Poem

You can listen to this week’s Devotional here

Author: Kaudie McLean

I understand faith as a committed relationship. Healthy relationships require hard work and honesty, especially when they hit the inevitable places of tension. A fair fight, a loving if difficult exchange of strong words around hurt and disappointment – these are the signs of devotion. Quiet indifference can prove a far more insidious force than pained and passionate words.

I wrote the following poem in the spring of 2021 after my mother had died; I had spent nineteen months preparing our family home of fifty-two years for sale, and I had moved back to Colorado during a pandemic that severely hindered the possibility of re-creating a sense of home and connection out here. That’s the short and tame version of the story. Many of you have your own story of utter desolation.

The poem is anything but indifferent. And it isn’t gentle. But for all its rawness, it is a loving lament to God to do something new in me and with me, to grab hold of me in the abyss and pull me back to life.

Travail

Giving birth hurts, don’t it?

I am the fiery fetus,
made of molten glass,
rolled and pulled by the Glassblower
and praying that this nameless artisan
will soon make something
anything
out of me.

I am the blue-flamed mother with a furnace
for a belly,
screaming at the Glassblower to get on with it
and help deliver this searing ball of fire.

I don’t know this Glassblower.
I don’t know the tenderness
of hands that mold clay or carefully
wield a brush.
There’s just someone at the distant
end of a pipe,
apparently trying to make some art.

Even the best artists botch things.
Then it’s back to the fire.
Or the scrap bin.
Right now, I’m not sure which is worse.

I’m the tired and tearful mother, hoping
this won’t end in still birth, longing
at last to hold
the body of my beautiful baby.

I’m the wet and wonderful baby, hoping
this Glassblower is
a damn good Midwife.