“…No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.” Mark 2:22 (New American Bible)
Jesus, pour Your new wine (Your Holy Spirit) into me. Make me a fresh wineskin.
Happy 2024! I love new beginnings. I love a clean slate, full of wonder at what the Lord has in store for the upcoming days, weeks, and months.
My mission is to stay close to my Lord Jesus, and He will take care of everything else. I need to stay attached to the Vine, so my little branch will be fruitful. My Lord is so faithful to me. He knows I love writing, but I don’t like to read—maybe because I felt like I never had enough time to read, or because I’m just a slow reader. I would much rather play my guitar and sing praises to Him at Eucharistic Adoration. I feel like an old wineskin. I learned from going back to school, that it takes a lot of reading and researching to write something, especially about another author. I learned about the lives and history of other poets and writers and their works. The uncountable poets, over the span of thousands of years, blew me away. God helps me to appreciate, embrace, and enjoy reading. I need His help to become a fresh wineskin. To my amazement, He has blessed me with many volunteer opportunities to read. He knows I won’t do it on my own.
Covid triggered an explosion of online literary journals and magazines, creating many new opportunities to read what others have to say, and to publish new writing, Praise God! These are exciting times. Clayjar Review recently published my latest poem, “The Crown of Life,” Clayjar Review. At first, short-listed, Clayjar asked to hear “a bit about,” the poem before making their final decision. This was my response:
I love to weave scripture into my poems. This poem is based on a true story when I accidentally hit a deer with my Suburban on a rainy night on the way to a Girl Scout camping trip. The antlers of the deer reminded me of the crown of life bible verse in James 1:12, "Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." (New American Standard Bible 1995) I felt like I was undergoing a trial when I hit the deer. I had to keep steering straight to stay on the road, and I couldn't stop the car in all the traffic in the rain that night. In life, during trials, I have to keep going straight, and keep my eyes on Jesus, who I hope will reward me with the crown of life. I always wondered what happened to the deer. Only God knows. This poem was originally written as a free verse poem [which means, no form or rules] to a, "Wild Life in the City," prompt. After I learned how to write formal poetry, I re-wrote the poem in five stanzas, each containing two lines of iambic pentameter. Lastly, I revised this poem several times in response to critiques I received from my fellow MFA classmates.
Later, I learned Clayjar accepted my poem, Praise God!
Did anyone get a chance to read, “The Pulley,” by George Herbert in my last newsletter? The Pulley by George Herbert | Poetry Foundation Herbert’s delightful poem is about God creating and blessing man with strength, beauty, wisdom, honor, and pleasure, but withholding rest, so, “weariness / May toss him to my breast.” From a formal point of view, there are four stanzas, with five lines each. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ababa, which means the end sounds (a) in lines one, three, and five [man, can, span], are the same (or similar if you indulge in slant rhyme), and the end sounds (b) in lines two and four [by, lie] are the same (or similar.)
The recognizable pattern in the line lengths of each stanza, with the first and last lines being shorter (with three feet each,) and the middle three lines being longer (with five feet each,) create a visual rhythm. Herbert mostly uses what is called an iambic foot, which is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The first and last lines are iambic trimeters. The middle three lines are iambic pentameters.
William Shakespeare wrote his plays in iambic pentameter lines. The stresses in an iambic pentameter line should sound like: ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM. For example, here is the first line of Shakespeare’s first sonnet:
1 2 3 4 5 (five feet)
x / x / x / x / x /
From fair | est crea | tures we | desire | increase,
Sonnet 1: From fairest creatures we desire… | Poetry Foundation
The (x)s are above the unstressed syllables, and the (/) forward slashes show the stressed syllables.
In, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, this quote helped me tremendously: “knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and wider our knowledge, the greater will be our love." (16th Letter, 2nd paragraph) The context of his writing suggests that Brother Lawrence was talking about knowledge of God. The more we know God, the more we will love Him.
Learning to love reading has broadened my perspectives on so many things. No more old wineskins for me! Jesus is the only One who can change me. For me, I also applied Brother Lawrence’s words to knowledge of literature. The more I know about literature, the greater will be my love for literature—and for humanity. Reading is my new friend. Thank You, Jesus! I welcome all of your comments. God bless you! You are in my prayers.
Thank you, Paige, for this lovely combination of spiritual meditation, spiritual wisdom, personal history, and instruction in formal elements of verse. Beautifully done!