Don Williams’ Blog

Don November 12th, 2008

XXVI 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Not only did I hit a better stride with the sonnet, but, inspired by Sidney and Spenser, I began to wonder if the sonnet cycle might be revived for modern readers.  There are only three in this one, not a hundred or so, but they are interlocked by the repetition of last lines as first ones, coming full circle back to the very first sonnet in the last line of the third.  Since the one in the last entry got it started, I will repeat it here so you can get the full effect.

 SONNET IV 

A new-born leaf and an ancient, lofty star

                         Converge in space and time before my eye;

                         The one as near as is the other far,

                         And both are wondrous things—but both will die.

The leaf will wither in the summer sun

                         Or else be blasted by chill winter air

                         And wither just the same—it all is one;

                         But while it lives, it lives, and it is fair.

 Before man woke to see, this star was bright,

                          And when the last man sleeps it will remain.

                          But someday there will be a starless night,

                          And nothing, ever again, will be the same.

And yet we pray to Him who outlives all

                        And know that He will hear us when we call!

 SONNET V 

We know that He will hear us when we

Because of who He is and what He is:

Creator, Master, Savior, Lord of all,

Whose laughter is the thunder; dew, his kiss.

He feeds his children with a varied feast

That He grows from soil and sun and summer rain.

His Word shines out like lightning from the East

And flashes to the West, and back again.

And hark!  The piercing, clarion trumpet’s cry

That cuts the still night air, unbearably sweet:

It is the signal of His passing by

Some lowly, maybe mortal man to meet.

And at His name, the planets, Venus, Mars,

Bow in joyful silence with the stars.

 SONNET VI 

The planets bow in silence and the stars,

With one exception:  Earth, the haughty, proud

Kingdom of Lucifer, shackled with iron bars,

Who neither Joy nor Love nor Peace allows

To pass the warlike borders of his realm.

He fails!  For he  cannot keep out the dew

Nor still the thunder, nor the wind-in-elm,

Nor blot out the lightning!  Not a few

Slaves’ hearts’ bonds have been shattered, charged with light

As bright as noonday sun, and made to live

A new life by this mystic lightning’s strike.

Redemption sure it offers; life it gives.

This wonder we proclaim as Lord of all,

And He it is who hears us when we call!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don October 10th, 2008

XXV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            Finally by my junior year I was starting to hit my stride in the sonnet.  Here’s the first one with no blatant cheating, no use of archaisms to make the rhyme and meter work.  Not that I would not descend to such expedients again.  They are OK if one has some excuse for them justified by the topic.  But merely using Shakespeare’s form does not give one carte blanche to use his language when one is not addressing his contemporaries.

 SONNET IV 

A new-born leaf and an ancient, lofty star

                                                Converge in space and time before my eye;

                                                The one as near as is the other far,

                                                And both are wondrous things—but both will die.

The leaf will wither in the summer sun

                                                Or else be blasted by chill winter air

                                                And wither just the same—it all is one;

                                                But while it lives, it lives, and it is fair.

Before man woke to see, this star was bright,

                                                And when the last man sleeps it will remain.

                                                But someday there will be a starless night,

                                                And nothing, ever again, will be the same.

And yet we pray to Him who outlives all

                                                And know that He will hear us when we call!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don October 7th, 2008

XXIV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            Just to prove that I did eventually learn to write real alliterative meter, we have the following paraphrase of the first Psalm.  Metrical paraphrases of the Psalms is a venerable poetic habit that has attracted talents as diverse as Sternhold and Hopkins or Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke.  I was ambitious enough to conceive this at the time as a project to do the whole Psalter in alliterative meter—but since that form is not terribly useful for modern hymnody, I never got any further with it.  Still, it was a useful exercise.

 PSALM I 

Happy is he    who has not walked

In godless roads    nor gone to stand

In stile of sinners,    seeking evil.

Sit he hath not    in scorner’s seat

Beguiling the witless.    But his delight

Is in his liege-Lord,    the Law, moreover,

The words of his mouth.    Whatsoever

Words Lord speaketh    will thane heed:

These thoughts he thinketh    than all others more,

By sunlight and moonlight    searching their meanings,

Adding to word-hoard    and to his stature.

A tree shall he be,    towering, strong,

Watered by rivers     of water sweet.

Fruit shall he bring    forth in his season,

Precious produce,    pleasing his master.

