm swells of calcium , feeling filling, whatever they wear with the deep joy of their impersonal breathing. Now they are flying

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in place conveying the terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving and staying like whitewater. And now, all of a sudden they swoon down into so wrapped a quiet that nobody seems to be there. The soul

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shrinks from all that it is about to remember from the punctual rape of every blessed day and cries, oh let there be nothing on earth but laundry, nothing but rosie hands in the rising steam and clear

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dances done in the sight of heaven. Yet as the sun acknowledges with a warm look, the world's hunks and colours. The soul descends once more in bitter love to accept the waking body, saying now

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in a changed voice as the man yawns and rises , bring them down from their ruddy gallows, let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves. Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,

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and the heaviest of nuns walk in a pure floating of dark habits keeping their difficult balance. I love that poem. The poet awakens to the cry of pulleys as the mornings, laundry sheets and shirts and

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blouses and smokes is cranked through the air pinned to close lines and in that liminal moment between sleep and wakefulness before the brain begins dictating to the eyes, what they may see and to the soul, what

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it may believe in that liminal moment. The morning air is all a wash with angels. The world is an enchanted place, and the land of the imagination knows no limit. Wilbur's poem invites us to

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linger in that moment to imagine angels as shirts on the backs of thieves and bed sheets that embrace lovers . And, yes, even the white undergarments beneath the dark habits of nuns who keeping their difficult balance

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must negotiate a morally ambiguous world. I want to talk this morning about poetic imagination. That's the place where poets like Richard Wilbur live, I suppose, that you might call these remarks a rudimentary theo poetic

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, it's theology informed by elements of poetic expression. There are four specifically I want to mention, although we could have selected many others imagery, mystery form and hospitality. But to tell you the truth,

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what I really want to do is read poems and to invite you by the reading into the world I live in. It's a world where the boundary between theology and imagination is no thicker than a line from

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a poem. In my world, imagination pokes holes in the surface of the status quo and allows me to peer beneath to a deeper beauty, one that drifts in the direction of the divine. In my

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world. There are angels in the laundry. Well , first then imagery, as the word suggests, imagination is at its heart. Image. Poetic images are made of words of course, but they are

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always more than words. They are the peculiar collision of the specific and the abstract. The poetic thin place where the mundane has truck with the transcendent poems , wrote modernist poet Marianne moore are imaginary gardens with

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real toads in them. Don't you love that line ? Yeah. Ezra Pound wants to find an image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. Images are windows into the

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workshop where we manufacture meaning. They are not symbols exactly. They don't stand for something. Rather they evoke something usually more than one something, something that tells us as much about ourselves as it does about

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the image itself. The curious thing about images is that they look both backwards and forwards we see but are also seen. Poets and theologians pay careful attention to images because the language of believing is the language

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of image. Let's take the most obvious example. We are every one of us and all of us together, created in imago dei in the image of God. To look at each other in the face

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, as we do, is to look into the face of God poetically speaking. But I wonder is not this yearning to see God also, a way of yearning to see ourselves. And when we stare

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into the face of christ christ whom the author of colossians calls the image the icon of the father, Do we not yearn to be seen by the very face We see the language of faith is full of

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images and to speak about faith is to speak in images. Each one an invitation to part the conventions of the ordinary and peer into a deeper truth and to be seen by that truth. Last year eric

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wall, there he is. Mhm. Invited me to write a poem about the tendency of Protestants to splinter. That was his word splinter into sects and denominations. That word splinter put me in mind of

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wood and wooden things like chairs and tables and the crosses. My father used to cut out from pine scraps on his band saw and that made an image spring to mind a photo I had seen of the

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hands of a friend of mine, a very skilled amateur woodworker holding a table leg. He had just finished turning his hands were nicked and bleeding from the wounds made by flying splinters, the inevitable result of

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holding sharp edges against fast turning pieces of wood. I began thinking about the image of blood and bloody hands and the relationship between blood and wood and that led to the blood price paid burned up on wood

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, piled high on ancient altars and blood bled out on crosses and about the body of christ bleeding on a table in a cup, speaking words of unity . Even as we use those very words to tear

