Past Event: Conference | Poetry "Love bade me welcome"

TUESDAY, MAY 12 | Yale Divinity School | 409 Prospect Street, New Haven

3:15pm –  Bus leaves hotel for Yale ISM-Divinity School

3:00-4:30 – Conference check-in

4:30-4:45 – Welcome & Orientation

4:45- 5:45 –  PLENARY #1 (Keynote): Christian Wiman | “When You Consider the Radiance: Poetry for Preachers and Prophets”

6:00-7:00 – Dinner Reception

7:15-8:15 – Evening Worship led by Maggi Dawn

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 13 | Yale Divinity School | 409 Prospect Street, New Haven

8:30 am –  Bus leaves hotel for Yale ISM. Continental breakfast in Common Room.

9:15–10:00 –   GUIDED MEDITATION led by Janet Ruffing

10:00-10:30 –  Coffee break

10:30-11:30 –  WORKSHOPS #1

• Maggi Dawn | “Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs: Integrating Poetry and Song Lyric into Worship”
• David Mahan | “’all that beauty comes home’: Teaching Faith through Verse”
• Thomas Troeger | “Cultivating the Landscape of the Heart: How to Nurture the Poetic Imagination for Preaching”

12-1:00pm – LUNCH

1:15-2:15 –  PLENARY #2: Thomas Troeger | “Wonder Reborn: the Theological Necessity of Poetry in a Lopsided Culture”

2:15-2:45 – Coffee break

3:00-4:00 –  WORKSHOPS #2

• Christian Wiman | “Reading Poetry as an Act of Faith”
• Janet Ruffing | “Poetry as an Opening to the Mystical?”
• David Mahan  | “ ‘all that beauty comes home’: Teaching Faith through Verse”

4:15-5:15 – WORSHIP led by Maggi Dawn

 5:30 –  Bus leaves for hotels, downtown

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THURSDAY, MAY 14 | St. Thomas More | 268 Park Street, New Haven

8:30–9:00am – Continental breakfast served

9:00-10:00 –  WORKSHOPS #3

• Maggi Dawn | “Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs: Integrating Poetry and Song Lyric into Worship”
• David Mahan | “’all that beauty comes home’: Teaching Faith through Verse”
• Thomas Troeger | “Cultivating the Landscape of the Heart: How to Nurture the Poetic Imagination for Preaching”

10:00-10:30 – Coffee break

10:30-11:30 – PLENARY #3:  “Spirit & Muse” An open conversation moderated by David Mahan

11:30-12pm –  GUIDED MEDITATION led by Janet Ruffing

12:00pm – Conference ends

Let me extend our heartfelt welcome to you! We are glad you are here and look forward to our two and a half days together as we contemplate what it means to ‘bring poetry into the life of our churches.’

Our goals are simple: we want our sessions and our interactions with one another to be inspirational, practical, and worshipful. From our first plenary session to our final guided meditation, we expect to walk away feeling even more motivated to plumb all of the resources that poetry offers the life of faith. As we reach for such heights, we also want to bring it down to earth. In our plenary talks and particularly our workshops, we aim to equip one another with fresh, practical ideas about how to integrate poetry into the worship, preaching, teaching, and devotional practices of our congregations.

Our ultimate focus is not poetry, of course, but God. In ways that are both inspirational and practical, our worship services and guided meditations will both demonstrate further how to draw upon the riches of poetry in our devotion, and, most significantly, direct our attention to the One whose love especially bids us welcome.

With gratitude for your company,

David Mahan
Conference Coordinator

Note: Because they are an integral part of our schedule, we have made every effort to offer worship services and guided meditations that embrace all of the diversity represented at our conference. Some elements may be familiar to you, others may not be. But we encourage you to participate in ways that you feel comfortable with.

We will open and close the conference with a guided meditation.  The opening meditation will honor the 500th anniversary of the birth of Teresa of Ávila and use two of Teresa’s poems, which we will enter through a Taize Chant, and a guided process based on Teresa’s guidance for opening to contemplative prayer.  This time of prayer and reflection will provide a gentle transition, leaving cares behind and becoming fully present to the present moment, allowing us to open to the sacred dimensions of poetry.

The closing guided meditation will allow us to “gather up the fragments,” featuring two or three contemporary poems set to music, and encourage us to linger contemplatively with the fruits of the conference before we leave.

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Janet Ruffing - Professor in the practice of spirituality and ministerial leadership, Yale Divinity School

The author of six books, most recently, To Tell the Sacred Tale: Spiritual Direction and Narrative, has a background both in literature, including teaching English in secondary schools and a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality which focused both on “love mysticism” and on spiritual direction.  Her work in mysticism has included mysticism and social transformation, kataphatic mysticism examined through qualitative research discovering that mediated experiences of God may continue throughout one’s lifetime, and has developed a cycle of courses at YDS focused on various mystical figures in Christian traditions.
 

