Prose – Page 19 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

How To Write a Poem

You need two things to write a poem. You need inspiration and you need to know a few techniques. I’ll cover one of the techniques called meter, but ultimately inspiration is what counts.

Inspiration

Before you can even begin to write a poem, you need something to say. Once you have that then you need words.

Occasionally you will hear poets talk about their muse who tells them what to say and how to say it. To avoid the distraction of Greek mythology, I will stop referring to a muse, which none of the poets who use that word in a modern context believe in anyway, and talk generally about a poet’s source of inspiration. However, the good thing about those poets who acknowledge a source of inspiration is that they know they themselves are not that source no matter how responsible they are for the final product.

Poets who do not believe in a source of inspiration give themselves full credit for what and how they say things. For them, poetry is self-expression. I would like to assert, so there is no ambiguity about my own views, that self-expression is tedious and overrated.

In addition as a poet you are always serving your source of inspiration. You are always serving that spirit who is inspiring you, helping you and comforting you even if you mistakenly believe that you yourself are that spirit.

That spiritual source of inspiration may be a good spirit. It might also be not so good. If you write about topics that glorify, incite or condone anger, lust or some habitually dysfunctional thinking in your readers, then your source of inspiration is not so good. The poem may sound nice and people may write mushy music to sentimentalize it, but that source of inspiration will remain, in spite of all that sugar-coating, not so good.

Once you understand that you are not expressing yourself when you write a poem but you are serving a spiritual source of inspiration and that source may be good or not so good you will begin to see what is morally at stake when you offer a poem to a reader. I hope you won’t mind me drawing the conclusion that any not so good source is a demonic source. It is out to get you so it can use you to get others.

I see the good source of inspiration as the Holy Spirit, a Person of the Trinity with Whom the poet can enter into a relationship. I identify the demonic sources with spirits of antichrist. They are deceivers who manipulate those foolish enough to play with them.

Bottom line: Writing a poem is not a neutral artistic expression of oneself, but a moral act of service to some spiritual source of inspiration. Make sure that spirit is the Holy Spirit.

1 John 4:3
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

Technique

Once you have a topic, you will need to express it. Although the words may come to you from the Holy Spirit, you need to make it melodious. In English that means paying attention to meter.

Meter is the pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in the words you use. The most memorable, and influential, poetry repeats metrical patterns. Some of these patterns are given names such as limericks or common meter, sonnets or blank verse. Others are specific to the poem itself.

As an example, listen to the song, What a Beautiful Name, and try to note which words are accented and which are not in the lyrics. In particular there are four stanzas in this song with an almost identical metrical pattern except for an unaccented syllable on some lines. I’ve listed two of those stanzas below. The ACCENTED syllables I put in italicized bold red capital letters. The unaccented syllables I wrote normally.

YOU have no RI-val.
YOU have no E-qual.
NOW and for-E-ver, GOD, you REIGN.

YOURS is the KING-dom.
YOURS is the GLO-ry.
YOURS is the NAME a-BOVE all NAMES.

Were you able to find the other two stanzas?

If so, you know what meter is. You know why those lyrics are powerful even without the music. Make your poems memorable by using metrical patterns.

If not, great! You now have an opportunity to start building your relationship with the Holy Spirit by asking Him to show you what you don’t understand. If you don’t think He’ll talk to you, ask Him anyway, sleep on it and wake up refreshed. Then thank Him regardless what you hear. Giving thanks means you acknowledge that you are in a personal relationship with Him.

Conclusion

There are many tricks that will help any poem be more powerful no matter what the source of inspiration. They are just techniques. One could even program a computer, which is neither intelligent nor inspired, to follow the meter and other aspects of the sound of a poem.

Ultimately what matters is the source of inspiration. To write a poem you need to first choose whom you will serve.

And that’s all there is to it.

Joshua 24:14-15
¹⁴Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.
¹⁵And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Combination—Six Sentence Story

Bart dreamed that a rich man gave him the combination to the lock on his storeroom and told him to take all the gold and jewelry he could carry out. Joyfully he stuffed his pockets.

When a child approached with his hands out the rich man told him to give something to the child, but Bart said, “No, I have to fill my own barn!”

Nonetheless Bart obeyed the rich man giving the child the tiniest gold coin he had crammed away somewhere which turned into a loaf of bread and a fish in the child’s hands. Others seeing what happened rushed to receive something as well.

