Rev. Don Erickson

Written for a church series on the spirituality found in otherwise secular practices. Why do I write poetry? For the purity and possibility in a blank sheet of paper, For the close to endless presence of words to conjure, For the creative act that taps into the divinest of works… Why do I write poetry? To feel okay feeling deeply (though to everyone else aloof and quiet). To get lost in words when thinking too much leaves nowhere to go. To memorialize a moment and know belonging despite unwelcoming worlds. Why do I write poetry? There’s a poem I wrote some years ago, written early when I had much to learn. The poem’s theme was the art form itself, the gift it’s been and continues to be. ...Unpathened white snow. an unclaimed plain. I express, yet hide, and work until it’s let go. Why do I write poetry? The internal life so important to me is content staying hidden, most of the time at least. When the hidden must be expressed, I turn to paper and pen, to Word’s empt...

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”  And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.  A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.  But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.  He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”  And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” - Mark 4:35-41 My mother loved to tell us Bible stories. She particularly loved the one from Mark 4. In particular, she loved the phrase, the mantra, that Jesus uses to calm the storm. “Peace, be still!” I am one o...

Mark 6:32  And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.  33  Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.  34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.  35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late;  36  send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.”  37  But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”  38 And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”  39  Then he ordered them to get all the p...

A Homily Poem by Don Erickson “I once was lost but now, I’m found” The woods near my home lost me. I went searching for some solace there, For some peace then amiss amid teenage angst and anguish, For comfort from the pine floor softening my steps and heart. Maybe I found the solace, comfort, and peace I sought. But the woods, like the Lord, some say, gave and then took these gifts away, Losing me, hiding a path to find home, Taking solace, peace, comfort, leaving their antonyms. Not solace, but fear, Not peace, but anxiety, Not comfort, but close to tears, For the dark was not far off. The low sun no longer streamed down through trees, my unrestrained shouts for help unheard. Lost. Have you ever been lost? Really lost? I once was. Then found the way back home somehow, before twilight faded out. But the distress of the sun going down with me alone in that cavern of trees, that memory remains. The woods hiding me, my yells, the scents and sounds of panic, that stays and is easi...