POETRY: A New Way of Understanding

by Kathleen Norris

GROUNDED SPIRITUALITY  Sometimes our notion of spirituality needs a kick in the rear. This poem reminds us that although it can be romantic to extol the holy in birds, trees, and mountains, we need also recognize that human beings are holy, indelibly so, even in the most gritty of circumstances.

A grounded spirituality, able to laugh at itself and rejoice, able to incorporate both warts and turds: who could ask for anything more?

ALLELUIA
By Andrew Glaze

As I walk mornings down Bleecker Street,
I meet ten saints with filthy demands.
The tenements shout with holiness,
God reels by or sleeps on the curb,
at home everywhere in the wrecks and bars,
in the stale tobacco and business,
and everything that’s wild and absurd,
like madness with madness and holding hands.

I had rather ten faces than ten birds,
I don’t sense deliverance in a tree.
There is no impossible in lakes,
there is more miracle in a crowd
than in a Rocky Mountain or me.
There is more holiness in an eye
than in a scroll of holy words.
God’s here, thank God, in the market place!
Viva the Signor of warts and turds!