POEMS BETWEEN HERE AND BEYOND - Introduction

(My books are available on Amazon at this link.)

(Before becoming a preacher, a nurse, an amateur artist, or a massage therapist, I was a poet. I still am. Getting my poetry published in more than homemade binders had been a dream for years. Health challenges and the rise of modern book-publishing technology merged to motivate me to make the effort. This and my other books are published through Kindle Direct Publishing in both paperback and Kindle editions.

I wanted to put the introductory essays for each poetry collection on my blog. If you want to know what makes me tick, my poems tell it better than a biography.

This "Introduction" and the concluding poem are from my 5th book of poems. To read the posts from my others, click on these links:

Poems Between Heaven and Hell

Poems Between Darkness and Light;

Poems Between Death and Life;

Poems Between Birth and Resurrection;

Poems Between Fear and Faith;

Poems Between the Beginning and the End.)

“Introduction” to

Poems Between Here and Beyond

Ancient Chinese wisdom aptly pictures humans with feet on earth and heads in heaven. We inhabit two worlds, one tangible, measurable, concrete; the other intangible, difficult to measure, often elusive. Men and women are body-spirit beings, participating simultaneously in two modes of existence: material and mental. We’re not spirits wrapped in flesh or bodies with souls, but a marriage of them, a wedding of the animal and the angelic, an amalgamation of the chemical and the transcendent, a unique union embodying God’s image.

We can’t escape being replicas of our Creator. If we try denying our God-likeness, human art betrays us in paintings, plays, novels, songs, poems and other creative works. We image a Supreme Artist. Or if we try denying God as the Decider of “good and evil,” we empty our own personal moralities of meaning. We can’t remove an Ultimate Authority from the human equation without forfeiting the divine certainty that we are “very good” parts of creation (Gen 1:31).

Confidence in a Self-revealing God gives us a much more solid and human-friendly perspective. His existence (God reveals Himself in Scripture as “Father”) makes creativity and morality not just gifts but callings. As image-bearers of the Designer and Judge of all things, we were meant to mimic Him. He calls us to create new designs and to live holy lives.

Communicating truth is also part of that divine image. God is love, and love communicates. So, the God of truth and love is also a Communicator, sharing truth with us and infusing into us a persistent attraction to it. This explains why human creativity is often an attempt to communicate, using story, song, poetry, music, dance, drawing, sculpture.

Perhaps our greatest purpose in imaging God is to be His ruling representatives. He made us mediators, belonging to both the cosmic and celestial worlds. Ultimately, His revealed plan is to bring both realms under a single, divine government administered by human servant-leaders.

This coming reign has a human King, in fact, “the King of kings and the Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16). The Old Testament foretold His First Advent—the transcendent God’s incarnation into creation as a human being “to reconcile all things to Himself” (Col 1:20). The New Testament culminates in His Second Advent: the God-Man’s return in His resurrected body to reign over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1). Although this renewed universe awaits future fulfillment, it has already begun in the hearts of those following this Savior, Jesus Christ. In a real sense, the future is already here while still on its way.

This kingdom context is where I live, think, preach, and write poetry. Along with others in Christ’s Body—His Bride, the Church—I serve as one of the King’s royal ambassadors in a familiar but foreign land. It’s familiar, because He created it, sustains it, and plans to fully renew it. But it’s foreign, because human sin and selfishness have misshapen it. His kingdom has come, but it’s still coming. Jesus initiated God’s salvation plan, but we still pray for His reign’s full consummation, using the familiar words He taught us: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). Christians live in a world of already but not yet. So does everyone else, even if unconsciously.

As I’ve aged, I’ve become more aware of the body-spirit nature of humanity. The here-and-now of the material world is quite blatant. We spend time and energy maintaining the body and its health, engaging in labor and leisure, accumulating and managing possessions. But the beyond of the spiritual world impinges on these material dimensions of life with a long list of immaterial values and virtues, some of which are listed as fruits of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).

