By PEGGY MOEN
As I was reading Wilfred G. Chen’s God Speaks in Silence: Poems for All Seasons, I also reread Pope John Paul II’s message for Lent of 2004, in which the late, sainted Holy Father reflected on the severe suffering innocent children sometimes undergo:
“What evil have these children done to merit such suffering? From a human standpoint it is not easy, indeed it may be impossible, to answer this disturbing question. Only faith can make us begin to understand so profound an abyss of suffering. By becoming ‘obedient unto death, even death on a Cross’ (Phil. 2: 8), Jesus took human suffering upon himself and illuminated it with the radiant light of his resurrection. By his death, he conquered death once for all.”
Through his collected poems, Dr. Chen, a physician and cancer research scientist, offers his own perspectives on suffering. Like John Paul, he finds the answer in Christ’s agony. Chen gives this exploration of the daily sufferings we all undergo in his poem The Cross:
Never a need,
to look for the Cross.
It meets us every day,
every hour
of every day,
a Harsh word,
a Spit on the Face,
a Highway puncture,
or Just missing the Bus,
The Will of God
or The Will of Man,
or Just the rawness
of the circumstance,
whatever,
whenever,
Let us
carry the Cross,
Bearing it Silently.
Becoming the Cross, slowly
Bit by Bit.
A Living Cross,
Breathing it slowly,
Breathing out calmly,
with a patience,
an inner Peace
and an inner Silence.
The suffering of the innocent is the hardest aspect of the problem of evil, but we struggle the most against the everyday aggravations that Dr. Chen lists above, and we need to become “A Living Cross” to find consolation. Sometimes the rhythms of poetry express that better than straightforward prose can.
Chen’s poem In The Beginning is reminiscent of chapter 38 of the Book of Job, where the Lord speaks to Job out of the whirlwind:
In the beginning
there was God.
Outside, there was nothing.
Neither you nor I
nor Darwin.
Nothing to evolve
neither dust
nor mist
no birds in the air
no fish in the sea
no crawling serpents
no lights no darkness
no day no night.
Only God. . . .
Along with theological themes, Chen also writes about the everyday joys of his own life and our lives: friends, teachers, the seasons, golf, even a poem on snow, which speaks of the “Coldest Winter, / Country for Bears / And Eskimos.” Unlike reading some poetry, in Dr. Chen’s work we learn something about him — his work, friends, family, and personal heroes — which gives us greater insight into his writing.
The penitential season of Lent is also the time to meditate on the end of our earthly lives. This short poem, Crumpled in Age, is a reminder of that:
Crumpled with age
crooked on stick,
swaggering in mind,
still stamping
in anger.
What a waste, never too late
for Repentance,
Time for Peace.
For those interested in adding this slim of book of poems (116 pages) to their Lenten readings — or who would simply like to read some calming and enlightening poetry — you can order the book an amazon.com or you may contact Dr. Chen by email at: wilfredgchen@hotmail.com.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress