Rowan is one of those names distinguished by its vague familiarity. It rolls easily enough off the tongue and rings a muted bell… which is to say you probably don’t have a close friend or sibling called Rowan, but maybe you think some distant cousin, or perhaps it was a cousin of a friend who may have had that name… or at least a name that might be quite similar.
So, for the curious: We named Rowan after one of my favourite people – the theologian Rowan Williams, who is also the current Archbishop of Canterbury.
Arabic Class in the Refugee Camp
One by one, the marks join up:
easing their way through the broken soil,
the green strands bend, twine,
dip and curl and cast off little drops
of rain. Nine months ago,
the soil broke up, shouting,
crushing its fist on houses, lives,
crops and futures, opening its wordless mouth
to say no. And the green strands
stubbornly grow back. The broken bits
of a lost harvest still let
the precious wires push through
to bind the pain, to join with knots and curls
the small hurt worlds of each
small life, to say another no: no,
you ar not abandoned. The rope of words
is handed on, let down from a sky
broken by God’s voice, curling and wrapping
each small life into the lines of grace,
the new world of the text that maps
our losses and our longings, so
that we can read humanity again
in one another’s eyes, and hear
that the broken soil is not all, after all,
as the signs join up.
Rublev
One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.
I said, Here is the blood of all our people,
these are their bruises, blue and purple,
gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.
These (god) are the chromatic pains of flesh,
I said, I trust I shall make you blush,
O I shall stain you with the scars of birth
For ever, I shall root you in the wood,
under the sun shall bake you bread
of beechmast, never let you forth
To the white desert, to the starving sand.
But we shall sit and speak around
one table, share one food, one earth.
Let’s hope that Miss Rowan’s eyebrows become more feminine than Misters! I do like the name regardless, and i actually didn’t think of it as a male name! Ha!
She’s precious!
And it’s so good to read your writing and the Rowan poems. I don’t follow Rublev but I love it. Explain next time I come over.
Glad you enjoyed them Jason! The Rublev poem I find starkly beautiful and challenging in its conception and address of God. In very little space it develops concerns of theodicy and an almost imprecatory statement about the moral culpability of a deity that Rublev won’t allow to stand at a distance from its covenanted creation.
Congrats on becoming a father! I’m glad to see that you’re back in the blogosphere! I’ve really enjoyed your posts so far, and I especially liked that second Rowan Williams poem. Also, I don’t know if I have time to complete your entire 100-book list, but I’m going to try to take a stab at it when I can. Keep the good stuff coming!
Cheers Josh! I’m enjoying the experience of fatherhood thus far… she has been a really easy baby to date and is gifting us with 7 hours sleeps already which is pretty sweet 🙂 How is fatherhood treating you?
I have only one friend crazy enough to tackle the whole list on short notice with me, but a few people who want to jump in from time to time when particular books tickle their fancy. I’d love for you to chime in!
Fatherhood has been really good so far! Lucy is about 14 months old now, and she also has been a really easy baby.
It may be a while before I can get to any of your books — I have a few on my own that I’m trying to finish, and things at school are incredibly busy right now — but I’ll let you know when I finish any of them!
There is a spooky likeness of one Rowan to the other! 🙂
Your baby is the cuter though.