By popular request, we are again designating Sundays as a platform for the Feral Poet.  Over the past few years he has made several forays into the world of progressive religious publications with some modest success, so in a nod to the Sabbath, we will be featuring some of those writings over the next few Sundays.

First up is the poem “Cold Ashes,” initially published in the Anglican Theological Review.  It was nominated by those editors for inclusion in the Orison Anthology, the best spiritual writing of 2016, and was accepted.  A great big thank you to both those publications. The poem grew out of the long internal struggle between Zen practice and the tradition in which I was raised, and was, in a sense, a way of resolving that struggle.  More on that subject at another time. The immediate context, of course, was the wonderful biblical text, John 3: 1-21.  The image of Jesus and Nicodemus engaged in heavy theological conversation by lamplight has always resonated with me. There is an inherent thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, of a kind, in the poem, though perhaps, nothing is resolved.

From the Hammock