The silent river of life

I just returned tonight from a retreat of a group known as A Place Apart, a growing network of communities that strive to follow Jesus in ways that nurture being fully alive as God would have us, as Jesus modeled in his life. As I continue to read Stafford, I am struck by how much of what he says is so in line with what A Place Apart is about. Here is a blurb from their website that begins to sum it up:

The purpose of A Place Apart is to provide a place where men and women, young and old, married couples and singles, clergy and lay people, Christians, other faith traditions, and those without any religious affiliation can comfortably come to break with the frenzied pace, empty value systems, fakery, and pseudo-life of the world and develop a new relationship to God, to others, to themselves, and to the Earth. A Place Apart will be a place to regain hope and a place to receive direction and channel hope.

Stafford, in my view, was about this break from what is empty in the world and reconnecting to the world in new and innovative ways.

On Friday night I read some of Stafford's poetry, and several people commented how much they appreciated his words. I believe he is addressing a longing that so many of us are experiencing: to stop pretending that we have the answers, to no longer be afraid to say and be who we are and what we dream of becoming. I don't consider Stafford, nor myself, to be a "Christian poet" per se, but we both seek to present the world in ways that are true to human experience, so true that they move the reader to some sort of action, even--and especially--if that action is a shift in view. So much of poetry is about vision, a way of seeing that is apart from the habitualized, ritualized norms. I may write more expressly at times in religious language more than Stafford, but my writing, like Stafford's, is not about the "right way" as Christianity often is. Many people are beginning to no longer say we are Christian, because we are do not desire to be a part of that system anymore. Instead, we are calling ourselves, if we must call ourselves anything, followers of Jesus. (YouTube has four humorous videos that attempt to get at this dynamic.)

I have been reading The Answers Are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life, and I just came across this passage from an interview with Stafford this evening:

To what extent do religious beliefs influence your work? Do you consider yourself a Christian poet?

I might describe myself as a religious poet whose vocabulary, reference points and surrounding culture are phrased in Christian terms. I think I would be whatever religion there was in the society around me; it's not the local content of the religion that possesses me, but the general attitude, the way of living that recognizes more than we know.

For Stafford, religion is not about religiosity--it is about the people around you rather than "getting it right"; and "the way of living" which he says so wonderfully "that recognizes more than we know." This is precisely what A Place Apart is seeking to do--what I am striving for myself. Of course, I am a Christian--or follower of Christ, and probably won't lose that part of myself. But I desire to live in a way that is not so much about me and what I believe, but how I live with the people around me, and how I interact with what I can never fully know. This is my "silent river" of sorts, as Stafford says of in "Ask Me":

...We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.

I wait to hear "what the river says," and write what I see. This is the only way I know how to be alive.