His leaf shall be green,    his life shall not wither,

And all that he doeth    ever shall prosper,

Blessed by his Lord.    But the ungodly

So shall not be.    Sifted are they

Like chaff in the wind;    chastisement just

Is then their lot.    Thus in the judgment

Down shall they fall,    nor dare they approach

The chosen people,    church of fair jesu.

The brightness of glory    would blind their eyes,

So long used to darkness.    The Lord doth know

The Way of the righteous,    and walketh himself

Therein with his servants,    than all lords ever

The noblest of noble,    knowing his thanes

As if they were sons.     But in the way

Where tread the ungodly    He turns not his face;

They will not receive him    and thus walk in darkness,

Servants of serpents     and sick to the death,

Forever they perish.    Forsake not these words!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 27th, 2008

XXIII 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

The limerick is perhaps the most universally recognized form of light verse used for comic effect.  It consists of two lines of (usually) iambic or anapestic trimeter, two of dimeter, and one more of trimeter, rhyming AABBA.  Something about the two short rhyming lines returning to the longer line with the original rhyme lends itself to the comedic effect, perhaps by helping to set up the last line as a “punch line.”  Here is my first attempt at one, justly mocking the false pretensions of negative biblical criticism and the “assured results of modern scholarship.”

 LIMERICK # 1 

A high-critical biblical scholar

Wrote books that all caused quite a holler.

He claimed that St. Paul

Wrote The Campaigns of Gaul,

And he made about three million dollars.

            The assonance and consonance in the first line, the contrast of scholarly phrases like higher criticism with a colloquial vocable like holler, and the use of the rhymes in lines three and four to highlight the ironic discrepancy between the biblical author and a work he had nothing to do with all contribute to the humorous effect, one hopes.  Unfortunately, the likes of Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman can now make much bigger piles of money for the same kind of nonsense than what was intended as a hyperbole back in the seventies.  For that reason alone, the poem is, alas, now somewhat dated.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 25th, 2008

XXII 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

            Any growing poet needs to be nurtured by the great poetry (and other literature, too) of the past, both for the sake of learning technique and of deepening his own soul.  I wasn’t the first to find the Psalter essential for both.  The Psalms are a catalog of the full gamut of religious emotion.  Not just exercises in pious ejaculations, they sometimes show impiety wrestled with and overcome.  David and his fellow psalmists were not afraid to question God; they were not afraid to ask the hard questions.  They were not afraid to reveal their own doubts and their own sufferings.  But they always win through to peace in the end.  Oh, yes, there are some good lessons there!

 ON DAVID WRITING THE PSALMS 

Such words were never uttered unless by

Some battered brain’s true trial- and tear-taught try

To cry the thing, heart’s clearly seen lament

Before insight intense is spent

Diffused, dispersed, immersed and rent

By hurried passing Time.

Holy Spirit stooping, molding,

Prodding, soothing, moving, goading,

Guiding, forming in this writing

Sword or torch of Truth abiding,

Made to smite complacence in its nest,

To bore into the soul, unbidden guest,

And wake the wound that slumbers in man’s breast:

A memory of the universe at rest.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 18th, 2008

XXI 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

It is now the Fall of 1971, the beginning of my junior year of college.  Realizing that I do not have the talent to be principal clarinetist with the Atlanta Symphony, and loving music too much to subject myself to the dreary fate of being a junior high band director, I change my major from music to English.  Giving up one lifelong dream, I realize another and enroll in Koine Greek class to satisfy my new foreign language requirement.  But these upheavals are minor events compared to the annual changing of the seasons.

 ODE TO A SHIRT 

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

Bright the glory of the leaf-host,

Brown the windblown stalks of corn,

Chill the frost on pumpkin orange

Seen while walking, early morn.

The spirits of these things lie sleeping,

Woven deep among the threads.

Tomorrow will be time for wearing;

Indian summer now has fled.

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

            I miss that shirt.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 16th, 2008

XX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            Our base of operations in Cartagena, Colombia, on that South American tour, was a hotel from which we could walk straight out onto the beach and gaze North across the Gulf of Mexico toward home, which lay over the horizon.  There is nothing better than the rhythm of the surf to get one in the right frame of mind for practicing the rhythms of poetry, and capturing the spirit of poetry too.

Choir of stars and the sea

To the rhythm of my feet on the sand:

This is the music that follows me

And calls me away from the land.

I hear the waves and feel the spray;

The horizon’s lost in shadows of night.

But there lies a maid who’s as fair as the day,

As fair as the sweet morning light.

