I am a Conventual Franciscan priest living at Mount Saint Francis, IN. Since my ordination in 1975 I've served in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Louisiana and Kentucky, plus a brief time in Melbourne Australia. At this time I am one of several chaplains at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Louisville, KY. Catholics believe a word became flesh and lived among us. How could I not love words? I might say I love poetry but poetry is something like computers. I may know how to use one computer program but I don’t understand all computer programs. Likewise I may enjoy one poem; I might take delight in the poetry of one author, but I don’t love all poems, nor do I like all poets. I enjoy the sound of words. I love their multiple meanings and diverse functions. I love the subtlety of words. They are powerful, fascinating, eminently useful and essentially spiritual. They are breath shaped into sound. How many millennia passed before the human creature discovered the principle of a sentence? It is as perfect as pi. It must be something sprung from Plato’s ideal world of forms. Poetry explores the meaning of words and sentences, stretching these entirely human constructs until they speak divinely, even until they break open, revealing the spirit that forms them.
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