Critic Cal

When I set off down the not-exactly-career-path towards a theology MA in 2020 I was determined to get to grips with the complex, high-stakes and unavoidable task of biblical interpretation – too often underacknowledged or even (in some circles) denounced in defence of a dangerously supposed “plain reading” (aka unexamined interpretation). And so Hermeneutics was the very first module I took, and I passed it just fine but I don’t think I’ll ever get past it. Which is to say: complex? high stakes? and some. This poem was written near the start of that still-going journey and is especially dear to my heart as it made it into the  Anglican Theological Review  (whoop) and because I’m real pleased with “tabernacular”... Though I can hardly pretend to have "arrived," one book that has especially helped me along the way is Kevin Vanhoozer’s  Is There a Meaning in this Text ?  It’s about the relationship between meaning and written language (including but not only the Bible)...

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...

Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8) CONTRACTIONS The Spirit gives birth to spirit. The Spirit gives birth. Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he – Except – And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And the Spirit is not 'It,' they said. Amen! The Spirit is 'He.' The Spirit gives birth. You must be born again. Look, here is water – Darkness is upon the amnion. Let fall the form and content I would hold regardless; Spirit Who gives birth, Deliver us. Carolyn Whitnall, 2019/21. The word the Hebrew Bible uses to describe God's Spiri...

Poetry is what happens to you when you really should be writing essays... I'm rather fond of this one though. Enough to have a go at recording it (full text underneath): CHRISTMAS 2020 Please wait, the host will let you in; The meeting is about to start – You’ve got your Christmas jumper on, A rigid grin, a grudging heart,  A drink that you don’t want in hand, An exit strategy pre-planned. You love the faces on the screen; You’ve loved them, every day since March A little more – and even then You leave them daily in the lurch;  It feels as much as you can do To keep on top of keeping you. And meanwhile all the web-wide world Is page refreshing for a sign Of AstraZeneca’s brainchild, Or one, perhaps, of Pfizer’s line; A saviour in a chilled pipette By which our hopes and fears are met. For now, it’s carols from our doors, And reindeer in the windowpanes That rainbows graced not long before, And charitable food campaigns For jobless households scraping by, As businesses are l...

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ( John 12 :1-8) CONVENTION Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, And Mary with about a pint of nard At dinnertime, and all the peopl...

“Biblical Womanhood” is a pulse-raising phrase that typically describes a set of prescriptive (and subordinating) gender norms based on particular interpretations of selected portions of scripture. Funnily, those selected portions don’t typically include the accounts of actual Biblical women – many of which make for fascinating / inspiring / disturbing / all-round-complicating reading. When they get read at all, that is.  One of my favourites is that of Tamar, through whose initiative God extends the tribe of Judah , establishes the house of King David and, according to the Christian testament, selects the human ancestry of the Messiah. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus actually goes out of its (patrilinear) way to honour her by name – and yet, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her mentioned in church. Perhaps because we’re stumped for a Sunday School moral-of-the-story (though we have disturbingly little difficulty deriving neat takeaways from the lives of male biblical “heroes” whose ac...

IF YOU’RE KILLED ON ZOOM YOU DIE HERE This is your body Breaking up At 50 megabits-per-second Straight to my front room A three-by-four of eyes and mouths Unanswerable sound I love you for an hour every day The pixels of our faces numbered We are better than a multiplex of data Gathered Each one to our own home On the night you were betrayed We took the slice and blessed it Everything is what you make of it A host of fragments un-assembled At our private suppers I have eagerly desired to be left alone Forgive me For I do not know what we are doing Carolyn Whitnall, 2020 The other day I requested a Zoom link that I never received. It was for a church thing. The common sense response would've been to ask again, over a different channel. But I was tired and lonely and sad and so I just skipped the session and chalked it up as the latest episode in the lengthy, rambling narrative of rejection that, when I'm tired and lonely and sad, feels like the en...

My lockdown fitness / coping regime keeps reminding me of a thing I once wrote, so I re-made it better and 'now'... STAY IN PLACE   and: hold. you’ve found the secret of eternity, your belly button pulling in towards your spine –  eyes fixing, face like flint, as seeming poised as you can seem to be, remembering to breathe.  remembering to – ( one ) you count the ringing in of ( two ) the evening news. whole empires  ( three ) decline and fall between each ( four ) recorded chime; tectonic ( five ) contractions, famine, wars and ( six )  the rumour of a vaccine. steady now. your hips are up a little; bring them in but do not let them  sag; and: breathe. the world in solemn stillness tries to hold its own together, separately.  so focus on the headlines; keep your head in line and inattentive to the quiver at your core;  ten seconds more – and: rest. you have until eternity tomorrow.  Carolyn Whitnall, 201...

"Jesus died to save us". I have known this for many years, and "knew" exactly what it meant, perhaps even before I could've written the words down. But it turns out (you don't say?!) that not every believer in all times and places has "known" the same meaning. I've been reading and thinking about this a lot lately. About how familiar images and formulations that present as objective and universal are in fact rooted in particular historical circumstances and power arrangements. About how oppressed and enslaved people have encountered and received Jesus in profoundly different ways to those prescribed by the religion of the ruling classes. About how the various ideas that resonate with me knock up against each other seemingly irreconcilably. There is no "context-free" theology, and perhaps it is reductive to reach for such a thing. After all, God (I believe) was not content to remain an abstract idea, but consented (and consents) to...

In recent weeks, this poem (the first of an enthusiastic spate when I discovered roundels) has felt personally apt in new, weird ways. DIURNAL ROUND  Another day, another shock alarm; Another bracing of the body to obey, And of the face, to face with surface calm Another day.  Abolish every thought that goes astray, Deny yourself the luxury of qualm, Just exercise, and eat, and work, and pray.  You have a system, and it’s like a charm. And if you’re losing out to keep it, that’s OK; The time for all those other things will come Another day.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2018. Of all the people I know, I guess I’ve been one of the least hit by lockdown. Largely because of massive privilege. But also because I have been keeping life simple for some years now. My mental health has long needed careful managing. Or, at least, it feels like it needs careful managing still – who knows by this point? I’m generally too scared to test it. And some days I am am...

Of all my poems, this might be the one that’s closest to my heart. I wrote it in the aftermath of Christmas 2018, and was chuffed to have it appear in the  Winter 2019 edition of Preach magazine . THIS HOUSE   Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, and hurl Our order into holy disarray: Upend the tables where we wheel and deal, And scatter our accrued prosperity. Awake us, dancer on the dancing deep, From placid slumber; rock the boat; disturb The peace that we content ourselves to keep, And make us see the chaos we transfer. Confound our clarity, cut short our too long Prayers, take back the narrative and heckle Sermons preached to itching ears. Throw down Each stone in every separating wall. Do what you’re here to do … but, come what may, Rebuild the ruins of us, please – and stay.  Carolyn Whitnall, 2019. And then the pandemic. And the stuff of it all got a bit real. And no, I don’t mean any of the following: that “God has done this,” or that I wished f...