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each other apart. Here's the poem would work. It's about the blood joining boards, at angles, edges are negotiations prone to pinch, and nails pierce like talking points. Splinters burn like lightning beneath the

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skin. Red stains in the palms of hands. It's about the blood. A lifetime of little cuts . Saw blade, nick's chisel slips on turning lathes scrapes from roughened surfaces in rapid motion currency to pay

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for chalices and tables, for chair legs in church parlors and for crosses always crosses. It's about the blood smeared on every lentil door, post, pulpit , pew, forensic faithfulness, a wound for every

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wonder impassive as a judge's smile, the paschal lamb has nothing more to say. After the planers blade has smoothed the ragged faces of the cross, and with every hammer blow, the blood sinks deeper in

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the heartwood, unseen and silent, until all that's left is argument quid pro quo Leave the dead behind in the night when angels pass and head for parted water. But it's about the blood crying out from

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every field, and every brother without a keeper, every lamb laid on every altar, every cup on every covenant tal table, that's where the wounded body lies awaiting autopsy, while survivors lurk in hallways,

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fighting over the personal effects, imagery and mystery. If it is a truth, that an image is a porous boundary between the mundane and the transcendent, then perhaps we should ask what we mean poetically by

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transcendence. I would suggest that transcendence is a theologians word for mystery and mystery is that realm that stands forever over against us, inaccessible and yet inviting defying explanation. While demanding exploration, mystery is the darkness

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beyond the ring of light, the eternal No! To our persistent, inquisitive, yes, unseen, but not unreal. Mystery hovers at the edges of imagination and at the edges of theology too. The

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landscape of christian faith is littered with mystery with liminal spaces, where we stand at the edge of our experience and peer over into the wild, unknowing and yet so ubiquitous are those limb analyses that we grow

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accustomed to their presence in our vocabularies. We speak of the trinity that perry Keret IQ oneness in three nous in oneness or of the incarnation, that cal sidani in doubled nature, un confused, yet in

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single being. And our sentences trip from our tongues as merrily as they may as though we were making some kind of sense. We stand at font or table and evoke the presence of the divine in basin

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blood and bread and cup yet marry a lip quivers nor finger trembles. It is as Annie Dillard once observed about us that we sought her through the liturgy like mohawks along a strand of scaffolding. Having long

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since forgotten their danger. Poetry knows better. Poetic imagination is always on high alert in the presence of mystery. It's strange to peer into that darkness, but it cannot always trust what it sees. Poems

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refuse to know too much. So they retraced their steps. 2nd guess their assumptions are constantly aware of their own fragility. A poem is a candle in the darkness easily extinguished when the spirit exhales. And

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yet occasionally by luck, as much as by design a poem, illuminations and enduring truth in that darkness . Here's a poem, Resurrection before the dawn he slips into the flow so silently, no star in

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Heaven, here's nor earth beneath, nor even hell below, it seems. It hasn't been like this for years. Silence reigns, no star in heaven . Here's the subtle scuttling last retreat of death.

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He thinks it hasn't been like this for years. It would be such an effort to draw breath. The subtle scuttling last retreat of death rolls the stone aside, and now the breeze suggests the effort of

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unsteady breath. Nothing in this life is done with ease. Stone rolled aside, the movement of the breeze, watched the acrid dust stirred on the floor . Not so. He thinks the one thing done

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with ease is dying. Living always summons more, wafting. Acrid dust stirs on the floor. Another moment could he just abide in dying living summons? There is more. They want his blood, their

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fingers in his side. Another moment rest, and just abide. But then the nostrils twitch and muscles move. The blood flows into fingers at his side , rising from the deep abyss of love. The

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nostrils twitch and now the muscles move. Neither earth beneath nor hell below can stop this rising river deep with love, the time has come. He slips into the flow, imagery, mystery and form.

