I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead...
02189 – We are More than Ourselves
For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they...
02037 – Evil in the Name of Good
Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good. Our greed, fear and lasciviousness have enabled us to murder our poets, who are ourselves, to castigate our priests, who are ourselves. The lists of our...
01497 – Adaptive Capacity is Applied Creativity
In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare--negative capability. This...
01372 – Eloquent Sermons
I am sometimes amazed, even alarmed, at the extent to which people judge ministers by their preaching, and preaching by its rhetoric. To do so is to make the entirely spurious but nearly universal assumption that God is better served by a poet than by an accountant....
00516 – Sacred Songwriters Need Theologians
Songwriters need theologians to offer inspiration and guidance in their work as lyricists. Making use of capable Christian poets would also help lift our lyrics above the mundane. In the same way theologians, along with all Christians, need songwriters to weave the...