While our spiritual lives anticipate a destiny hereafter, our future afterlife begins here and now. Christ’s First Advent firmly planted the future’s presence in historical time. His earthly work established an ongoing beachhead of God’s Kingdom in our fallen, sin-scarred world. Tradition calls this holy battalion the Church Militant—Christ’s loyal followers still engaged in earthly spiritual warfare. The Church Triumphant comprises that group of faithful souls who now rest from life’s labors, awaiting a reunion with their physical bodies promised by Christ’s resurrection. Yet, by that mystery described in the Creed as “the communion of saints,” these departed believers are still surrounding us as “a great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1), watching our progress in faith and cheering us on to victory. Christians live between a present here and future beyond.

All my previous poetry books are “poems between.” While this introduction explains the name of this fifth one, its title certainly doesn’t account for the wide variety of themes and thoughts expressed by the poems included—some written years ago and some included merely for comic relief. But this long preface does describe where and in what frame of mind most of them were written. At this stage of my life, I feel even more keenly my location in this “between” mode of living. Yet, although less active now, since my retirement from hospital nursing, I also feel in the midst of dynamic momentum.

We never move through time; time moves through us. Our present is without dimension, sandwiched between an irrevocable past and an unfurling future. The now dividing them cannot be subdivided, but it can be wasted. We can ignore our calling as God’s image-bearers, squandering the remaining days of our sojourn between here and beyond in trivial pursuits. I pray these poems paint pictures, sing songs, preach sermons, tell tales that will stimulate awareness of time’s limits and encourage decisions of personal involvement in the present and future reign of the King.

— David L. Hatton

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

BABIES

All babies bring from heaven
Some vestiges at birth
To modify the burdens
And daily grind of earth.
Angelic light still gleaming
From eyes that know no guile,
They capture us with wonder
And charm us with their smile.

When parents are devoted,
Their inborn love protects
These precious little infants,
Just as the Lord expects.
But this is not the reason
He calls adults to share
Their sweet maternal nurture
And strong paternal care.

God sends us helpless babies,
So innocent and dear,
To challenge selfish habits
That we’ve picked up down here;
To lift us from our folly
And fill our empty cup;
To teach us precious lessons
And help us to grow up.

— David L. Hatton, 10/5/2015
(Poems Between Here and Beyond, © 2016)

For more single poems from this volume, visit my website's “Poetry Page.”

GOD’S INTERACTION WITH HUMAN WILLS

Triune Deity enjoys perpetual fellowship. Other concepts of God are lonely ones. The Trinity has no essential need for personal relationship beyond Their eternal Society of Three. Yet Scripture reveals that God desires to interact with the world He created, especially with faith decisions made by the world of humanity (John 3:16).

The Bible never bothers explaining any theological problems raised by its descriptions of this divine desire or by its expectation of true responsiveness between divine and human wills that make this desire genuine. Some forms of theology actually reduce the freedom of human choice—and God’s interaction with it—to an illusion. God’s Word, they reason, reports these mutually free dealings as authentic only to accommodate our limited understanding of His omniscience and sovereignty.

Such theological reasoning about God is human-unfriendly. The Bible, on the other hand, is not. In fact, Scripture often depicts God legitimately interested in how we respond to His directives, to His Presence, to His Person. If the biblical revelation is accurate, then God has sovereignly chosen to let human decisions inform His omniscience, and human actions in time move His will in eternity. Otherwise, biblical narratives of God’s activity seem as fictitious as fables or as illusory as the maya of Hinduism.

For instance, was God merely play-acting when, after having “formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky,” He “brought them to the man to see what he would name them”? Genesis 2:19 says that “whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” God made but did not name any creatures. He let man name them. This verse literally shows God desiring to learn those names. Later, not only does He use them Himself whenever talking about animals, but He also adopted at least two for His own incarnate identity: “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) and “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5). Man invented those names. God responded to their invention in time by incorporating them into His own eternal vocabulary and by later naming Himself with a couple of them. That thought is something to chew on.

