Poems by Alli Lindquist
These poems were created from torn out pages of a book called “Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology” that I bought when I first began struggling between the attitudes of Christians and what I believed was the nature of Christ. My intent was not to disgrace the book by tearing out these pages and creating poems from them, but it was a form of therapy. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that some Christian apologists created an entire book to attempt to get others to care about the earth when experiencing the earth is right outside. These poems point back to the messiness and the truth of the human experience. I wanted to let myself search for sacred moments in art by experiencing art and emotion as a relationship to the divine.
I.
Suspiciously / The “least of these”
Do not turn away / From violence
They may supply the needy with / Balance
Underscoring his plea / Early
Society maintained need
Without restraint or thought
Economic growth / Of extraction and extinction
Ultimately / All who amass wealth unjustly
Will prove to be fools
Where abundance is peasant
II.
An anxious relationship / Is fragile and fearful
Amid these tribulations
A sword / Gains a sense of why
Glory / Scorned
Creation-intoxicated / Christians are
Mere speculation
Every part / Acclaimed the elements feared
And the / Flowers smiled
To the hiddenness of God
III.
Dear Sirs:
This much is clear
No response to that anxiety
Has much to do with / Reverberations
The land mourns / For the futility of / Freedom
Our purpose is / Human sin
To become / What we are
Both humanity and ecosystems
IV.
Rippling and rolling waves / Enraptured
Narrate- / that it feels like coming home
Such a liminal space / Transitional waters
Physiological alterations / Can be spiritual spaces
Utterly Other / See the space we inhabit as holy
The soil underfoot invade the space between our toes
We will discover / Life in return
Alli is a neuroscientist who likes to stray from science into writing and art. She just published her first collection of poems and has a collection of bugs on her work desk- ask her which she thinks is cooler.
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