Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn
The Pulse in the Prayer
Clem Schoenebeck
November 28, 2004

Drumbeat             (1999)

My time is here, my time is now,

Days whisper quickly by.

The hours brush upon my brow

like trees against the sky.

The moment flows, it cannot wait,

Its rhythmn drums too loud.

The minutes dance upon my fate

like raindrops from a cloud.

The meter shows, it will impose

each breath's allotted air.

The cadence slows, it only slows,

when floating through a prayer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First, a brief poetry lesson. For me, poems and prayers are often

interchangeable. I wrote this poem five years ago, as an exercise

in meter (beat) and breathing. This is an example of metrical verse.

Most of today’s poetry is written in free verse; It is not written with

great attention to rhythmic detail. Many of today’s best poets feel

that even free verse is better if the writer has a foundation in metrics.

Otherwise, there is a danger that poetry will lose its pulse, and

therefore, its feeling.

(Robert Frost once said that poetry without metrics is like

playing tennis without a net.)

In the children's playful word games, there is a beat, a natural

cadence which draws us into their movement.

Listen to these old echoes:

Rain, rain, go away

Come again, another day,

Little Johnny wants to play

Cross patch, draw the latch

Sit by the fire and spin.

Take a cup and drink it up

Then call the neighbors in. 

These sparkling clusters of sound are like fireflies in a jar,

waiting to escape into the dancing, skipping and singing

we all knew as children. Where did it go? Can we retrieve

that music?

Continuing with the poetry lesson:

the meter shows, it will impose, each breath's allotted air...

Cadence and breathing; how rapidly we say our words,

and how many words we get into one breath, determines

how we are heard.

Iambic Pentameter is a  parade of words, the most

widely used line in English metrical verse, the line of

Shakespeare's sonnets and plays, Milton's Paradise Lost,

much of Robert Frost's poetry.

Iambic refers to the beat. Its cadence is of an unstressed

syllable followed by an accented syllable. This is an iamb.

The rain     In Spain   good night   aachooo!

It is the most natural and unforced rhythm of our language.

Pentameter means the line is long enough to have Five

stressed syllables or feet.

the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain (pentameter)

the rain in Spain is on the plain                    (tetrameter)

The pentameter line is most commonly used by the English

poets; it matches the capacity of our lungs for normal speaking.

It fits nicely  when forming a full phrase. It is conducive to

meditation and prayer.

Now, an important point about the Iambic beat. And this gets to the

heart of my message. When Doctor or Nurse places the stethoscope

on your chest, it is Iambic music that is being listened to. The textbooks

describe the sound of the heartbeat like this: Lub Dub Lub Dub LubDub,,,

Unstressed beat, followed by an accented beat.

The beat is iambic. Indeed we hope for longer than a pentameter line!

The point is that when we listen to poetry or speech in iambic meter,

we are hearing a heartbeat in the words.

My sermon is not about forming poetry. Today, we are bombarded by

angry words from Talk Radio, from Television Analysts, from our

National and International leaders. In the recent political campaign,

I often felt that both candidates were dialed up to full volume, day after

day. I felt “Yelled At” most of the time.The Talk Radio stars compete with              

each other to see how much anger can be jammed into one breath.

Politicians and public figures have no monopoly on inflammatory speech.

It happens with neighbors, friends, and our closest family members.

I must admit that the times in my own life which I most deeply regret,

have been the direct result of too much heat in my own speech. 

We can look at the vision of “Road Rage” in the car next to us on the

interstate, and just imagine the angry words bouncing off the

interior walls of that car.

Today’s  Political Ideologue has choked the heartbeat out of

his message, so that his words are crushed into one loud scream.

The effect on me is simple; I tune him out. In my opinion, our country

Is more divided than I can remember. Angry words contribute to this

division. The gentle speaker who respects the opposing voice, the speaker

who patiently enunciates with the diction of compromise and compassion,

that person is likely to be run over at the intersection of differing opinion,

where an angry opponent could not listen to one word of dissent,

could not wait one more second for the light to turn green. I remember  

the clever debates I used to hear between Sen. John Patrick Moynihan

and Sen. Bob Dole. Words were used cleverly, more in a sparring manner

than a knockout punch. The argument was won by instruction and respectfully

opening up one’s eyes to another viewpoint. One did not have to leave his

opponent bloodied, by the side of the road. Indeed, it is naïve to wish for

a world of only kind words. Sometimes the “alarm” must be sounded. There

are valid times for angry words, but those times seem to be leaking more

and more into common conversation.