After Bart opened his eyes from his dream to the morning light and the sound of birds and put on his threadbare clothes to leave the shelter he recalled that his pockets in that dream remained mysteriously full no matter how fast the rivers of living water welled up from within him to give everything away.

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Denise offers this prompt word “combination” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

John 7:37-38
³⁷In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
³⁸He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Text—Six Sentence Story

In the good old days the Ninevites were a wicked bunch. The Lord told Jonah to tell them to either repent or be severely punished which sent Jonah off on a boat in the opposite direction, because he knew, like everyone else, except perhaps the Lord, that Nineveh did not deserve an opportunity to repent.

When the Lord roughed up the waves to destructive levels below the boat Jonah was fleeing on, the reluctant crew threw him overboard at his own request so the sea would calm. A fish sent by the Lord scooped him into its mouth and held him in a disgusting state of indigestion for three days and three nights until the Lord finally let the fish relieve its bellyache by vomiting its cargo onto the shore. Then the Lord asked Jonah once again to tell the Ninevites to repent lest He destroy them.

Jonah recited the bare text of the Lord’s message hoping no one in Nineveh would listen, but the grotesque stench coming from his direction only confirmed the conspiracy theories about a fish and a boat and, since no one in Nineveh wanted whatever happened to him to happen to them, they all repented.

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Denise offers the prompt word “text” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. For what really happened see the short book of Jonah. Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II: 2 Kings 14:25.

Guided Evolution

About seven years ago I was studying the Christian analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga. I think I actually reached a point where I could explain the details of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). However, I see now that I didn’t understand what was really at stake. Because he was a Christian and an analytic philosopher I assumed he was someone I could trust. Today I see much of this very differently and I am hopefully not as gullible.

The Capitulation

Plantinga’s argument pitted evolution, which he didn’t seriously question, against naturalism, which he rejected, to try to show that if you believed in evolution, you should not believe in naturalism. The problem with his argument, logically sound though it was, is that he thought he could separate out evolution to save it from the false atheistic mythology of naturalism.

To his credit Plantinga argued for a special kind of evolution which he called guided evolution. Based on this idea he hoped to resolve the alleged conflict between science and religion by compromising with, that is, capitulating to, atheism rather than rejecting it. He wrote in Where the Conflict Really Lies, (2011) page 11, the following:

A more important source of conflict has to do with the Christian doctrine of creation, in particular the claim that God has created human beings in his image. This requires that God intended to create creatures of a certain kind—rational creatures with a moral sense and the capacity to know and love him—and then acted in such a way as to accomplish this intention. This claim is clearly consistent with evolution (ancient earth, the progress thesis, descent with modification, common ancestry), as conservative Christian theologians have pointed out as far back as 1871.

While it may be clearly consistent in some logical system to assume the existence of a god, such as the fictitious Gaia, to guide evolution, that god could not have been the Elohim of Genesis 1 who finished creation in six days. That god who guided evolution could not have been the Christian God.

Ignoring Genesis

Faced with such a complaint a Christian who supports evolution, even if it is just physical/chemical evolution of planets, stars and galaxies, has to rationalize how six days can be interpreted to mean a mythologically large number of years. Plantinga does this far too quickly by dismissing young earth creationism on page 10 with the following:

Of course Christian belief just as such doesn’t include the thought that the universe is young; and in fact as far back as Augustine (354-430) serious Christians have doubted that the scriptural days of creation correspond to 24-hour periods of time.

He even admitted (footnote, page 144) that his resolution of the conflict between science and religion is not concerned with belief in a universal flood or with a very young earth. According to him, these are not part of Christian belief as such. On this ground alone Christians should reject his argument.

Redefining “Evolution”

To make his theory work he not only had to ignore Genesis, but he also had to redefine evolution to allow for creative activity of some sort. However, the very point of evolution is to come up with natural processes that completely account for changes that take one from nothing to something, from non-life to life and from pond scum to human beings without involving the creative activity of any God, angel, demon or human being.

On this ground alone even atheists should reject his argument. It doesn’t matter whether he finds it clearly consistent to add in creative agents. According to atheist mythology they are not wanted. Atheists don’t need them. His EAAN argument attempts to show that such views, however, are not reasonable, but why should that matter to atheists who rely on randomness, not rationality, and can fantasize a multiverse of universes in which to play atheist roulette?

Christian Alternatives

Confronted with evolution the Christian has three options:

Accept evolution and become an atheist.
Compromise (capitulate) in some way as Plantinga has done.
Reject evolution along with the rest of atheist mythology.

