Issue 24: “Rough Translations”

"Poetry is a nightingale that sits in the darkness and sings"
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often wondrous and also difficult. Holding beauty, naming pain, and contending for hope is what M25i does well. Walter Brueggeman writes, "A poem utters the unutterable and thinks the unthinkable." In places of brokenness, where much feels unutterable and unimaginable, we encounter Jesus. Continue with us in reflection and prayer through this series, "For the Soul," as poetry might offer us Spirit-soaked imaginations.

What does it mean to be Easter People when we are walking alongside others for whom reality feels like an endless Friday of "death" and Saturday of "silence"? How do we "practice resurrection" when facing obstacles, suffering, and setbacks?

Jan Richardson's poem, Rough Translations, considers hope as a prophetic act in a world that seems like it is constantly falling apart. We have just come off the heels of our Lenten Reflection Series where we steeped in the heart of God for the vulnerable. As we now enter Eastertide, we contend for Easter Hope: all things are being made new! In our work,  that is slow and often discouraging, we will fight to be Easter People.

Consider printing this poem and placing it somewhere so you can read it out loud, and it can shape your soul as prayer.

Rough Translations

By Jan Richardson, from “Circle of Grace: Blessings for the Seasons”

Hope nonetheless.
Hope despite.
Hope regardless.
Hope still.

Hope where we had ceased to hope.
Hope amid what threatens hope.
Hope with those who feed our hope.
Hope beyond what we had hoped.

Hope that draws us past our limits.
Hope that defies expectations.
Hope that questions what we have known.
Hope that makes a way where there is none.

Hope that takes us past our fear.
Hope that calls us into life.
Hope that holds us beyond death.
Hope that blesses those to come.

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13:12-13

At M25i we hope to shape an ACNA that is known for its vision of those who are most vulnerable in our society.

We help parishes and dioceses strategize, launch new works of justice and mercy, revamp works that have gotten stuck, and offer resources to their churches that can mature what it means to be Anglicans who love Christ in the poor, the imprisoned, the stranger, and the hungry.