by Jettie Hess

jettiehess@lovechristnow.com

www.LoveChristNow.com

Within each of us there is the ability to feel in images, to see what is beyond sight, to touch reality that can hardly be captured in mere words.  Yet, it is often through words that we communicate those images, those sights, that reality.  Poetry, unlike conversation for the sake of conveying information, uses words like art.  Words become the paints that depict the images and reality onto the white paper canvas.  Like prayer, poetry digs deep into the fibers of our soul and out of those depths draws the mystery and magic of human life and emotions.

Reading and writing poetry takes me into that place of deep feeling that leads to prayer.  There in the vastness of my own self I give voice to the soul’s longings in words that almost seem too deep to utter.  It’s not rhyme or sophisticated language that creates poetry or prayer.  It is giving voice to simple words, simple truths from within the uncharted layers of our being.  Poetry leads to prayer; prayer leads to poetry.  It is a dance of spiritual moves and each partner relies on the other to complete the steps that make up this beautiful ballet. 

Charles Wesley once wrote:

A poem is a little path
That leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores,
To anywhere you please.
Follow it and trust your way
With mind and heart as one,
And when the journey's over,
You'll find you've just begun.

Readers know a poem when they see it, but poetry does more than exist as a form; poetry portrays and often dramatizes the experience of human emotional life.  A poem’s main purpose is to express the experience of human emotion.  But along with the expression of emotion, the poet must employ knowledge as well as feeling, but still that knowledge is put to use in service of expressing the feeling, not just to inform a listener.  If you’ve read the Psalms, you understand what I mean.

Before I became a Christian, I never expressed myself in writing. But once the Lord sent His Spirit into my life, gratitude seemed to well up in me to the point I thought I would burst if I couldn’t speak and/or write what I was feeling.  Gratitude overwhelms my soul, at times, especially as I kneel and look up at the cross to see how very much I am loved.   With each glance, I find I must release that seemingly vast spiritual tornado that at times whirls within my soul. 

Copyright by Jettie Hess