There’s an even greater biblical example of God identifying Himself with a human response to Him. Coming to Jacob in a dream, God announced, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me.” (Genesis 31:13a). He was referring back to the time when Jacob did those things in response to His self-revelation (Genesis 28:10-22). Jacob renamed the location where it happened from “Luz” to “Bethel,” he performed a ritual anointing to consecrate a stone, and he made a solemn vow to the Lord. God told him to do none of these things. They were all Jacob’s own ideas. Yet God adopted Jacob’s creative responses to Him, making them into part of His own identity. The Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, will forever be “the God of Bethel.” He sovereignly chose it as one of His titles for eternity, because of his interaction with human faith in time. He may have done exactly the same thing with many of your own faith encounters with Him. How human-friendly that is!

Another report of God’s reaction to our response to Him is given in Malachi 3:16 (ESV), “Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name.” This verse is amazing! It shows that an eternally omniscient God is listening in on our conversations in time, because He’s concerned about what we have to say to each other about Him. He’s so excited about our discussion that he makes sure it gets it eternally recorded!

God certainly needs no notebook to jot down our devotional conversations to jog His memory. They probably were not written to remind Him, but to educate us. Some of us have a stubborn theology that undermines the authenticity of His open-ended interactions with humans. He wants it known in eternity that He did not determine our responses—He danced with them. His earthly interactions with us were all real, not just contrived accommodations for the frailty of our fallen and depraved human minds.

During His heavenly review of our lives and of the many unworthy trusts we held sacred, God may have to point out to many this human-unfriendly belief adamantly held and taught about His dealings with humans. This “book of remembrance” mentioned by Malachi will forever condemn the shame of such a theological allegiance.

When we live in a world where its Creator treats our decisions and actions with as much integrity as He expects us to treat His own, we live in a human-friendly world. In the midst of the trials and troubles brought about by human sin, faith in such a God makes the journey not just tolerable but joyous.

THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST’S ATONEMENT

It may interest, anger, befuddle or flabbergast you, but there’s no one specific view of Christ’s atonement that fully explains the spiritual transaction in history and in eternity that transpired at the Cross of Calvary. It remains as mysterious as the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation.

Those interested can survey the various theories of the Atonement on the Web. My purpose here is not to recount them, but to decry how so many Bible teachers haughtily assume theirs to be the right one: “How dare anyone question the legal-penal substitution theory? Doesn’t it undergird all our evangelical preaching?” A better question is, “How could the church even use the word atonement to describe what happened on the Cross?” Most theologians readily admit that it’s a major misappropriation of terminology in Christian thinking, but also that it's a term we're stuck with.

In the Old Testament usage of the Hebrew word atonement (kaphar, “to cover over”) is a concept of hiding sin’s guilt by covering it with the blood of animal sacrifices. Ecclesiastic prudery insists that God clothed the first sinners with animal skins to approve or accommodate the very first independent idea and action of their sin nature: a felt need to hide their bodies. A view more in keeping with His gracious character is that God was providing His delinquent image-bearers either physically—with warmth and protection in a fallen world—or spiritually—with the first recorded kaphar, an atonement or covering for their sin.

Not only is the concept of atonement etymologically absent from the New Testament, but a new idea is introduced. We first hear it from the lips of John the Baptist upon seeing Jesus at the Jordan: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus came to take away sins, not to cover over them, which was all that animal sacrifices could do. These sacrificial repetitions, year after year, only reminded sinners that personal guilt was put away from sight not taken away (Hebrews 10:4-5). Jesus accomplished the latter.

But how did the transaction at the Cross work? Was it a debt repayment, a redemptive trade-off, a substituted punishment, an absorption of divine wrath? A narrow focus on the Cross alone, in conjunction with certain Scriptures, might elevate any of these motifs to the exclusion of others. But there is a larger picture, one that weaves the Cross and the Resurrection into one solid and inseparable tapestry of redemption. That is the ransom or restoration theory of the Atonement.