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If you were listening carefully to that poem, you detected the repetition of lines. In fact, it probably hits you over the head. The poem is a Pan Tomb, a form characterized by its repeated

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interwoven lines. It's a sort of dance with two steps forward and one step back. A pan tomb is a wonderful form for thinking about things mysterious because its structure disciplines a poet to proceed cautiously reverently,

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even to be patient to wait from, for the nuance to emerge from the already known poems are imagination , disciplined by structure. This is true of any poem. Even a poem written in free verse,

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but a poetic form, especially a classic one, like the Pan Tomb can function like a river bid that channels the currents of the poets imaginative vision form helps imagination flow downstream toward poetry instead of flooding the

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page and inundating the literary landscape. There is a significant sense in which what we do here in this seminary is to give form to the wild rivers of faith. It's no accident that a chunk of our

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curriculum is called ministerial formation, but don't get the idea that ministerial formation happens only in supervised practice of ministry or clinical pastoral education. And if you don't know what those terms are. Well, wait a

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while. No, no, quite the contrary. Its formation all the way through top to bottom, end to end, to study theology is to be formed by creeds and confessions. And the work of

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great theologians to learn to preach is to be formed by the styles and methods of beloved preachers. Before you venture out onto your own to learn liturgy is to know how to shape the flow of the Eucharist

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between the river banks of an omni sis and epic Lassus. Biblical studies tracks the trails carved out by generations of scholars by following their Hermano tickle blazes left on the tree trunks of the text. Christian education

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teaches methods, both ancient and modern, that inculcated the great practices of christian faith from its very beginnings , theological study structures thought in order to clear a path for discovery and nuance. If you studied poetry

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, you've probably come across a poetic form called a celestina Festina's are complicated beasts. 39 lines gathered in six sextet. That's a six line stanza followed by an envoy, a terse it or three line concluding

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stands up. The ending word of the. of each line of the first sextet must appear as an ending word in a line, in each of the following five steps, although in a fixed order.

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The envoy then employs all six ending words within the three lines of the terse. It's are you confused ? You ought to try to write one. Here's the thing though, making yourself arrive at the end

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of a line in a predetermined word forces you to uncover nuances in the meaning of that word, you begin discover a whole world of imaginative possibility. Beneath the surface of those six simple words, I tried

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writing a celestina recently prompted by a photograph of a garter snake shedding its skin when snakes shed their skin . I found this out. The skin first loosens over the eyes forming a bluish gray cataract that renders

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the snake temporarily blind the ending words I chose for that first stanza about the blind snake Got me thinking about other kinds of snakes and other kinds of blindness . Here's the poem. Blue eyed snake. What

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in the world is a blue eyed snake, a sign that things are surely changing. That what is old is sloughing off. Not yet replaced by something new. It's hard to know just where you're going

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when you can't see just where you are snakes shed their skin. It's how things are. It must be hard to be a snake about the time you get things going, your eyes grow dim and things

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start changing. You have no choice. You face the new blind as a bat. The first thing off is eyelid skin before it's off, it turns opaque and your eyes are useless and blue. It's

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nothing new unless you don't know you're a snake. Can't understand why things are changing. Can't see which way the world is going. I can't help wondering if what is going on with us is not far

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off from snakes whose skin is always changing, How vulnerable it seems we are to fear of change. Like a snake reflexively. We hiss at new threats perceived though unseen new phantoms in the fog going past

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in the dark. Yeah, A setting snake will strike at you to warn you off. I have a sense that's how things are with us. Our lives are always changing. New people keep arriving,

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changing, settled ways, demanding new accommodations in how we are. Used to speaking used to going about our days, something's off, we think and learn to strike like snakes. We're holed up like a

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blue eyed snake, the old skins changing chuck it off. We need new skin where we are going imagery, mystery form and now hospitality. I happen to think of that poem about the blue eyed snake

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as a poem about hospitality, although before you say it, I know that a blind and temperamental snake is hardly a good image of welcome. But as a practice, hospitality is all about opening one's life

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to the presence of others, attending to their needs , accommodating their differences. Making room for those who otherwise have no room. Hospitality changes us whether we are the guest or the host, it forces us

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to make friends out of strangers and builds community out of separation. Hospitality is Leviticus is demand that we love the neighbor as much as we love ourselves. It's Deuteronomy is command to us to shelter the widow

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and the orphan. It's hebrews injunction to show hospitality to strangers for by so doing some have entertained angels unawares. Hospitality is all about making space for the other poetry practices hospitality to in the form of imaginative

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openness, a willingness to make space for the stories . The story doesn't tell narratives ignored or squeezed out by the dominant meta narrative of faith and life. A few years ago, in this very pulpit,

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President Wardlaw preached a sermon using the joseph narrative in genesis, you know, that long arc from 37 to 50 all about joseph and his arrogant dreams at his brother's expense, his brother's developing hatred, his

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sail into Egyptian slavery, his rise to power in pharaoh's court, his ultimate reunion with his family, now safely within his protection. Ted focused on joseph's final speech, in which joseph looks back over the

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long arc of his story and says to his brothers , you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good When ted read those words, this is literally the thought that sprang into my mind.

