Issue 22: “I want to yell out at the fevered oak”

"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 Spirit-soaked imagination.

Around the world, we are witnessing incomprehensible pain and unspeakable evil. Again. We remember the hundreds of thousands who have died in the war in central Europe in recent years, but also the many on the African continent who are facing unbearable, systemic destruction that becomes very personal when it affects one life: the daughter, the father, the friend whom you love.

We watch all that is in the news now, and are aware of all the quiet slower deaths that are happening in North America because of malnutrition, urban violence, sexual abuse behind closed doors... as followers of Jesus we throw and sometimes slam our hope on a God whose love is stronger and more powerful in anticipation of when He will make all things new.

Nina Coyle's poem reminds us of how creation can tell us God's story. The beauty of a fall leaf is because something is dying. Do we dare believe that death does not have the last word?

I want to yell out at the fevered oak
Nina Coyle

I want to yell out at the fevered oak
The jaundiced sugar maple
The blushing pair of chestnuts:
How dare you make the letting go

So vibrant--
how dare you, bid me settle
Into quiet, into bare,
bid me slow

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

1 Corinthians 15:55

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

Who might you need to see today?

What might it look like for you to join us in that mission?