In Gustaf Aulén’s book, Christus Victor, I learned that this understanding of the Atonement dominated Christian thought for the first millennium of Church history. C. S. Lewis employed it as the basis for his allegorical representation of the death of Christ in Aslan’s death for “the traitor” and subsequent resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I first read Christus Victor, I was inspired to write the following poem with the same title, as an attempt to capture this idea of strategic ransom:

            CHRISTUS VICTOR

Drawn into a web of darkness,

Duped and drugged with sin's seduction,

Down we drank the Devil's lie

And were lost within the starkness

Of a wasteland of destruction,

Damned and doomed, condemned to die.

Love Almighty, Love Creator,

Love, Who breathed His image in us,

Love, the awesome Trinity,

Planned to foil the Fabricator,

Planned to plunder hell and win us

By strategic mystery.

God descended and invaded

Human flesh and limitation,

Preaching Heaven's Reign begun,

Waging war where sin pervaded,

Buying reconciliation,

Tasting death for everyone.

Had they known the power hidden

In the Lion's crucifixion,

Hell would not have killed the Son.

Now the human race is bidden

To depart from self-addiction

Through the victory Jesus won.

Christus Victor!  God descended

To fulfil the Law's postponement.

Slain, He slew the death we died!

Christ is risen!  God ascended!

Sinners, purchased by atonement,

Rise with Christ, the Crucified!

Christ Triumphant!  Christus Victor!

Captives freed by hell's disruption

Soar like eagles taking wing!

Ransomed by the Liberator,

Slaves to sin and death's corruption

Gain new life in Christ the King!

            -- David L. Hatton, 11/21/95

Because of its heavy dependence on a realistic view of the Incarnation, this atonement theory has quietly influenced the development of my theological thinking. Yet, in general, I forgot my initial excitement in discovering it . . . until recently, when I saw the video clip of Brian Zahnd giving, “The Gospel in Chairs.” I encourage you to watch it, maybe more than one time. If it doesn’t immediately blow your mind, then ask yourself, “Does how I view and preach the Cross accurately represent the heart of the Heavenly Father who ‘so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son’?” You may find yourself reaching back to the minds and helpful illustrations of our early Christian ancestors for a balanced view of this mystery.

It’s important to approach unfathomable mysteries in the Christian faith with deep reverence and godly humility. Glib confidence and sometimes outright cockiness in Christians mouthing their beliefs may not only be a turn-off for the prospective convert, but a point of great future embarrassment, or even tears of regret, in the presence of our risen, conquering King, Christus Victor.

ART IS A TEACHER

Art is not just a skill but a teacher. When I began art courses in 2006, I started seeing things differently. I noticed shapes and arrangements, colors and tones, lines and curves, schemes and designs, everywhere around me.

One night in the hospital, I caught myself staring at the typical row of skin creases around one of my patient’s armpits where her pectoralis inserted beneath the deltoid. I was suddenly fascinated and wanted to capture on paper an area of the body I’d seen for decades without noticing or appreciating its uniqueness. The same was true for other parts of the naked anatomy, but especially the structures of the face: eyebrows, noses, lips, jawbone angles, ears, hair; all were more interesting now. Art had given me renewed vision, awakening my eyes to see more of what I'd been looking at without really seeing.

Because my mind is steeped in theology and logic, it was easy to see another dimension where art is a teacher. In meditating on humanity’s bent toward creativity, I saw how artists, even in their most innovative moments, are essentially imitators. All human art is an imitation of the artistry within creation. Even the abstract artist selects and recombines the same lines and forms and colors, even the randomness, which have always been resident in nature. This teaches us something about God and something about ourselves.

After I’d been taking art classes for a few years, I wrote this poem:

ARTIST

Paint clouds that really rain
And noisy, running streams,
Or birds that can take flight
And sing beyond your dreams,
Or sculpt a lovely nude
That wakes to your embrace . . .
If not, then praise the Artist
Who made the human race.

— David L. Hatton, 10-20-2009

Today, in thinking more about the theological lessons of art, I finished another similar poem:

DESIGNERS

We’re designed to be designers
By the Maker of the skies.
When they copy nudes and nature,
Artists often plagiarize.
Praise the Artist of creation,
When you render earthly art.
Our designs are mere reflections
Of the great Designer’s heart.

— David L. Hatton, 12- 27-2012

Human artists and their compositions provide a powerful, extra-biblical proof that we are made in the image of the Original Artist.

