April is when Erato speaks...

"It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes." -Dana Gioia

As I sat in my makeshift art studio the other day...I wrestled with the challenge and sometimes guilt I feel being an artist and a pastor. It takes time to be an artist...scribbles, countless hours writing, still born sketches, used paint, brushes, paper, canvas...oh the expense. Sometimes it feels vain. But then I remember and or see the apparent waste of beauty all around me and realize God is just as condemned as I.

One of the dreams I have had as a artist and a pastor has always been to plant a Church, a Christian community that an artist could live among and in. Help restore the wonders of expression in all her forms in our telling of the greatest tale to be told. A house with open windows where Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania could be once again experienced in their humble place under the altar. Oh, lets not allow them to ascend above the altar ...but instead be incarnated as simple offerings to be laid upon it.

As national Poetry month commences...I pray that the Lord will stir the blood of the poets to let loose their finely worded blades; severing the serpent entwined woman's head, whose gaze has silenced too many voices. Indeed, way too many hearts have turned to cold, dreamless stone but I hope you know that poetry can turn stone to flesh again and again. It has mine.