The call of the lamb

A brief diversion today from my 2021 “Sing Praise” project. On most Saturdays I haven’t selected a hymn or song although that will change shortly when we get to Lent. But today I took part in an online ‘quiet day’ with a couple of devotional talks, group discussion and times for personal prayer, all focused around the themes of ‘lament’ and ‘praise’ found in Psalm 57, which is believed to have been written by David in a cave while being pursued by his rival Saul.

The idea of being stuck in a cave fearing what’s outside obviously resonates with the Covid-19 lockdown. After the first session on ‘lament’ we were encouraged to take the words and themes of the psalm and come up with something creative – words, music, art or craft. My meditation resulted in the following poem. It was inspired by the photo shown here on the handout for the day. The viewer is looking out from the narrow cave and there is a sheep looking in. Jesus is referred to as both the Shepherd and the Lamb of God, and that is the poem’s starting point…

Look up, look out from your death-dark cave
And see me standing here.
You are not alone when you mourn and moan,
I have come to allay your fear.

Did you think I would stay in those pastures green
On the other side of the dale?
No, with sure-footed skill I have climbed your hill
To hear your woeful tale.

The enemy shall not find you here,
Nor lions enter your cave.
For I suffice as the sacrifice,
It is I who have come to save.

The Most High God comes down to earth
As a gentle, listening lamb.
I heard you bleat, and have come to meet
You where you are.  I Am.

© Stephen Craven 2021
Written on a Scargill virtual quiet day with Revd Mat Ineson, 6 February 2021

4 thoughts on “The call of the lamb”

  1. Thank you for the poem, Stephen.

    I have often wondered, and continue to wonder, whether Psalms 56 and 57 were originally written as alternatives to each other. Although they don’t in any way correspond verbally to each other (i.e. I don’t think there was any “copying” from one to the other), I think they correspond closely in their themes and also in their structures. Ps 56:10-11 is a repeat of Ps 56:4 (I use the bible’s verse numbers rather than the Prayer Book’s); likewise Ps 57:11 repeats Ps 57:5. Both of them can easily be fitted into a v1-ch-v2-ch-bridge-ch framework with minimal changing.

    You write: “we were encouraged to come up with … art or craft”. I find the delineation of art and craft most interesting: art is the way that something inside of ourselves finds its creative expression in something we produce, but craft is somehow the taking of the produce of the imagination and then fashioning it into some more resilient framework so that it endures and fits a purpose. You already went some distance from art to craft: your verses aren’t entirely “free”, but they have rhyme and rhythm such that it’s obvious how to read them rhythmically, and how to space the words out so that the stressed syllables come in a regular beat. You have introduced an internal rhyme in the 3rd line which sounds entirely natural but is of course the result of work and effort. Your poem is great – did the “craft” side of the instruction include anything about how to take a poem and create a hymn-lyric out of it? By tackling the question of whether the meter can be reshaped so that all the verses have the same rhythm? And did you consider whether there might be a call for your own voice – as opposed to the Lamb’s voice – to respond at the end of the poem? If it were to be said/chanted/sung by a group on stage (perhaps during a drama in a church service) instead of an individual, what features would help it to gel and cohere so that everyone kept together during the presentation?

    Thanks for a most interesting post which raises all these discussion questions.

    (I have the feeling I ought to know who Mat Ineson is, but I can’t place him.)

    1. There was no specific instruction on writing poetry, although I have previously been on a poetry writing workshop at Scargill. The first draft written ‘as it came to me’ included one line with the internal rhyme, and it was when I reviewed it as I was typing it up that I decided to make the internal rhyme a feature of the other verses to create a pattern, changed the order of two of the stanzas, and made a few other amendments to improve the rhythm when spoken aloud. There was no intention of having a regular metre to make it suitable for a strophic song. The only additional thought I’ve had since publishing it here would be to change punctuation of the last pair of lines:

      I heard you bleat, and have come to meet you.
      Where you are, I Am.

      The suggestion of a personal response is interesting, yes that would strengthen the ending.

  2. Many years ago I was part of a group called “Christian Songwriting Organization”, in which we posted up song-lyrics on an e-mail chat group, and wrote critiques of other people’s. The purpose was for us to help each other, and the key about critiques was to say WHY one felt what one felt rather than just what one felt. It was a most helpful group (to me, anyway).

    One of the ground rules was that the lyrics belong to the person who wrote them, who alone decides what to do with them. You alone are to decide whether adding another verse would strengthen the ending or not. My comments are just to prompt you to think, and it’s OK for you to say “no thank you”!

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