In life, there are teachers we meet in classrooms who direct specific curricula and form individual relationships with their students. I have benefitted from some truly dedicated and excellent teachers. There are also teachers you never meet face to face, whose work you encounter through their writing. As a lifelong reader, I have felt a special connection with authors who have significantly contributed to my thinking. Walter Brueggemann is one such teacher for me. Although I have attended lectures, sermons, and other presentations by Brueggemann live, I know him primarily through his writing. I have used his commentary on Isaiah as the curriculum for bible study classes that I have taught. I continue to refer to several books of prayers by Brueggemann for personal devotion and use with small groups I lead.

I have a second and meaningful connection with Brueggemann. His biographer, Conrad Kanagy, is my editor at Santos Books. We have spoken of how Brueggemann has positively impacted both our lives and our writing.

Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar who has invested much of his career in studying the prophets. One of his simple insights, which has helped me understand the impact of the Bible, is that the characters we call prophets are also poets. Brueggemann asserts that poets call people back to the essentials and communicate what cannot be expressed in prose, especially in times of cultural or national trauma.

Early in my college career, I encountered the words “poetic” and “noetic” presented as a dichotomy. Noetic refers to intellect and mental activity, while poetic refers to emotional and imaginative expression. At the time, I preferred noetic pursuits. I enjoyed academic learning, but I read very little poetry for several years as I tried to hone my intellectual skills and academic writing.

Then I entered graduate theological seminary. I didn’t attend the school where Walter Brueggamann was a teacher. Instead, the first teacher I encountered at seminary was a professor of Christian Education named Ross Snyder. Ross quickly became a mentor and guide for my education and for the ministry that followed. Ross was a published poet in addition to being published in a more traditional noetic fashion. He also assigned poetry to us as part of our classes. I struggled with the poetic assignments. In addition, he pushed my more traditional academic writing by asking me to “say the same thing with half of the words.” He helped me learn to edit my work and showed me the value of re-writing.

Still, I didn’t think of myself as a poet. I didn’t read much poetry during the early decades of my career. However, I have returned to regular poetry reading in the last couple of decades. The collection of poets I keep beside my favorite reading chair is growing, and I read some poetry daily. I have also focused more on writing poetry in the last couple of years. I belong to a poetry writing group and have read poems at an open mic and church. I have contributed to a couple of informal poetry collections for special occasions at our church.

A couple of years ago, I sent a small collection of a dozen or so prayers to a friend who had a career as an editor. She helped format them and returned them to me with a note about appreciating my poetry. I hadn’t initially thought of my prayers as poems, but when she formatted them, I saw that I had been writing poetry without awareness.

These teachers- Brueggemann, Kanagy, Snyder, and my editor friend- have helped me see that the poetic and the noetic are not a dichotomy but companions in communicating important ideas and concepts.

I have been thinking a lot about the role of poetry in community recently. Part of that reflection is because I am working on a collection of essays, poems, and prayers. Part of it comes from reflecting on Brueggemann’s work with the prophet/poet Isaiah. The Biblical book of Isaiah covers a span of history longer than a single life. As such, it is not an individual author's work but a community of like-minded thinkers and writers. The book spans the time leading to the Babylonian exile when multiple regional superpowers threatened Israel. It then continues through the exile and the post-exilic period of return. As such, it provides a unique window on the effects of national and religious trauma caused by the conflict of culture that resulted in the displacement of people and forced exposure to different religious and social structures. Brueggemann asserts that the people's experiences were so disruptive and impactful that poetry was the only language that could address the complexity of their relationship with God.

If Brueggemann is right, and I believe he is, this time in our country is another pivotal moment in human history that is so disruptive that it demands poetry. Poets possess a unique ability to speak truth to power. It is not a mistake that poetry has been an essential part of political rallies and protests. Poets have contributed to the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, and poetry has marked many Black Lives Matter rallies.

In the disorientation of the political chaos that has descended upon our country in the past three weeks and spread across the world, creating a health crisis in Africa, causing an emergency political summit in Europe, leaving thousands with job insecurity, threatening programs for veterans and seniors, our world is once again in need of poets. I turn to Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, James Cagney, Julian Brolaski, Amanda Gorman, and others for words that speak powerfully to the human condition.

Now I am older. Whatever intellectual brilliance I once possessed is slipping. I don’t think as clearly as I once did. I make more slips of the tongue and often misspeak. I ramble on and on when fewer words would communicate more clearly. But I now understand what I did not when I was younger: how the poetic and the noetic go hand in hand. Intellectual intelligence is meaningful without emotional intelligence, and both require artistic intelligence.

For now, I am reading less news and more poetry. Here is a bit from Denise Levertov:

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.