A Poem About Valentines Day (and some wise words max said about it)

The other day I bumped into my mate Max at a poetry slam. Max is a wise man and he writes devastatingly wise songs, and on this occasion he said something particularly wise that particularly interested me.

I was competing in the slam (by which I mean, I was performing three minutes of poetry which would be judged by five random members of the audience against seven other poets, the person with the best scores being awarded honour and glory and a much needed boost for the somewhat-leeky poetic ego.) My name came out of the hat last, which is actually a big bonus for me because you usually get a better score – it is emotionally much easier to keep giving people nicer and nicer scores through the evening! Anyway, by the time I went on to do my poem, there had already been a couple of poems about religion – there usually are a few – in fact Max said when we were chatting afterwards that in his experience its one of the main tropes or genres of spoken word poetry: ‘residual religion’. I thought that phrase captured it pretty well. Lots of people write these really powerful poems where either they are using the language of a religion they grew up with but have now abandoned to describe the new thing that they feel is divine in some way, the new thing that they are worshipping – usually that’s romantic love. So they talk about it in terms of sin, and penance, and prayer, and glory, and it paints the whole thing in this rich, transcendent light – like the sun is shining on it through a stained glass window. Or sometimes people write poems about the act of abandoning religion. An amazing poet did one this particular night about trying to shake off ‘mother church’ but never quite being able to get away – bursting out weeping as she swam beneath Greek sunsets, unable to escape. It was heart breaking.

One thing that’s really sweet about this is when I then do a poem about Jesus in a positive way, and I’m chatting to the poets afterwards, and they apologise and they worry that they might have offended me! I’m touched by how sensitive they always are, even when the church has been horribly insensitive to them – but I’m not offended at all.

And when Max made his particularly wise comment it made me realise why – he said,

‘What’s interesting is that all the poems that are negative about religion are talking about the institution, the organisation; whereas your poems never talk about that, they talk about the relationship.’

When he said that I quite wanted to give him a cuddle.

Because it’s absolutely true. I don’t write about the church very much. I don’t write about the buildings, or the activities; the organisations, or the leaders; the habits, or the structures because they are just not what I am bothered about. I write about my family. Because I love my family. It is bizarre, and terrifying and wonderful, and it is drenched in love, and I love it more than anything. And the centre, the heartbeat, the father and the mother, the one who brought it all into existence and around whom the whole thing spins, is of course ‘Our Father in heaven’, and his Son – Jesus of Nazareth, the rightful King of the whole cosmos. It is a very strange family to be adopted into – with an unimaginably glorious Dad and eldest brother, and then a somewhat motley crew of flawed and failing siblings, growing a little bit more like the Father together every day – but, though it might be strange, it is certainly a loving family. (And if your experience of the church family is that it isn’t loving, I’d honestly say to you, I am sorry, please look for a different church and give us another chance!) And the only reason I enjoy, and am grateful to, and am part of the activities and organisations and structures is because they help gather the family around Jesus. An old guy called Frederick Faber puts it way better than me, so much better in fact that this quote made me weep the first time I read it:

“Wherever we turn in the Church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us… There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.”

So, that’s all I want to say really. I’ve heard a lot of poems about how hurtful and bad the institution of the church has been – and even though it breaks my heart to hear, I don’t get offended. To be honest, because I know that it’s true, the church really can be hurtful. I really can be hurtful. And I just want to say to anyone who is reading this who I have hurt, or ignored, anyone who’s got the impression from me that Christians think they are better than other people, anyone who has got the impression that Christians are boring and only talk about Jesus and don’t care about other people, or any of the wonderful things in this world – I am really sorry. I’m increasingly aware of how bad an impression I give of my Dad and my big brother a lot of the time. Please forgive me. And please don’t judge Jesus for adopting people like me into his family.

Also, here’s the poem I did that provoked Max’s remark! I hope that you enjoy it!

What is love? it keeps on changing.

Why is the course of true love rough?

Why does the beauty keep on fading?

What is love, is it enough?

What is love?

Is it what brings hope when all seems lost

Like the leaf of an olive in the mouth of a dove

Is it soul-mates perfected predestined from above 

Is it just two people fit together

like a hand in a glove

or is it inconveniently something that does not rhyme with ‘love’?

Newton Faulkner says love is a verb

And it must be true because he has got dreadlocks.

Ginger dreadlocks, so it must be true,

But when people say ‘I fell in love with you’

it seems like something happened to them

At least as much as they happened to something.

So what if love, is like adopting a baby lion.

You did not create it

but its yours.

And usually it’s friendly

but its claws

Still frighten you sometimes.

And you lie next to it at night

And it’s warm, and furry,

And you’re never quite

sure if it will eat you while you’re sleeping

Because the lines are a little blurry

About whether it belongs to you

Or you belong to it.

And love is like that a little bit, isn’t it?

Love is like a hunger.

Like a tingling desire

That is never quite satisfied,

the burning of a fire

Inside, that says that this is right,

And the hotter it gets, the brighter it glows,

the more stuff you feed it, the hungrier it grows

Its greed is increasing, its need is exceeding

All of these moments you give it to consume

And you know in your heart if you don’t keep feeding it
it will start to consume you.

There is a black hole at the heart of love.

distorting and swallowing up time and space,

but also holding the universe together.

So don’t get me wrong.

I’m not saying love is bad,

I’m just saying that it’s strong,

And the only thing that’s strong enough

To save us from bad love,

Is a better love.

So what about a love that’s not just 50-50,
not just give and take,
not just pull and push and shove and twist and bend and break,
what if Prince Charming would not steal kisses just for his own sake,
but would sleep the sleep of death himself so Sleeping Beauty could awake?
What if love would bite the poison apple?
What if love would drain the poisoned cup?
What if love would give itself completely,
before it would give up?

What if there was one love unfailing,
what if this one love was enough,
what if the beauty would stop fading
and yes the course of true love’s rough,
but what if one had walked the way before us,
his bare feet had trod that path,
so our soles could be bare and safe and tender,
because his are pierced with shattered glass?

What if this one love was unchanging,
what if this one love was enough,
what if the beauty could stop fading,
what if this love is enough?