Encountering God through Poetry: Creating a pantoum on National Poetry Day

Today here in the UK I’ve learned that it’s National Poetry Day! This just so happened to coincide with me leading one of Coracle’s Space for God slots, where we coming together as a community to encounter God, and I led us in writing a pantoum, a kind of poem. (You are more than welcome to join the Tuesday and/or the Thursday cohort! Links for both on the Coracle website. If you would like to engage with this prayer practice through the Space for God video, it is here.)

I’ve been thinking about liminal space ever since Gabriel Dodd shared his excellent thoughts on the topic in his Space for God. I later that afternoon wrote a pantoum about my own encounters with liminal space—the already but not yet experience that we encounter so often in life as followers of Jesus.

Today I encouraged us to wrestle with and sink into a passage from Romans, which pulses with the already-but-not-yet:

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. (Romans 8:22–27, NIV)

It’s deceptively simple to craft a pantoum—if you can jot down six phrases or lines, you have got it! I invite you to join in with this special practice:

• ponder with God what liminal space you’re in
• pray through the Romans passage
• go where the Spirit leads
• remember that the Spirit intercedes on your behalf

How to create a pantoum:

• write six lines or phrases
• label them A through F
• choose most important line as A
• make the second most important F
• order the lines in the following pattern:

1. A
2. B
3. C
4. D

1. B
2. E
3. D
4. F

1. E
2. C
3. F
4. A

I would love to hear from you if you engage in the practice, and if you meet God through it!