            The maid turned out not to be so permanent a part of life as I then thought.  But the far horizon and the promise of something beckoning from beyond it has turned out to be more so than I could then have imagined. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 13th, 2008

XIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            The summer after my sophomore year I traveled with an ensemble from the Taylor University Band on a tour of South America, visiting Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador.  It was my first significant cross-cultural experience, and also introduced me to Pinchincha, the mountain that towers over the 10,000 foot high bowl in which rests the city of Quito.  I made it up to First Peak, about 13,000 feet, and learned something new about majesty and transcendence.

 PINCHINCHA 

I have walked and talked intimately with the clouds

On the slopes of Pinchincha,

And I have left the clouds behind and gone

Where they did not care to follow.

And there I stood alone with the universe and sang

Songs of praise to its Creator.

And there I learned wisdom that cannot be made in to poems,

But this I can tell you:

It is difficult to doubt Him when he thunders at you

With such silence. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don August 26th, 2008

XVIII             Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            It is good to have experienced Winter as a metaphor for a bleak eternity, as the oppressive and inexorable descent of entropy over the universe at the end of time when all the stars have gone out.  It teaches you that Spring does come after all, that death is not the final word, even as it forces you to take death’s role as the final enemy with full seriousness.  If Spring is the Resurrection, then Fall is this life.  And every cycle of the seasons gives you a new chance to appreciate and try to grasp these metaphors and the mystery they hint at.

 NOVEMBER, 1970 

I stand on the knife-edge ‘twixt Autumn and Winter

And watch the spent leaves blow.

To remember is to be

And to love, to know—

And so—

The leaves are turned to snow.

 VISION 

That cloud

And that horizon

And those trees

Arranged in just that way that I now see

Give just the very faintest ray

Of hope that this long Winter may

Indeed, at long, long last, give way

To Spring.

            It is good, I say, to have lived in the upper Midwest and learned such lessons.  It is also good to have come back to the South so that one can remember them in the lingering beauty of a proper Spring or Fall!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don August 2nd, 2008

 UGANDA 2008: REPORT 

Note:  We pause from our poetic history for a report on my recent trip to Uganda.  For pictures of this mission trip, go to

 http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=fxd5bee.4t6gbpfe&x=0&h=1&y=mb86mx&localeid=en_US

From July 14-25, 2008, I had the privilege of teaching a theology course on Pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit) to thirty pastors and church leaders from Uganda and Kenya in Nakaloke, near Mbale, Uganda. We used my world famous (i.e., known to about thirteen people in the U.S. and now thirty in Uganda) textbook on the subject, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, which you can order online from Wipf and Stock or my website if you want to see what we studied.  My students were rural pastors who do not have access to higher education. They can’t go to Bible College or Seminary, so my role is to take a little Bible College to them.

My basic thesis in the course was that both Charismatics and non-Charismatics have missed the boat, sending each other screaming in opposite directions away from the actual teaching of Scripture. If you want to know more, if I have piqued your curiosity, buy the book!  What I try to do is to develop a Christocentric Pneumatology. If that phrase turns you on, you would actually enjoy the book. Since most Protestants in this area are Pentecostals either officially or without knowing it, we were destined to have some interesting discussions before we were done. Over all they seemed very receptive.  But we had to tread on some very sensitive ground when we got to the topics of the Second Blessing, Baptism and Fullness of the Spirit, and the Spiritual Gifts.

 Africans are not used to discussion– they expect to be lectured to and to write down every word the Muzungu (white man) says–and it took them a while to get used to the idea that I actually wanted them to respond and participate. I was with them about six hours a day so that we could get a full course done in two weeks, and Socratic method doesn’t work very well there until about the end of the second day–unless you just give up before then, in which case it never does. But I am, as some of you know, incredibly stubborn. About the last thirty minutes on the second day I felt we had a breakthrough and things started flowing better. One of the most important things I do for the Africans is encouragement–I think empowerment is not actually too pretentious a word. So success in getting them talking is even more important than with American students. I still did plenty of spouting; don’t worry about that! (Not making this admission will cost me some credibility with my former students back home. Go ahead and laugh!)  By the third day I had gained their confidence and the questions and answers flowed freely.

One of the most interesting and stretching aspects of teaching in Africa is the questions you get to try to answer. Here are some of the new ones I got this time, with the (highly condensed) answers I tried to give.
1. If John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, how could he have come to doubt the Lord (”Are you the one who is coming or do we wait for another?”)?  DW: Let that be a warning to us. Being “filled” with the Spirit may give us power for service, but it does not make us infallible.
2. If Satan is not divided against himself (according to the Lord’s argument against the Pharisees), how is it that Witch Doctors can cast out demons?  DW: Are we sure that they can? Do their “exorcisms” have permanent results like the Lord’s did? [Much uncertainty here from the Africans.] Conclusion: we do not seem to be in a position to draw any conclusion from these alleged exorcisms. But we do know that the Lord spoke truly.