INTRODUCING MY BLOG

I like to learn, but I must teach. Discoveries delight the mind, but sharing them fulfills the heart. When I gain new perspectives on God, His Word, creation, or our place in it, I feel compelled to express them. This usually comes through prophetic prose or poetic verse, but occasionally in the form of visual artwork. This blog is my way of passing along those insights and inspirations to those interested.

In introducing my blog, let me first break apart and explain the wording of my name for it: “PastorDavidRN's DANCE with NAKED TRUTH.” Its long title is an important description.

My parents named me “David,” which means “beloved.” I’ve always appreciated that. Knowing my name’s literal Hebrew meaning helped me grow up with gratitude. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt thankful for being “beloved,” not just by my parents, but by God.

I really am a pastor, an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church. Since 1996, I’ve served a small retirement community church sponsored by Faith Legacy Church. Many of the sermons I’ve preached there can be listened to on “My Sermons” webpage. Some of the insights shared on this blog came during this pastoral ministry to seniors.

I’m also really an RN, which now stands for Retired Nurse after I left hospital work in 2015. I got my nursing degree in 1981 and worked the ER for almost a decade. Then, cross-training to OB in 1991, I helped multiple thousands of mothers give birth and breastfeed their babies. Meditation on the physical realities of life—so dynamically obvious in nursing—shaped much of my thinking about the embodied nature of our humanity.

Dance is a meaningful metaphor. Life rarely marches in a straight line. It spins and whirls, jumps and twirls. Also, we rarely dance solo. The dance floor of life is relational. I first used this illustrative term in my talk called, “The Dance of the Sexes.” All humans are in a dance, because we are made in the image of a Trinity Who have danced together forever.

Naked is another term with metaphorically rich meaning. Its reputation today, however, is smothered by prudish fear and sullied with pornographic filth. Hopefully, from time to time, I will offer an array of historical, cultural, theological, and psycho-social insights on nakedness that will help restore its human-friendly significance.

Truth is foundational for true love. Without it, love becomes wishful sentimentality, at best, and addictive fantasy, at worst. Jesus said “the truth” can liberate those enslaved to sin (John 8:31-36). We get the phrase “the naked truth” from an ancient fable that beautifully illustrates the nature of truth: “While Truth was bathing in a river, Falsehood stole her clothes, and rather than wear the rags Falsehood left behind, Truth went about thereafter naked and unadorned.” I wrote a poem about this fable to expand upon its concepts.

Insights are epiphanies, realizations that are usually sudden and unbidden. Since they seem to come more frequently with age, I believe most of them arise from the workings of human reason. But they can also be God-given revelations. If so, they must always be checked against God’s Word, His authoritative revelation to us. Part of the reason I’m starting this blog is that I seem to have so many of them. If they touch on Christian doctrine, I won’t share them unless they can be shown not to contradict Scripture.

Inspirations are much like insights, but to me they serve as ignition points for creative expression. I have been writing poetry since early childhood. My love for proverbs, epigrams, and aphorisms has made me a collector of quotes and lured me into the challenging task of whittling ideas down to short, pithy and catchy sentences. Since 2006, I’ve begun to fulfill my dream doing of artwork. Some of all these areas of inspiration will appear on the blog.

God is my King. My life and my thoughts revolve around Him. If I hear His existence doubted, my reason goes into gear to prove Him real. If I hear Him maligned, my thoughts line up in ranks to defend His character. My goal is to love Him more. So, I can’t help but bring God into this blog, since He is not only its Lord but the motivation behind it.

Creation is everything else—all reality other than God. I have many insights and inspirations both about the handiwork of God and about His creative will in the continuity of human creativity. But there is one place where God and creation personally meet: the Incarnation. If you find my blog heavy on the implications of that doctrine, it’s because it has captivated the bulk of my thinking for years, and I will never tire of its riches in contemplation nor exhaust its depths by writing about the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

So, welcome to my blog—my dance with “the naked truth”—as it tries to offer my insights and inspirations concerning God and creation.