Second Saturday Conversation – April 12, 2025

Children in the Snow: Reclaiming a Poetic Faith

Second Saturday April 12, 2025, I am honored to announce we will have special guest Mark Oakley, British Church of England priest, Dean of Southwark Cathedral in London and formerly Dean of St. John’s College Cambridge. He is an author, lecturer, broadcaster, whose love for poetry and theology will change our view of both.

I became aware of Mark Oakley reading the award winning The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry. The subtitle having a nice double entendre. Poetry and belief when they share the same house become “More numerous of Windows — Superior — for Doors” to borrow from Emily Dickinson.

Poetry is the language that most truly reflects the life of the soul; it is the person of faith’s native language, claims Oakley. “Both poetry and Faith work to challenge the sleepwalking life… [‘interrupt our snoring’]… Poetry and Faith reflect parts of each other… as they deepen and not resolve the meanings, mysteries and mayhem of the world, and the rumor of God that encircles it, infuses it.” Don’t let “poetry” put you off saying it’s not my thing. Let Mark Oakley lead you into it. I say you will find yourself a home. A home that has been waiting for you. Perhaps for years.

The title of Mark’s conversation with us is Children in the Snow: Reclaiming a Poetic Faith. He borrows from American poet Wallace Stevens who said “people should like poetry the way a child likes snow…” Mark Oakley can help us like “snow,” maybe for the first time, re-imagine our landscape of faith, reinvigorate our wonder and longing for God.

In our time when language is literalized and flattened, used as a blunt instrument devoid of spirit and musicality, when “Christianity today so often appears to be a choice between ignorance on fire and intelligence on ice,” we are fortunate to have Mark Oakley whose humanity is near to our own. “The truth is far too important to be literalistic with,” he says. And “God is not to be the easy object of our knowledge, but the deeper cause of our wonder.”

I look forward to this opportunity to be with you and Mark Oakley. After our last Second Session I posed the prophet Jeremiah’s question: “Is there no balm in Gilead?” We may rediscover it with Mark Oakley.

All our sessions are free. And open to all. You must RSVP to receive a link for our April, 12 Second Saturday Conversation. You will receive the link the day before and morning of April 12. (Be sure to check your JUNK email if you have registered but don’t see your link sent on April 12!)

Don’t miss this opportunity to be with Mark Oakley. What a way to enter Holy Week.

Register for April 12 Second Saturday Conversation

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