'WRITING ... A KIND OF PRAYER'
I LOVE TO pick up a book that, as you devour it, makes you want to call out to the nearest person, "Hey, listen to this!"
That's how I feel about Compassion Wins, a collection of poems and essays by Godfrey John, Welsh–born writer, husband, father of two, good neighbor, Christian Science practitioner and teacher—and amateur boxer.
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On almost every page of this book—even if it's a topic that doesn't immediately appeal to you—there's at least one thought that inspires and heals.
Just listen to these: "The extraordinary always awaits fresh discovery."
"The kingdom of light is a kingdom of love. The sweet strangers are among us. Friend, love first: don't wait for someone to deserve your caring. What kind of loving makes forgiving second nature ...?"
"There has to be enough silent yearning, enough struggling against the current, enough simple, unwavering loyalty—to enable us to hold our gaze relentlessly to what we love."
The last extract is part of Godfrey's moving tribute to his wife, Rosalind, in whom he saw solitude and sharing "brought affectionately into a single reality." In an early poem to her, he wrote:
Thank you for the way you spring April on November,
for the quick joke and long grace you bring into my life;
for being strong enough not to let me change you—
and wise enough to let me think sometimes that I had.
(From Five Seasons, published by Robert H. Sommer, 1977)
Years later came the poem "Legacy," which is one of Rosalind's favorites in Compassion Wins. Even these few lines speak volumes about the way their relationship grew:
What we now are flares out far beyond
what we once were.
Only the love, light–wise, is actual:
the sharing we thought was its original source
no longer exists. ...
But here a glow becomes
the music of a sphere.
Many of Godfrey's poems and religious articles were published in these pages. Others were carried by The Christian Science Journal and The Christian Science Monitor (where his essays also found a natural home). Dozens of his poems and essays were published 28 years ago in a collection called Five Seasons. And before his passing two years ago, he and Rosalind, with help from their daughter, Kristen, compiled the material for Compassion Wins, which spans the years 1977–2000.
Kristen says in a note on the dust jacket that she's "grown up with an awareness that any one of life's moments can be unexpectedly transformed into poetry." And she has written many poems of her own. None perhaps more poignant than these lines for her father, first published in The Christian Science Monitor of June 16, 1995:
My roots have to travel deep
To meet with his
In the heart's soft underground
We understand
The mission is the triumph of surprise
We find we share the flight.
In his introduction to Compassion Wins, Godfrey wrote: "It's lovely when, without a lot of fuss, we can enter into a poem, explore its moment of hush, and return unceremoniously to the ordinary business of a day's living. Whenever writing lends itself to such exploration, it is becoming for us a kind of prayer—like the smile dawning on an old man's face."
It's hard to keep the smile off your own face as you page through Compassion Wins. It's a book that cries out to be shared, just as Rosalind shared it again with Godfrey in his last year, reading it aloud to him during their evenings together. "He enjoyed it," she told me, "as if he were rediscovering the ideas. It wasn't so much, 'Look what I wrote,' as, 'Isn't it amazing that this was written!'"
Many readers will be grateful that it was written. Their own discovery of those ideas, and the inspiration and healing they bring, will long continue.