I wish to hear a more gentle heartbeat  in the words surrounding us.  

I especially wish our elected officials would set an example, by their words,

That we can disagree respectfully, without demonizing The Disagreers as

Being against God and Country. The pulse of tolerance is needed by all.

Allow me to present some words with a pulse; words that imply generosity

And concern for the human condition: 

Four Lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Listen to Frost’s use of the language, so natural

And unforced that the “pulse” is there almost

Without realizing it.

Robert Frost      Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though.

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go, before I sleep,

And miles to go, before I sleep. 

Consider now, if you will, words of a bigger-named poet.

(I have 11 letters in my name, Frost has 5.)

This poem was formed with metrics in mind.

It was inspired by a clip from the  evening news.

If, in this poem, you feel the pulse of sadness,

I have written an acceptable poem.

Sonnet to the Numb Widow

The widow, numb, on the evening news

She cannot weep, she cannot feel

Her soldier’s death must be refused

Embrace denial, this grief’s too real

Young and still in wooden flight,

His pine-boxed dreams in frozen slumber

Homecoming dark, in the darkest night

Draped in his flag, he adds to the number

His infant son, dies his own death,

Becomes a father to his father’s leaving

Pray for the prayer of prayer on his breath

To give him endurance for durable grieving.

The math of war, a simple equation

Subtracts as it adds, with harsh calibration. 

There is another dimension of sound and meter that I wish to honor.

Nature has forever had its own poetry, inherent, unlearned. Nature

never attended a workshop on rhyme and rythmn. It was always the

Teacher, never the student.

In mid-September I hiked in the Wind-River Mountains of Wyoming,

with my brother and his son. On our way to our destination, we spent

a day Fly-fishing on the Madison River, in Southwestern Montana.

In that part of the country, fly-fishing is a spiritual exercise, if not a

Religion. The fishermen have enormous respect for the fish, which is

almost always released. The ritual of fly-fishing is a meditation, in which

the eye is filled with beauty, the heart adapts to a patient beat, and the

ear is filled with the noise of the rushing water. See if you hear this pulse

on the banks of the Madison, in a meditation with nature.

Fishing the Madison               (southwestern Montana)

 Beyond the crossing at Three-Dollar Bridge,

The endless sweep of prairie sage

Shimmers silvery-green, like an ocean

Flooding the foothills of the Madison Range

Lofty and jaggedly proud in the East.

The river’s swish, gurgle and slap

Pitches and tumbles in frothy crests,

Slithers in rushing bubbles and whoosh,

Riffles in bubbles and whoosh.

Now begins the upsteam meditation.

Fly rod up, out, 12 o’clock, then 3,

Curled back, flicked out in the long reach

Of an extended prayer, casts upon the water

The Wooly Bugger, the Elk-hair Caddis.

Begins now the guessing, about

The missionary’s uncertain gift,

How the offering looks from underneath,

The hook-hidden hope for communion

Before the downstream reality, unanswered...

Begins now, the faith of repetition. 

Begins, now, the faith of repetition. We will speak again and again.

I wish for a world in which our children and their children will hear words

carried by the pulse of generosity. I wish for them, a return to a language

of acceptance of differences, a dialogue in which we can respectfully agree

to disagree.

Francie and Choir “I’m Dancing”

Finally, I know I AM preaching. If I take myself too seriously, it would not be

good. Therefore,I offer, in Iambic Pentameter, a disclaimer for this sermon.

            In case you think I practice what I preach,

            Don’t be mislead, that’s too much of a reach.

            But maybe if I think about my speech,

            With grace I’ll learn to practice what I preach.

May we all speak with kindness. May we all hear it coming back to us.

Amen....