A foreword by James Finley begins this book: “The philosopher Martin Heidegger said that the vocation of the poet is to evoke the holy. Reading these poems in the attentive manner in which Colette Lafia wrote them, we realize we are being invited to join her in exploring the holiness hidden within the endless ordinariness of our lives.”
What’s new, here, is that the poet has placed contemplative, prayerful tools directly on the pages, with the poems. As Lafia explains in her Introduction:
“Poems are combined with contemplative practices modeled on Lectio Divina, (sacred reading), a practice with roots in the Benedictine tradition that combines slow, conscious reading with listening and silent prayer. This way of reading helps develop a prayerful receptivity, allowing meaning to emerge through actual participation, allowing something to be revealed.” Suggestions for listening, reflecting, responding, and resting are offered with each poem, differing slightly from one to the next.
Even without the tools, the poems are beautiful, and have a way of speaking from personal experience but with a universal voice for all who spiritually yearn. For example:
“I keep forgetting—
my holiness, my wholeness”
That’s the first part of the book. In the second part, called “Altar Pieces,” Lafia offers with each poem a practice she calls “Letters to the Divine.” This is a journaling practice designed to help one become more intimate with the Divine by listening to God speaking in life. As Lafia puts it, “I began writing letters to God and inviting God to write back to me."
The title poem is one that will surely be reproduced in anthologies, in the books of other great spiritual teachers, even perhaps in funeral liturgies as words that speak for the journey of a life. The poet begins rootedly in ordinary life:
“…Love calls me to leave the shore;
carries me away while my husband sleeps in our bed.”
And then several lines down, begins to explore what begins to happen:
“…There is more to me that I have yet to know,
more of God hidden in the dark, fluid night.
No more walls, windows, doors.
I have never been out this far.”
This is journey many will take, and Lafia gives them the tools to do it.
