Dry Bones, poetry by Father James Gleason

 

 

The beloved retired pastor of our parish, Very Reverend Father James Gleason, has published a book: Dry Bones: A Small Collection of Christian Poetry (ISBN 978-1-959039-46-4).

In "The Church Messenger" (November 14, 2022), Very Reverend Father Jonathan Tobias tells us:

With the publication of his new volume of poetry, we have our own diocesan poet-priest, Very Reverend Father James Gleason. In a collection of fifteen poems penned over a period of thirty years, we can hear his kind, gentle, and profound voice clearly. Those of us who know him can tell from these stanzas that this is definitively the voice of Father James.
 
Here is a poet-priest whose vision deepened throughout the years, whose heart responded to the changing time and tide. His compassion streams through all his verse: it is that Christlike tenderness tinged with that piteous sorrow at the self-incurred pain of others. Every priest knows this sorrow well.
 
Compassion is the dominant theme in several poems. Most poignant is the heart-rending "Paschal Elegy for a Cat and for All Creatures Who Suffer Both Great and Small".
 
In other hands, the death of a pet cat might become maudlin stuff, but with this poet, this particular pity climbs by metaphorical and theological intervals into infinite Paschal hope, leaving no one behind.
 
This is inimitably theological poetry. But it should be borne in mind that this is not academic text or jargon-filled language. Theology was always meant to be spoken in the language of the heart.
 
And that is why the native tongue of theology is poetry. Priests not only can be poets, but they should be. And a faithful, pious, loving priest nearly always is (often he is without even knowing it or meaning to be). 
 
What is particularly valuable about Father James' poetry is that it is rightly haunted by apocalyptic vision.
 
"In Mount Tabor's Shadow" bears the date of the Feast of the Transfiguration (in 1989). The poet takes the awareness of mutability and his own advancing years— an old poetic theme so pronounced in Shakespeare's Sonnets— and he immerses that awareness in the Resurrection and the triumph of the Second Coming. 
 
But along the way, so illuminated by the Transfiguration, he brings the memory of this Feast into the burdens of struggle, age, and fading strength. And the result is this stanza of alternating iambic pentameter and tetrameter, of lines that glow in the dark: 
 
Waiting for the dreadfully beloved splendor
Of yet another dawning day 
Of floating, falling, dying, crumbling leaves—
food of future resurrection life and joy 
Carpeting redemption's way. 
 
No poet creates his songs out of nothing. There are shoulders of great people that we all stand upon. There are echoes of Walt Whitman in some of these poems, and definitely of Gerard Manley Hopkins in others. The generous honesty of Thomas Merton is there. 
 
Theologically speaking, I think I can trace Father Pavel Florensky in "An Ode to Christian Friendship." And Father Sergius Bulgakov's apocalyptic intuition seems to inhabit the last poem, the splendid and heartening "Canticle of Fire and Tribulation". 
 
These poems of Father James sometimes thyme in couplets, and sometimes the rhyme is subtler. There is blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and there is free verse. There is the sprung rhythm so favored by Hopkins in the triptych of "Nocturnes," "Meridian," and "Signatures". 
 
In "East Coker" (from "Four Quartets"), Nobel Laureate T S Eliot wrote this advice for old men (and for priests, and for all of us who must deal with time and change): 
 
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving 
Into another intensity 
For a further union, a deeper communion. 
 
Father James Gleason is definitely an explorer of beautiful intensity, Christian union, and "deeper communion." 
 
And he explored in the best way possible, in poetic song and deepest faith. 
 
Get this volume of this kindest, profoundest of priests that you know well. Take it home. Sit down by an open window. And— as you should with all poetry— read it out loud. 

 

A limited number of copies of Father James's wonderful book are available on eBay through this link.  The parish has no connection with the seller; we just wanted to share the news of its availability with you.