Critic Cal

Graham Adams’ new book had me at the title: Holy Anarchy . It’s his deliberately disruptive re-description of the Kingdom of God – “Kingdom” being a metaphor that has lost its tension to the point where we forget the profound ways that the realm of God is not  like the top-down, power-over kingdoms of this world. “Holy Anarchy” stands in opposition to the totalising, dominating impulse of Empire, defying the “False Order”-sustaining lie that “There Are No Alternatives”...a lie that Christian communities, in our preference for certainties and our uncritical valorisation of "order" for order's sake, too readily remain entangled with.  TANA is a pretty apt encapsulation of what I was railing against when I wrote this poem... [1] PLEASE PUT YOUR SEATS IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION The skies were never ours to start with – So, you see, we simply had to have them. “Fill the earth,” He said; we said, “but first, the air.” He put a stop to that, initially. But look at us today, Ten t

Vancouver 2017. I move towards rejecting the LGBTQ-excluding theo-ideology I'd grown up taking for granted. [1] I also follow my tourist map over an eight-lane highway bridge that only got less accommodating to pedestrians the further along I was stuck. COMPOSED ACROSS A BRIDGE Somewhere over Granville Island They will find me: Red and yellow, pink and very green. The colours of the promise. Promise me a song for me will rise Above the noise. I swear I heard the sweetest  Chorus on the other side, But it is far; more far than I foresaw And treacherous; The families and single people Driving in their families-and-single-people cars! This shall be for a lamentation. Blessèd are the late to rise For they are home While I am somewhere, Painted over Granville Island, Vivid in the colours I combine. Carolyn Whitnall, 2017/18 . I've not shared this one before, partly because I kept trying to submit it places and partly because when I stop to look at it from the perspective of f