Christian Wiman is a fantastic poet whose poetry has been the first in a while to make me stop and want to reread a poem to really internalize it. And then reread it again. And again. And again. His poem Every Riven Thing is a beautifully written poem (which you can read here) in which the line “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made” is repeated throughout, but the syntactic structure changes each time, changing the meaning of the phrase and building upon itself in a linguistic and poetic crescendo. I highly recommend reading Every Riven Thing before reading on.

The following writing was written in response to the question: Things sing God’s being simply by being what they are, says Wiman. So, who/what are we, and what do you think it means to be who/what we are not?

We sing his being simply by being.

We are a song, beautifully made and sounded. A song that is sung simply because it has been written, and that is all the reasoning it needs. But a song can’t sing itself any more than a violin play itself, or a book write its own words. How can a violin know the fingering required to bring forth a chord, or a book the combination of words needed to articulate what is needed? We are a song, but by that same token, we cannot sing the song that we are. So then is it God singing the song, weaving together the melody and harmony into being?

I suppose so.

But what then does it mean when we are who we ought not to be? God cannot sing the song of lies, lust, and envy any more than a cardinal sing a bluebird’s song. A turtle cannot perform a lion’s roar; an oak tree cannot produce apples. And yet we know that at times those are the songs that are sung unto our being. So do we sing those songs? Can we even sing them?

I thought only God could sing.

But perhaps the dissonant chords of sin is our attempt to take control, to wrestle the baton from the conductor’s hand, as it were. We frantically grapple for the baton, like a child fighting against a parent in an attempt to pull something from their hands, hopelessly outmatched and yet we don’t know we are outmatched. And when we finally get the baton, we think we did it all on our own, but realistically maybe the parent loosened their grip to let us see what it would be like, to let us experience what happens when we take control.

But alas, when we do try to take control, we know not the melody – after all, we did not write it. We cannot perform what we do not know. And the songs we attempt to sing are brash and dissonant. The melody is halting and jarring, the harmony utterly unharmonious.

Perhaps that – our frantic attempt at conducting, our crazed waving of the baton in hope of something turning out right – is Sin.

And our asking for forgiveness and reconciliation is our recognizing our poor conduction, our wayward wandering being realized, and ashamedly handing the baton back to the conductor. We slowly and carefully, but dejectedly at the same time, place the baton back into His hand, saying “Your way is best.” And as He takes back the baton, He gives us a hug and pats us gently on the back, placing His hand upon our shoulder in a firm but tender way, saying, “That’s okay. Now let’s try that melody again.”

As He infinitely forgives, and as He begins to infinitely to sing again, louder and more beautiful than before.