This may cause some people grief. No one wants to capitulate regarding their faith. However, there is no need for grief. It is a rational and scientific stance to reject evolution. Just ask yourself: what repeatable, measurable, non-creative, natural processes can you use to explain how nothing (not even a quantum vacuum) can turn into something? There are no non-creative, natural processes that can explain such a transition. That means physical evolution is atheist mythology. It is neither scientific nor rational to hold such a belief.

Continue this line of thinking. What natural processes exist that allow one to go from pond scum to human beings? If someone suggests that mutations and natural selection might work, then remind them that those processes lead to mutational meltdown (extinction). They do not lead to more complicated beings, but rather to less complicated ones. That means biological evolution is also impossible. One should reject it with the same conviction that one rejects the rest of atheist mythology.

The problem with evolution is the problem of building a house of cards without a creative agent. In the real world, not some magical, mythological world the atheist would love to live in, if you want to get a house of cards you need a human being, a creative agent. You need someone to build it. Natural, non-creative processes, such as a gust of wind and gravity, can surely knock that house down. Natural processes, however, cannot build it. That takes a creative agent, but evolution does not acknowledge them.

Ancient Earth

Plantinga describes evolution in these terms: ancient earth, the progress thesis, descent with modification, common ancestry. Note that without an ancient earth there would not be enough time for the rest of that mythological stuff to happen. On the Bible’s timeline of less than 8000 years there is no time for the progress thesis, there is no time for descent with modification and there is no time for common ancestry to occur.

Everything Plantinga wants to protect about evolution depends on an ancient earth, but what is the evidence for that?

Human history does not record more than 5000 years and even much of that is sketchy. There is no evidence for an ancient earth here.
Axiomatizing relativity with the two-way speed of light being what is constant in all frames of reference permits a convention of simultaneity where distant starlight arrives on earth in less than a second of time. There is no evidence for an ancient earth in distant starlight either.
Measurable, non-catastrophic, natural decay processes put upper limits on the age of anything they go about destroying such as rock formations, radiocarbon in diamonds, soft tissue in fossils and genetic code. These decay rates directly falsify the mythological ages assigned to rock formations, diamonds, fossils, and DNA. There is no evidence for an ancient earth when natural decay processes are taken into account.

Fulfilling Prophecy

Rather than trying to help atheists maintain their mythologies, Plantinga should have pointed out that evolution has never occurred and that the earth is not as old as atheists would like you to believe. Why didn’t he do that? Why did he add atheist mythologies to his Christian presuppositions? I think 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NIV) tells us why:

³For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Alvin Plantinga is an example of the fulfillment of this New Testament prophecy. Logically there is nothing wrong with the EAAN. It just doesn’t address the right problem which is the need to reject, not capitulate to, atheist mythologies. That capitulation turned Plantinga’s ear away from the truth and toward accepting myths.

Admittedly I used to be an example of this prophecy’s fulfillment as well and maybe I still am in ways I am not yet aware of. That is why I am writing about Plantinga’s EAAN and his claimed resolution of the conflict thesis. I want to make sure I put this stuff behind me having already repented of ever considering it helpful.

Pump—Six Sentence Story

Except for possibly Jehu, for whom she dolled herself up in a desperate seduction play, no one annoyed Jezebel as much as Elijah. In spite of the Lord confirming him over her prophets by sending fire from heaven only on his sacrifices, when Jezebel sent Elijah a death threat he fled so far away that only the Lord’s still, small voice could bring him back.

At that point his usefulness was compromised. To his credit, Elijah did accept his replacement, Elisha, even though Elisha wanted a double portion of what he had. Elisha inherited Elijah’s assigned tasks of acknowledging Hazael as king over Syria whom Elisha saw would become a butcher and anointing by proxy the headstrong Jehu as king over Israel who would pump out judgement upon the whole clan of Jezebel.

If only Jezebel had the wits to realize that manipulation through lies could last only as long as the true Lord (not her Baal) constrained the pressure cooker filled with hatred from exploding, things might have turned out differently and the dogs would not have had a bloody mess for dinner at the gates of Jezreel.

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Denise offers the prompt word “pump” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. To read what really happened and to make sure I didn’t misread it, see 1 Kings 16:29 – 2 Kings 10:36.