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Well that works pretty well. If you're joseph, wonder how it feels to Isaac are the only brother whose story the story never tells. That thought snatched up my imagination and ran off like a pickpocket down

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a crowded street. Ted I did not hear another word you said. I decided right then and there is a car needed a story and by George I'm just arrogant enough to be the one to write it

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. It's not a hero story, but it's a story about what it feels like to be the not chosen the kid not picked for basketball. The dunce in the back of the class, who never gets

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the answer right? The second choice for the coveted job, the runner up, They also ran The guy who one day gets enough of it all and walks into school or work carrying a loaded a R

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15. It's not a hero story, but it is someone's story. Maybe even someone, you know , poetic hospitality invites us to imagine the stories we do not here to visit worlds. We do not

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live in. Maybe if we practiced a bit more hospitality, there would be fewer mass shootings. Here's a poem. The dream coat is a car's tail . You meant it all for evil, but God

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meant it all for good. Was what he said , perhaps, but not from where I stood. I was drowned in his endearment, undone by his desire, rejected in his rescue, but kindled by

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his fire. Had it been left to me that day when joseph topped the rise, I'd have stabbed the little prick as soon as I laid eyes on that dream coat stuck him like a slaughtered sheep and

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left him lying in the dirt to beg and bleed and bleed that dream coat. So he called it for he always wore his dreams like blazes on its panels and piping at the scenes. See here,

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he said, how sun and moon and stars bow on my sleeves. And here I stand so tall and gold amid your boy sodden sheaves! Don't kill him, pleaded Reuven. Always wanted to work the

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con and Judah said, let's sell him to those slavers coming on and divvy up the proceeds while they tie him to the board and soak his coat and goat's blood and tell pa he was gored. So

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we did the deed. Afterward I kept the coat keepsake trophy hospice for a hope lesser son of leah sion of the unloved spouse, cursed to dream of flocks and streams, and even of a house of

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ice, a car! I like the sound of that. But years of famine, death and desert burn up everything but tears and drive a man to pharaoh's land to barter dreams for food. You meant

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it all for evil, but God meant it all for good. They sing of joseph's wisdom, but it catches in my throat, and even after all these years I scarce can touch the coat. Dreams

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were written on it. They were written in my blood. I do not know the difference between evil and the good. This is what I know. Here's his body wrapped and dressed in coffin for the

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netherworld that waits upon the blessed alone of all the brothers. Now I stand at joseph's pyre and return the blood stiff dreamcoat to the one who lit the fire imagery mystery form hospitality. One last word.

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In this place we engage in the enterprise of theological education. We pursue that enterprise with any of a number of aims in mind, preparing for ministry, exploring the dimensions of one's faith, learning the classical

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disciplines of theological study. Allow me to add, peeling back the surface of the ordinary in order to peer into the enchanted beauty that pulses beneath, listening for the voice of God humming the ancient wordless song

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that vibrates below the basement vaults of creation. Wallace stevens, perhaps the greatest poet of the imagination in the english language once wrote of listening to a woman sing as she walked along a seashore, and how

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the words of the song she sang restructured the way he imagined the woman and the song and the sea , and ultimately, even himself. He ended the poem with these famous lines. Oh, blessed rage

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! For order pale ramon! The makers rage To order Words of the sea! Words of the fragrant portals dimly starred, and of ourselves, and of our origins in Ghost Lier demarcations, keener sounds.

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Here is my hope for you that something of stevens's blessed rage for order. His yearning. For the words of fragrant portals dimly starred will begin to stir in you While you study here. I hope you

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will establish a lifelong friendship with your imagination. Let it structure the way you look at everything. Your life, your loves, your world, even your God, who knows might even make you a poet

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. It all starts when you look for the angels