Traveling

I have been thinking that, at its best, counseling should have a poetic bent to it. Over the past couple of years as a counselor, I’ve been surprised at how wordy I can be, how I can say nothing in the middle of lots of language.  I want to become a counselor who is precise, and descriptive, and creative. I want to say more with fewer words.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been drawn to poetry this year. Poets speak truth precisely, descriptively, and creatively. I hope a little of that can rub off into my counseling here and soon in Sudan (where I will be forced to use fewer words as I stumble around in a whole new language).  

I’ve been enjoying Living Things by Anne Porter. Here are a couple of her small poems to remind us to say more with less.

Four Seasons Carol

The barbs of cruel Auschwitz

Grow back again and again

Hiroshima’s poison

Gluts the arsenals

While tyranny and famine

Are withering Africa.

Our coldness greed and war

Multiply past counting

The deaths of children

And the wounds of the poor

Whose bitter wants and sorrows

Are splinters of your Passion

Jesus, hunted Child.

Then grant us grace to bring them

More than stale crusts and empty prayers

That hinder your just kingdom.

Burning

There is a hidden kind

Of humble goodness

I love in others

Only an aeon

Of refining fire 

Could make it mine

But sometimes it’s as if

I were already burning.