Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life. Nathaniel Lee Hansen

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      Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

      Poems

      Nathaniel Lee Hansen

      Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

      Poems

      The Poiema Poetry Series

      Copyright © 2018 Nathaniel Lee Hansen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4113-8

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4114-5

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4115-2

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Hansen, Nathaniel Lee, author.

      Title: Your twenty-first century prayer life : poems / Nathaniel Lee Hansen.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | The Poiema Poetry Series.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-4113-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-4114-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-4115-2 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—21st century.

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/05/18

      Amy

      The Poiema Poetry Series

      Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.

      Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.

      These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.

      —D.S. Martin

      Series Editor

I.

      Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

      Your most frequent requests:

      300 safe interstate miles,

      night of sufficient sleep, a liner

      sturdy for the class’s ocean.

      Names you speak again, again—

      bless Andrew, bless Lynne.

      You wonder how saints

      master discipline, currents

      of communication in crackling

      lines, sparking from sender

      to receiver, back again.

      You can count on one hand

      when prayer blossomed

      organically without desire’s

      weeds crowding petals,

      stealing sunlight, robbing

      soil of water and life.

      Your petitions persist,

      abundant (overflowing)

      with me, my, and I.

      You forget, if you want

      to live you must lose

      your life.

      Some Sundays You Consider Leaping from the Ship of Church

      I.

      No faith crisis,

      no desire for licentiousness

      (no prospects for an affair),

      no compulsion for the NFL.

      Rather the cardinal’s song,

      the wren’s coloratura,

      the mockingbird’s imitative chirp,

      the mourning dove’s childlike coo.

      To lay in bed, listen—

      wouldn’t that be sufficient?

      Who needs the dressing up

      of clothes, of disposition?

      II.

      Church bell marks eight o’clock,

      harkening to monks’ measured days,

      time for measured prayer.

      It interrupts your slothfulness.

      You ready yourself with wrinkled shirt,

      khakis, and hope—your wife

      and two kids waiting for you

      and your faith at the threshold.

      Reading Scripture

      You approach with suspicion yanking

      on his leash, sniffing СКАЧАТЬ