Poetry intimidates me.
I don’t feel like I’m old enough to really appreciate it. 
Like..maybe it requires a lot of life experience, kids or some epic Tolstoy journey.
Mostly, I’m wrong and feel intimidated by things I don’t understand all that well.

I was at a poetry reading last week for my sis-by-marriage, Leah.
[who is, an amazing writer.]
I call her Leah “The Pit-Stop Poet” Rupp.
For her love for pit-stop munchies and few other little inside bits I won’t mention just yet.

I sat with a steaming cup of tea and listened to folks my age tear deep down into the human condition of family history and life experience. Also, we got to hear a few little stories in verse from Bill Jolliff, one of GFU’s English professors who, might I add, has one amazing beard.
”..when you play music with people…communion happens.” Among many other profound and silly stories.

There was a guy there…who read this poem he had written out of an experience he had recently. He was driving along the stages of the cross [not sure where this was] and at the crucifixion, they put the car in reverse to leave - giving them this experience all over again…but backwards.
He spoke about Jesus getting off the cross and putting his clothes on…having a gentle conversation with Pontius Pilate and a joyful dinner with his disciples…

Then, he said something that really hit me, “And it all ended with Mary having an abortion..”
And in the small, intimate crowd were fellow students and loved ones…as many “hmms..” and “wows..” gave way into a thoughtful clap.

I, on the other hand, was pretty disturbed and pushed to do a great amount of introspection on what that really meant, as poetry tends to take me a while to fully process. I’m working on it.
The poem was absolutely brilliant and haunting. 
An odd experience, it must have been…and to experience the stages of the cross in the opposite way…ending in Mary not even giving birth to Jesus, but as an abortion - Jesus’ death not only violent on the cross, but in the womb. How heartbreaking…how excruciatingly heartbreaking. 

And growing up, I always remember sunday school teachers making a point of Jesus not getting off the cross…after all the mocking, torture and dehydration…and always saying..”He did that for you…”

I reckon’ as a kid, you can understand something like that. You know Jesus died on a cross for your sins…but with obvious etiquette of teaching children, you leave out that suffering. You leave out the term, “Death Penalty” unless referring to some criminal on TV. 
But yes…Jesus was a product of the death penalty. 

To imagine this story in reverse completely removes the foundations of what I believe…the compassion, suffering and redemption of love. 
But…we know this isn’t how it happened….and I think, that is what’s important, or at least monumental in the way I think about Jesus and Mary. A tiny intimate family revolutionizing the way we see humanity and suffering. 

I’m still a little intimidated by poetry. 
And I don’t feel like I deserve to be read to,
but it’s free…and it’s real and at it’s best…
terrifyingly beautiful.