3. Why is the Holy Spirit less forgiving than Jesus? For Jesus said a word against the Son of Man could be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  DW: This question illustrates what I have been saying about the importance of context. What happened right before Jesus’ words about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? The Pharisees had attributed Jesus’ exorcisms to the power of Beelzebub. Confronted with undeniable evidence of his Messiahship, they still stubbornly refused to believe. Therefore the only unforgiveable sin is refusal to receive Christ. Since Christ is the ground of the atonement, that sin is by definition unforgiveable, because by its very nature it shuts us out from God’s forgiveness.  Here this sin is called “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” because it had taken the particular form of attributing the Spirit’s work to Beelzebub. It has nothing to do with which member of the Trinity is more forgiving.

4. I named my son after my father, who had died. Then my son died in infancy. Did I curse him by giving him my father’s name? DW: Dear sister, there is nothing in Scripture to support the idea that you could curse your son simply by trying to honor your father, which is itself something Scripture commands us to do. Please be free from any guilt or fear that you somehow caused this by the name you gave him. The sadness of his death is enough. Do not add any further burden to that, which Scripture does not lay on you. That last question is enough to break your heart. But I wish you could have seen the joy on Betty’s face when she heard the answer. Truly (as if they needed it) the words of the Lord were being confirmed daily in our class: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Never was the old saw proved more true since man first spoke with mouth.

Monday and Tuesday of the second week were in some ways the most difficult days, because I have a very different perspective on things like The Baptism and Fullness of the Spirit and Tongues than most of my pastor students, who, as I have mentioned before, are mainly Pentecostals. They went from very receptive (the first week), to somewhat skeptical and resistant, to having to admit that there is no biblical basis for saying that, for example, Tongues are the definitive sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And here we came to a very dangerous moment. What would they do when they got back to their churches and their denominations? If I was not very careful, I would only sow dissension there without doing any real good.

I snuck up on this issue from the side. “Whenever we have received teaching that others do not have, we are tempted to become proud,” I began. “Knowledge [alone] puffeth up, but love edifieth. So when we go back to our churches,” I continued, “what shall we do? Shall we start attacking other preachers or our denominational leaders as teachers of false doctrine? If we do that, we will only make them angry and defensive and we will do no good. No, we will just start positively teaching–and living–the larger, more whole, and more wholesome vision of the truth we have been given. In love we will teach our people to be open to a fuller version of the work of the Holy Spirit [nice irony there, by the way, given the name of the ‘Full Gospel’ movement!] than they have known: not focused on tongues and ecstatic experiences as ends in themselves but on conviction and calling and regeneration and sanctification and glorifying Jesus by being conformed to his image and giving him and his personal Agent, the Spirit, all the glory for our salvation. And we will pray that God will use this to glorify his Son and that as Jesus is glorified others will also be drawn to a better understanding. Otherwise, we may go back with the truth, but it will be with the wrong spirit.” They enthusiastically agreed with this, but some said to me privately afterward that if I had not said it their first instinct would have been to do just what I had warned against.

This is the kind of victory that has to be won in ministry here if we are to do more good than harm–which is probably not so much different from anywhere else after all. On Friday the 25^th we concluded with a comprehensive examination.  Those who passed were given “certificates of completion”; the few who did not got “certificates of attendance.”

On the three weekends that sandwiched our two weeks of class, I preached six times in four different churches: twice at Kachumbala Reformed Bible Fellowship and Kalonyi Assembly of God, and also at Christ’s Coworkers Church in Kalonyi and and Sidimbire Church of God..  In two of them I prayed with an individual who had come forward to accept Christ as personal savior.  One afternoon after our class I spoke to an assembly at Evaross Secondary School, a Christian high school in Mbale, on a Christian view of learning. 

A hearty thanks to all who supported this mission with prayer and finances.  Please continue to pray for the pastors in my class.  As I said to Rev. John Robert Opio, the director of Christian Life Teachings International, the local training ministry that had invited me, “They left more reformed than they came.”  Some of them have some rethinking to do, and they all need wisdom as to how to apply what they have learned.  Pray that they will “commit what they have learned to faithful men who will able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).  If that happens, we can consider the mission a resounding success.     

Yours for His glory, 

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Pastoral TrainerChurch Planting International

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