1 Kings 19:9-13 (Young’s Literal Translation, 1898)
⁹And he cometh in there, unto the cave, and lodgeth there, and lo, the word of Jehovah [is] unto him, and saith to him, `What — to thee, here, Elijah?’
¹⁰And he saith, `I have been very zealous for Jehovah, God of Hosts, for the sons of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant — Thine altars they have thrown down, and Thy prophets they have slain by the sword, and I am left, I, by myself, and they seek my life — to take it.’
¹¹And He saith, `Go out, and thou hast stood in the mount before Jehovah.’ And lo, Jehovah is passing by, and a wind — great and strong — is rending mountains, and shivering rocks before Jehovah: — not in the wind [is] Jehovah; and after the wind a shaking: — not in the shaking [is] Jehovah;
¹²and after the shaking a fire: — not in the fire [is] Jehovah; and after the fire a voice still small;
¹³and it cometh to pass, at Elijah’s hearing [it], that he wrappeth his face in his robe, and goeth out, and standeth at the opening of the cave, and lo, unto him [is] a voice, and it saith, `What — to thee, here, Elijah?’

Milk—Six Sentence Story

The angel proclaimed that she would bear the Child.

She wondered how this could be since she was a virgin. The angel explained how, but the most convincing explanation was that God could do anything and this is what He wanted to do. If she resisted it would affirm that nothing mattered except what was of no importance, but she had no desire to resist.

Suddenly pregnant anticipating she would soon be nursing Him with milk and protecting Him with her own life, if need be, she went to see her aging cousin Elisabeth to whom the impossible had also occurred.

All generations would call her blessed.

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Denise offers the word “milk” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Luke 1:28
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

Luke 1:46-55
⁴⁶And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
⁴⁷And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
⁴⁸For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
⁴⁹For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
⁵⁰And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
⁵¹He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
⁵²He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
⁵³He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
⁵⁴He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
⁵⁵As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

Pitch—Six Sentence Story

In the parody of parochial schools that Nathaniel was writing he had Sister Mary Martha, his own third grade teacher, say, “No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get rid of Jesus.” With his tongue in his own cheek he made her stumble like a strawman through an account of the Resurrection, a belief he himself had become too smart to take seriously.

However, as he recalled the smoothness of her face, ancient from the perspective of a ten-year old, he now saw the face of someone less than half his own mid-sixties age as he let her ramble on about how the followers of Jesus would rise to sing His praises even as they were killed. Putting two and two together he calculated that she must have been recently out of her teens, close in age to his granddaughter. He found an online obituary which reported that she served at the school for fifty-five years until the very day of her death at the age of 75.

Perhaps it was due to the notice of her death or to his realization of her age when she taught him or perhaps it was simply due to him returning to his early love for her, but whatever it was, Nathaniel decided to pitch what he wrote about his former teacher and he never touched the parody again.

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Denise offers the prompt word “pitch” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Catholic Eternal Rest Prayer
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.
Revelation 2:4
Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

Beam—Six Sentence Story

When a beam of dusty light through a dirty window brightened Jerome’s face he got out of bed woke awake. As a god of his own making, resting on his own authority, he was the good guy by definition. That meant everyone else was either a bad guy or had received temporary clearance papers to remain unscathed by his condemnations.

Since he didn’t consider it possible that he wasn’t much of a god nor that the good he did wasn’t all that good, he refused to repent when his own faults became obvious like contradictions staining an otherwise pristine proof. Being his own lord, why should he call upon Someone else?

Gambling that his tale would end when it was over, Jerome let it end with that.

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Denise offers the prompt word “beam” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Genesis 3:5
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Romans 10:13
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Cup—Six Sentence Story

Samuel had no idea why he accepted the invitation to his friend’s wedding. He had long ago psyched out his former classmates whom he expected to be there as terminally weird. However, after the ceremony and dinner as the dancing began he saw something bubble over in their eyes he hadn’t noticed before. They suddenly weren’t the certifiable psychos he remembered them to be, but rather huggable people.

In the morning Samuel’s memories of the party faded into his intellectual reconstructions of nonreality. But even after he drank a full cup of strong coffee his newfound love for all of them refused to capitulate to the nuttiness of his own mind.

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Denise offers the prompt word ” cup” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Scale—Six Sentence Story

Saul’s blindness left as if a scale fell from each eye when Ananias put his hands on him. His heretical heretic hunting days were over. He now became one of the hunted.

He waited for three days after the light overpowered him and blindness set in on the Road to Damascus. While waiting he refused to eat or drink.

Saul heard the voice, felt the power to the point of blindness and from that day forward abandoned his former ways to obey no matter what the cost to himself.

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Denise offers the prompt word “scale” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Acts 9:17-18 KJV
¹⁷And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
¹⁸And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.