Richard Spilman: “We all have faith—faith that the garbage we leave at the curb will be picked up, that the patch on the right front tire won’t blow on the freeway, that the air we breathe will satisfy our lungs. But faith in God is something entirely different—embracing not only the insubstantial but the nothingness that precedes all creation. Kierkegaard compared faith to jumping off a cliff, but it’s not nearly so dramatic or (thinking of Wile E. Coyote) so comic. But it does require, on good days, the ability to live not as if the world were transformed by my internal vision but as if I can be transformed by the inner heat of a world that, even at its most magical, is never what it seems to be.”
Roz Spafford: “My life-long argument with God—where have you been? why do you permit such suffering?—culminated when I began to write a series of poems in Mary’s ‘voice.’ I had tried rejecting God entirely—as a teenager, I had attempted to become ‘unsaved’ by standing on the cliffs overlooking the ocean shouting, ‘I renounce you,’ three times. It was a kind of temper-tantrum. With the Mary poems, I used another strategy: rewriting the Gospels. That I have not yet been struck dead for hubris offers ambiguous evidence—for a God who is generous, disinterested or absent. Still, why would one argue with God if he/she were not there to be argued with?” (website)
Tim Sherry: “I usually put it simply and say my faith is traditional—Lutheran. Raised in the church and active throughout my life, I have a firm understanding of mainline Christian theology and orthodoxy. However, I also have questions. Those questions often lead me to search for answers in other ways than through churchgoing, and living in the Pacific Northwest, I have often gone to the mountains for answers.”
Aisha Sharif: “Poetry is a vehicle that allows me to write through an understanding of God, religion, and myself; my faith is constantly explored, tested, and revised with every draft of a poem. My Muslim faith pushes me to write about being a religious minority; it has also propelled me to use poetry to break traditional stereotypes surrounding Islam and Muslim women.”
Marilyn Robertson: “Here’s one definition of religion: concern over what exists beyond the visible. I find that belief in the ineffable, in the Divine, gives life a shimmer, an edge. A good edge. One you can walk on. And poetry, for me, is scripture—a prayer.”
Scott Corbet Riley: “After college, I attended an Episcopal seminary for two years—and thought briefly about joining the priesthood. Instead, I elected to marry a priest and study poetry. While I consider myself an Episcopalian, I am significantly less interested in denominational caterwauling than I am intrigued by the relationship between material reality and the unseen world of the imagination. My poetry explores—and, I hope, embodies—the ways in which language connects us to that unseen world.” (website)
David Radavich: “An Episcopalian by denomination, I am eclectic in my beliefs, which inform not only my writing but my essence as a human, how I view and experience events in the world, even the way I take care of my body through meditation and yoga. The imagery in my work often incorporates subtle or not-so-subtle references to religious iconography, which even in our time retains its power and mystery, its ability to stir a deeper register of our lives. And at some level, all that is never far from politics.” (website)
