When Your Poem Becomes Theology

I have spent the morning wrestling with fabric imagery.  I thought that I was working on a poem, but I ended up with a piece of theology.

Last week, I had this line float through my head:  "The future speaks in threads."  I immediately wondered what kind of threads--threads from a larger garment that was coming apart?  If so, who yanked on the thread?  The thread of seams?  Seams holding together or fraying apart?  And I thought of threads that lead us out of mazes, like in that ancient story from the Greeks.  I wrote a few stanzas of a poem, but I'm not sure I like it.

On Sunday, I wrote down this line:  "The future speaks to us in widow's weeds."  I played with that image, but not much came.  I went back to the thread imagery of last week and wrote another stanza.  I remembered using some thread imagery in one of my morning watch broadcasts, so I went back to listen.

I was expecting poetry inspiration, but instead I got theology inspiration.  If you'd like to read that piece of writing, see this post on my theology blog.  It asks how we might behave if we believed we were part of the quilt making team of God, the team that's making a giant quilt of creation.

Maybe I need to do more research about widow's weeds.  Maybe that will give me what I need for the poem.  Maybe the third time will be the charm.

Or maybe it doesn't matter if the poem never takes shape.  I'm really happy with the piece of theology.  It's an unexpected, but delightful, surprise on this first Friday of March.