A Reading from the Book of Wisdom

We don't like to confess it, but Catholics aren't weaned on the Bible. Our relationship with God, and with the people of God, comes more through the sacraments than the scripture. Over the years I've come to passionately love the sacraments, and find the Bible interesting at best, problematic at worst. Well, that's an overstatement. As a lector, I've often been swept up by the scripture's power. I remember once breaking down trying to read Isaiah to the congregation. But generally, the Bible came to me through the scripture quoted at me by various unctuous people in various dubious causes, and in the dull readings of our lugubrious translation. It wasn't the center of my faith, nor anywhere near.

But in the last few years � Well, in the last few years, it's been different. In a way, it's been a joy to come to the Bible as a relative stranger. It's new to me, and it's strange, and it's wonderful.

I've just finished a poem of eighty-odd couplets drawn from the Book of Wisdom, trying to capture some of that strangeness and wonder. I'm putting a section below, and the whole, here.

It's -- well, it's not a translation. Most of the images are scriptural, though I've pulled them from various places throughout the book. A few are mine: the clay fingers grasping, the onion, the gold furnace, etc. I've tried to capture what touches me, and that means I've left out most of the stuff about smiting the Egyptians with swarming wasps, etc. And I've tampered with the theology by making the wicked and the just into one "we."

Please let me know what you think of this!

Part IV.

Our old gods have been
            a potter's poor pinchings

From common muck
            we make jugs and idols

Our god's nose is shut
            and its mouth holds no voices

Image of sorrow
            of a child lost early

We touch its cold palm
            but its fingers don't grasp ours

Our bodies were clay
            and to clay they're going

Our poor dying hands
            can make only dead things

Yet the Lord breathes into us
            when our hearts are in ashes

Our fire quickens
            and then we are shining

With his breath in us
            we sing like bottles