Article on Stafford in Brethren news publication

In the April 22, 2008 issue of the Church of the Brethren Newsline, Brian Nixon, a member of the Church of the Brethren recounts a poetry reading William Stafford gave at the denomination's 1991 Annual Conference in Portland, OR. I'm pretty certain I was at that conference, but I didn't know anything about Stafford then, at age 12.

Nixon tells this story:

As an impressionable college student, I looked over the plethora of lectures, seeing one that read, "Poetry Reading: William Stafford." This sounded great to me, but I was unsure of exactly who Stafford was. As a member of the Church of the Brethren, I had heard of Mr. Stafford, but was not yet quite "into" him. I knew he published a book of poetry with Brethren Press called "A Scripture of Leaves," and was well loved among the Brethren folk.

But as I stood there and looked at the other conference offerings, I finally decided upon a folk group concert instead (you see, I was "into" music).

Read the rest here.

Sing Now: A Poem

This is a poem I wrote a while ago after reading a poem of Stafford's, though the title eludes me at them moment.

Sing Now

A cappella four-part harmony is.
Everything else waits, listens.
Silence rises on air
at each breath, while
heaven descends on
old hundredth or 606.

All we need is now.
Before and after tumble
down, and now lifts away.
Sound is the only chapel.

A cappella four-part harmony is:
it saves us everywhere.

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.

To the churches: The War is Over!

"The pity of it!" George said. "Finding only such rare occasion (to have to wait for there to be a war, and then for it to end!) for them to relax their fears long enough to admit in public that they are enjoying themselves, to smile at strangers, to feel justified in having the actual freedom of a street-width in which to walk, rather than the narrow, crowded sidewalks."

I felt then, while listening to George, how good it would be--he made me see it--if that stretch of street could remain forever closed to automobiles, if for six blocks of a city's shopping center people could again have spaciousness. If they could sometimes get that feeling we often got on the truck, rolling along through the open country, gesturing broadly around at the mountains and the tall trees, knowing that we could relax with friends and confess our doubts, fears, ambitions and confusions--and that just over the hill was the back country, or rebellion, or any other adventure endless with possibility and serenity.

William Stafford, Down in my Heart. Elgin, IL: Brethren Publishing House, 1947: 83.


In this passage from William Stafford's memoir of his Civilian Public Service years, the celebrations of D-Day filled the streets. The Second World War was over, and everyone but the CPS men were ecstatic. Having lived in military-style camps for four years to perform "work of national importance" on the homefront--preventing soil erosion, extinguishing forest fires, serving as mental hospital orderlies--in exchange for exemption from donning a uniform and carrying a gun overseas, these pacifists knew that the world they hoped to see was far from being fulfilled. From their standpoint, military victory was not only not enough to sustain genuine peace, but was in fact antithetical to the establishment of the kingdom, defined by Stafford in the opening dedication of the book: "the society of human beings who have a common life and are working for a common social good." War does not usher in this kind of kingdom, but runs counter to it. The men of CPS saw themselves as seeds of the kingdom, but knew that it would take more than a cease-fire for the seeds to take root. War brings anxiety. The end of any war may bring about a collective release of this emotion, but for the men in this story, it is too little too late.

The spaciousness that Stafford wishes for in the midst of the crowd relies upon the absence of automobiles. He dreams of the day when people will not have to hide away in their cars, but can be out in the open, walking in the streets, seeing and approaching each other with nothing but the common air between them. It is significant that this is realized in the marketplace, the area outside temples in ancient days, or churches in medieval (and even modern) Europe. Inside the temple or church has historically been safe-haven. Criminals or anyone else being pursued could enter a religious building and, in most cases, be assured of protection. Likewise, today, we go about in church glad that it is safe--social convention says that we don't ask personal questions, we don't openly confess, face to face, our hopes or fears. Instead we sit through the prescribed, predictable worship. If we meet any member of the congregation outside of Sunday morning, it can be awkward--we might reveal something about ourselves we don't want others to know. We try to avoid this at all costs, and behave well--not out of of any religious motivation, but merely because it would embarrass us if the "wrong" news got out. But Stafford is praising the marketplace and all of its spontaneity, favoring it over the safe distance that the automobile affords. And George is correct--it shouldn't take some great collective victory for us to be able to genuinely see each other as fellow humans with a common good. Our world, and our church, will not have a moment so energizing that it sustains us throughout the rest of our time on this earth. We must start doing this now, getting out of our cars, our predictable church religiosity and anxieties, and take a look around. We might just see a few seeds sprout.