{"id":5774,"date":"2012-12-01T00:10:32","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T05:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=5774"},"modified":"2015-02-15T19:14:39","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T01:14:39","slug":"honeysuckle-ghost-in-the-first-baptist-church-back-pew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/5774","title":{"rendered":"Honeysuckle Ghost in the First Baptist Church Back Pew"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do not think
\nit is a living nothing, where non-beings
\ncan make a kind of unearthly love, I
\nthink it\u2019s the nothing kind of nothing, I think
\nwe go through the door and vanish together.
\n– Sharon Olds<\/em><\/p>\n

I, too, think often about warm sunlight\u2014
\nthe intention it gives to a single flower
\nbeing pollinated by a hummingbird,
\nbee, or hand eased toward beauty<\/p>\n

unmistakably\u2014being a thing
\nthat can bring beauty close to itself,
\nsimply by touching it\u2014petal-white,
\neach brief golden curl grown out of green<\/p>\n

both of our tongues reached toward
\nas if consummating something live
\nand holy\u2014beyond praise, beyond fact,
\nbeyond fences where our youth bloomed out<\/p>\n

orderly\u2014despite every discord in the congregation
\nof the First Baptist Church\u2014where I felt you touch me
\nas if Holy Spirit\u2014in the farthest back pew
\nwith the preacher praying and us both reaching up.<\/p>\n

To what, I still don\u2019t know. I believe in this world,
\nand this town, and each face in it as you do God.
\nThat is my confession. When I say, This place
\nbreaks my heart<\/em>, I mean, you do as well<\/em>. I mean,<\/p>\n

your heart also<\/em>\u2014not to mention, It could not last\u2014<\/em>
\n still won’t\u2014will not\u2014although we insist it. <\/em>We were
\napart before we ever came together\u2014all at once.
\nIf the hymns of the damned\u2014of the honey-<\/p>\n

suckled\u2014are enough to save us\u2014I’ll still gladly
\npraise you, beloved\u2014testify to your magnificence.
\nTo pass into the nothing kind of nothing
\non the other side of this life is a gift<\/p>\n

I accept without question. My corpse, now,
\npasses into it. Although most folks can’t tell
\nwhen they blindly profess what they pray to\u2014
\ninvisible\u2014I have seen it. It resembles<\/p>\n

your face\u2014how it first opened up with a joy
\nI found naked, then\u2014non-scriptural. You said,
\n I’m close, closer<\/em>\u2014until rising up you cried out
\nfinally, Yes. Oh Christ, yes. Jesus yes.<\/em><\/p>\n

That was my conversion to the end of a thing
\nbeing holier, here, in our mortal coil,
\nthan the everlasting. Now when I sing,
\nor pray, or profess to believe something true,<\/p>\n

my one tenet is this each and every Sunday:
\nThere is no majesty\u2014no mystery\u2014beyond you,
\nyour body, your blood crying out Yes<\/em> the first time
\nyou had me in this pew\u2014where you once spoke to me<\/p>\n

discretely, love, though I’ve become bodiless now\u2014
\nstill your Michael, Yes<\/em>\u2014still hearing what you told me
\nin the hollowed out heart of this old, oak-hewn seat
\nfor strong, righteous folks\u2014pure penitents who return<\/p>\n

for forgiveness weekly even with the echoes of our bodies\u2019
\nsinging: Death\u2019s a better rapture<\/em>. I still think about often
\nthe way you said it, your tongue tilting toward praise,
\nthen, sex-fed reckoning\u2014and my own still, silent.<\/p>\n

J. Scott Brownlee<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do not think it is a living nothing, where non-beings can make a kind of unearthly love, I think it\u2019s the nothing kind of nothing, I think we go through the door and vanish together. – Sharon Olds I, too, think often about warm sunlight\u2014 the intention it gives to a single flower being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1v8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10235,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5774\/revisions\/10235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}