Not of This Worldview: Poetry for the Kingdom Among Us
Ebook
God is at work among us. The “kingdom of God”—that dynamic, active power that breaks in to the hardest of hearts and places—is on the move. And how may we have eyes to see and ears to hear all that is truly taking place in, with and under the reality of our daily lives?
Here the gift of poetry may come to our aid. In poems that range from loose informality to tight structure, and from the humorous to the sombre, Richard Briggs seeks to let poetry open our eyes and ears to the strange and elusive work of God among us. He seeks out a voice that will let us celebrate the everyday, rejoice in the remarkable, and at the same time will enable us to weep with those who weep. He writes with gentle humour of his own path from zeal towards wisdom, and encourages us to follow.
Life is a gift, and Not of This Worldview offers a response to accompany us wherever we are in the ups and downs of that life—from the mountain top to the pit, as the Psalmists once said, and at all locations in between.
This poetry collection brings together attempts made over thirty years to communicate a perception of what its subtitle calls ‘the kingdom among us,’ as ‘Already here…/ And yet still at hand’ by ‘an Englishman who tried to write it all down’ – as a poem on the Vatican City humbly calls the author. This perception infuses poems exploring the experiences of a theological educator and minister reflecting on the journey of life; places (particularly Italy, USA and Durham) and the preoccupations people have in them; the mundane and the overwhelming; light’s penetration of darkness. An ineffable sense of the present and anticipated Kingdom is held in unstated connections between juxtaposed lines or verses, or in the gentle insistence of rhythm and form as they shape ideas, inviting readers to find searches for God in life and for the meaning of a poem parallel experiences. In Briggs’s best work a prayerful confidence lights his unworldly worldview, as in the conclusion to ‘A Light Psalm’: ‘So shine, Lord, shine . . . Be the headlight on my car/ And a streetlight on my way.’
- Title: Not of This Worldview: Poetry for the Kingdom Among Us
- Author: Richard S. Briggs
- Publisher: Sacristy Press
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781789591606, 9781789591583, 1789591589, 9781789591590, 1789591597, 1789591600
- Resource ID: LLS:9781789591606
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-06-15T01:16:37Z
Richard S. Briggs is Lecturer in Old Testament and Director of Biblical Studies at Cranmer Hall, St. John’s College, Durham University, England, where he teaches Old Testament. He is the author of Words in Action: Speech Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation (2001) and The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue (2010).