Right Under Our Noses

While our taste in literature or music or movies is often deeply personal, it's also governed in many respects by the trends and cultural sway of society. We get caught up in a craze of sorts, and we're off and running, watching episode after episode of some TV program or reading in rapid succession all the books we can find in a certain sci-fi or period-piece series.

If we try to disengage from the current and the wildly popular, we may have to dig pretty deep to get back to some of the earliest stuff we experienced under the banner of "media" -- long before the word was a catchall for every kind of human expression.

Take poetry, for instance. Remember studying poems in grade school? All those flowery rhythms and rhymes and extravagant ideas never seemed to do the trick for me. On the other hand, consider Alfred Lord Tennyson's stirring description of a British cavalry unit that is ordered to cross a valley to capture Russian cannons at the other end.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Poetry has the power to move us, to motivate us, to open our eyes. It's often closer than we think, too, like the hymnbook. I know it's tough for men to sing. Some of us never got beyond that cracking-voice thing that happened in junior high or middle school, but if you don't sing -- or at least read the words while others are singing -- you can miss a lot. As an example, read this hymn text slowly; think about the imagery, and you might get a sense of how Jesus overcame Thomas' unbelief:

These Things Did Thomas Count as Real

These things did Thomas count as real:
The warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
The grain of wood, the heft of stone,
The last frail twitch of flesh and bone.
The vision of his skeptic mind
Was keen enough to make him blind
To any unexpected act
Too large for his small world of fact.

His reasoned certainties denied
That one could live when one had died,
Until his fingers read like Braille
The marking of the spear and nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe
And thus the risen Christ receive,
Whose raw imprinted palms reached out
And beckoned Thomas from his doubt.

Poetry. Its power is undeniable, but for many of us it's an acquired taste. Without a melody to hum along and carry the words, it's easy to dismiss the subtle attention to detail of a well-wrought poem or a tightly constructed hymn.

Sometimes great poetry -- and the meaning it conveys -- is closer than we think, like in the pew, right under our noses

What are you reading or watching or listening to these days? Does it beat the standard fare media companies are offering the masses?

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