God is in your Typewriter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/1585255/">old typewriter by zen

As I rode the underground this morning, ‘i-podded’ and head buried in my book, cocooning myself in a blanket of media with which to blot out the world around me, I stumbled across a poem. It stopped me in my tracks, caused me to raise my head, remove my headphones and look around me with fresh eyes.

Upon arriving at my destination, I read up on the poet. I’m no great aficionado of poetry and I had never before come across Anne Sexton, but from what I discovered, she was a troubled lady who grappled with depression and mental health issues, and who took up poetry at the advice of her therapist.
 
I don’t know enough about her to comment on her faith or theology; if indeed she ever possessed either. This poem comes from her final collection of work, The Awful Rowing Toward God. The story goes that towards the end of her life she met with a Roman Catholic Priest, who refused to administer last rites, but told her, “God is in your typewriter.” Inspired, she wrote this collection in twenty days, refusing to allow it to be published until after her death, which came in 1974, as she tragically took her own life. 
 
Since the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1), perhaps, just perhaps, God was in her typewriter. Not in some pagan quasi-pantheistic way, lurking beneath the ribbon, or ‘one with the keys’, but operating through common grace, providing glimpses of His truth and beauty.
 
What was it Paul said, after all, quoting some of the pagan poets of Athens?

‘From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”’ (Acts 17:26-28)

 
Whatever Anne Sexton may have thought, felt, believed or meant by her writing, her poem lifted my head, caused me to look around and appreciate the morning in a new light. Everything does matter to God. It does all belong to Him. He is the source of every good and perfect gift, and Sexton’s words evoked a smattering of thanks from my lips. Perhaps they might do the same for you:

Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton
   
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

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Laura – Sunday 26 Feb 2012

What beautiful words; both the poem and the reflection. I am going to print this poem out and stick it on my work notice board. Many thanks for posting here, certainly gave me a little slice of inspiration for the day.