I have been reading a lot of poetry lately. My favorite by far has been Living Things by Anne Porter. I know that poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea. It can seem pretentious, boring, or confusing. My aim here is not to convince you that poetry is wonderful (which, of course, I believe it is), but to convince you that, like anything in God’s merciful hands, it is formative. And he is using Anne Porter’s poetry to form me.

Not to be confused with Katherine Anne Porter, Anne Porter was born in 1911 in Sherborn, Massachusetts. She began writing at a young age but was not formally published until she was 83 years old. Her poems cover a range of topics—personal stories, love of nature, questions of faith, suffering and loss—but what I find so moving about her writing is how hopeful it is. She expresses herself honestly and humbly, weaving lamentation and expectation together in equal measure. As I have read and re-read her poems this year, one theme has stuck with me: God is at work in all of us, slowly making us new in ways we could never have imagined.

A key characteristic of Anne’s writing is her attention to ordinary life. Her poems are filled with stories about small people and small circumstances. In “Terry Berrigan” she writes about a child who lives on her street. In “Stella Rapkowski” she writes about a ninety-year-old immigrant attending mass. In “Winter Twilight” she says,

“On a clear winter’s evening
The crescent moon
And the round squirrels’ nest
In the bare oak
Are equal planets.”

Her descriptions are simple, yet she attaches a kind of divine purpose to them. The squirrel’s nest is not just an animal hideout but has all the majesty and weight of the moon itself. Stella Rapkowski whispers her prayers in Polish each morning and this steady piety shapes her life. As a child, Terry Berrigan presented Anne with a gift, and, after many years, her rediscovery of it fills her with joy.

I wonder—are these not also descriptions of life in Christ? Small moments filled with the power and glory of God’s own Spirit? 

Looking to a new year, I often feel the need to produce more or to make a bigger impression on the people around me. And I ask myself, how can God work in me and through me when I struggle with the same disordered desires as last year? Change feels like something that will happen only in the future. As Anne says,

“When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.”

But the reality is that, by God’s grace, that change is already happening.

Part of the wonder of the Incarnation is that we don’t live in a strictly black and white universe in which all is dark before Christ’s return and all is bright after. We live in a gathering Light that no power can extinguish. And within that Light there is hope. As Paul says, “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”  Anne captures this so well. She says:

“There is a hidden kind
Of humble goodness
I love in others

Only an aeon
Of refining fire
Could make it mine

But sometimes it’s as if
I were already burning.”

God is forming us even in our small moments. We do not have to fear our own darkness or inability to change because in him is life, and that life is the light of men. And we are already burning with it.