He heard the poet say that
church –listening to the
preachers — led him to poetry.
He is a black man and as I
think of black worship and
black preaching in particular,
I can understand that — the
rhythm, the cadence, the
crescendos, the staccato, the
beat, the tempo, the ups, the
downs, the all arounds —
preachers as metaphor for
Spirit. I get that in a white
sort of way. The college
chaplain broke all the rules
of oratory. He didn’t look at
the students. He was down in
his manuscript and then up in
the wooden rafters; his jokes
weren’t funny but his gestures
were a joke. His arms would
flail away completely out of
sync with the point he was mak-
ing. He was Dutch so his rhy-
thm wasn’t much, but he was
all over the place – up, down
and all around, finger to nose
and then the chin and with his
message Jesus danced my heart
within. Then, the gay guy,
who had about as much rhythm
as the college chaplain and
could get his plump, pear body
hidden under robes and stoles
about as high off the ground
as Phil Michelson’s Master’s
jump, told great jokes and put
his finger to the tip of his
nose just as he was about to
offer a climactic thought be-
fore the denouement and he would
bow his head and raise his arms
and bring them down and I expect-
ed a pound on the pulpit but
he would stop just short and
raise his arms like a sym-
phony conductor orchestrating
the last note and then just walk
away from the pulpit to lead
the choir in the offertory and I
would cry the tears of Jesus as
he wept over his good friend
Lazarus stinking up the tomb
and I would cry the tears of
Mary and Martha as they watch-
ed their brother rise from the
dead. And I, too, knew those
preachers were poetry in motion.