Retired Uniting Church minister Janet Dawson, friend and colleague, has just had a book of poems published by Coventry Press: Psalms from my seventies … and other stuff.
It’s a book filled with honesty. Janet lives as she writes; in this book, she exemplifies a deep spirituality grounded in the ordinariness of life.
There are prayers about the closed blinds … sharing communion with a lizard … shedding tears in the fragility of life … reflecting on how hard it is to let go, especially to let a go a life partner who is changing before her eyes. There is no pretence, no puffed-up terminology, no pious hope in these prayers; they are everyday, grounded in the ordinary—and thus, so profound.
Janet especially grapples with her uncomfortableness—her sense of alienation—in the regular weekly routines of worship. Can there be a theology that offers something better than unthinking platitudes and unacceptable dogmas? So Janet seeks to offer precisely this in her prayers.
She celebrates the music that has been “a joy and treasure all my life”, remembers “those who can’t rejoice”, questions “what did Jesus think he was doing?”, imagines people as “beautiful round objects with so many exciting possibilities”. One prayer offers images of God as “Quantum God, Eternal Becoming, Infinite Possibility, Ultimate Consciousness”, another rejoices as she leaves behind “the boat” of the church and immerses herself in “the Ocean” of the divine.
And to close: a short, punchy drama about God in the ordinariness of life. I recommend this book as a fine resource!
https://coventrypress.com.au/Bookstore/Psalms%20from%20my%20Seventies
An Informed Faith 