We will gather twice for worship during the conference. In addition to being an opportunity to worship together, the two services will also serve to demonstrate in practice how poetry can be brought into worship and liturgy.  Tuesday’s service will engage poetry as a way of reflecting on scripture. On Wednesday we will gather for an ecumenical service of Holy Communion, drawing on the poetry of George Herbert, and on prayers from the 1559 prayer book which Herbert himself was familiar with, as well as a series of modern poets.

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Maggi Dawn - Associate Professor of Theology and Literature, and Dean of Marquand Chapel

Originally from England, Professor Dawn came to Yale in 2011. After a first career as a musician and songwriter, she taught theology at the University of Cambridge (UK) for a number of years, while also serving as college Chaplain. She is the author of five books, and teaches courses on performative theology, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poetry for ministry (with Christian Wiman), and the use of the arts in worship. She is ordained in the Church of England, an accredited pastoral supervisor with the Association of Pastoral Supervisors & Educators, an associate writer member of PRS for Music, a member of the Society for the Study of Theology (UK), and serves on the advisory board for the Royal School of Church Music.

People relate to religious mystical poetry in a variety of ways. For some, the words of the poet,…”voices the longings of the spirit and our deep desires—the desire for meaning, for a life of passion and creativity, for a sense of belonging, for wisdom and…for love.”  Others are compelled to write their own poetry in response to mystical experience which, in turn, often evokes similar yet distinct experiences in the one who contemplates such poems.  This workshop will explore these mystical uses and effects of poetry through such poems themselves.

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Janet Ruffing - Professor in the practice of spirituality and ministerial leadership, Yale Divinity School

The author of six books, most recently, To Tell the Sacred Tale: Spiritual Direction and Narrative, has a background both in literature, including teaching English in secondary schools and a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality which focused both on “love mysticism” and on spiritual direction.  Her work in mysticism has included mysticism and social transformation, kataphatic mysticism examined through qualitative research discovering that mediated experiences of God may continue throughout one’s lifetime, and has developed a cycle of courses at YDS focused on various mystical figures in Christian traditions.

Born in 1945 and raised in Ramsey, New Jersey and Cooperstown, New York, Thomas Troeger studied to become a flutist, but under the impact of a great preacher, he decided to prepare for the ministry.   A pastor for seven years, he then began teaching homiletics, hymnody, and liturgics.   His scholarship has focused on the role of the imagination in preaching and worship, and his creative work includes hymns and lyric poems.  

Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of eight books.  From 2003 until 2013 he was the editor of Poetry magazine.  Since the fall of 2013 he has been on the faculty at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, where he teaches courses on poetry and faith, poetry for ministry (with Maggi Dawn), “accidental” theologies, and creative non-fiction.

David Mahan

Berry, Wendell. The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry 1957‒1982 (New York: North Point Press, 1987).

——————–. A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979‒1997 (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998).

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems and Prose (New York: Penguin Classics, 1985).

Impastato, David, ed. Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Mahan, David. An Unexpected Light: Theology and Witness in the Poetry and Thought of Charles Williams, Micheal O’Siadhail, and Geoffrey Hill (Eugene, OR: Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Wipf & Stock, 2009)

Nichols, Bridget. Literature in Christian Perspective: Becoming Faithful Readers (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2000).

Janet Ruffing

Barks, Coleman. The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001)

Housden, Roger. Ten Poems to Change Your Life (New York: Harmony Books, 2001)

Levertov, Denise. Sands of the Well (New York: New Directions, 1996)

—————-. The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes (New York: New Directions, 1997)

Oliver, Mary. A Thousand Mornings: Poems (New York: Penguin Press, 2012)

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Trans. M.D. Herter Norton (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1993)

Thomas Troeger

Alexander, Pat, ed., and Zundel, Veronica, biographer. The Eerdmans Book of Christian Poetry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981)

Bloom, Harold, ed. The Best Poems of the English Language: from Chaucer through Frost (New York: HarperCollins, 2004)

Curzon, David. Modern Poems on the Bible: an anthology (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1994)

Curzon, David. The Gospels in Our Image: an anthology of twentieth-century poetry based on biblical texts (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995)

Troeger, Thomas H. Song that Blesses Earth: Hymn texts, carols and poems  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Troeger, Thomas H. Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons on Hymns, Music, and Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Troeger, Thomas H. God, you made all things for singing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Troeger, Thomas H. Above the Moon Earth Rises: Hymn Texts, Anthems and Poems for a New Creation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Troeger, ​Thomas H. Borrowed Light: Hymn Texts, Prayers, and Poems  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)

Christian Wiman

Heaney, Seamus, and Hughes, Ted, eds. The Rattle Bag (London: Faber and Faber, 1982)

Herbert, George. George Herbert: The Complete English Works, ed. and introduced by Ann Pasternack Slater (London: Everyman’s Library, 1995)

Kaminsky, Ilya, and Towler, Katherine, eds. A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith (North Adams: Tupelo Press, 2012)

Kaminsky, Ilya, ed. Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (New York: HarperCollins, 2010)

Mandelstam, Oslip. Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, Trans. by Christian Wiman (New York: HarperCollins, 2012)

Wiman, Christian. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)

Wiman, Christian. Once in the West (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)

Wiman, Christian. Every Riven Thing (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)