Was That You Boss
- Prayer & Spiritual Formation
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2021
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Publisher's Description
Here are earthy poem-prayers for those who believe that God is actually interested in what we think and how we feel. Even if God causes the clouds to roll and stars to shine, God is known as the trustworthy friend and confidant who can be teased, yet also called upon to "look out your window" to "see the smoke hear the noise / please get up." And, yes, here God is always addressed as "Boss," employing the language of nature and rural living. The paradox in these psalms is that calling God "Boss" reminds us that in every psalm, God has powers and understanding the speaker does not, yet the one uttering each prayer believes that the Boss welcomes whatever is on the pray-er's mind. Indeed, the Boss is "all ears."
Endorsements (5)
Foreword
“The two best words to describe Steve Rhodes’s poetry are fresh and classic. His ideas are rooted in sacred tradition yet painted with fresh insights for today’s world of belief with its many challenges. Reading him is like returning to another time and place and then discovering you’re living in the midst of today’s realities.”
“Rhodes has crafted poems that simultaneously honor Manning’s original odes and establish a fresh vein of poetic response. There’s grit and earth in these rural psalms, and luminosity, too. Whether contemplative or angry, the poet’s voice is remarkably intimate as it addresses the source of life—adversary, beloved, and mystery always. Gorgeous.”
“J. Stephen Rhodes is a fearless poet who dares to write with irony, humor, and humility about the wild, inscrutable God who is Boss. Reading him, one catches glimpses of an actual unposed devout life wrestling with the One who delights in our wrestling. His images are often wry, ironic displays of human spirit that is thoroughly enfleshed.”
“Steve Rhodes’s poetic sequence Boss begins, ‘I went walking in the marsh / Boss the one with live oaks / dead pines cypress knees,’ sweeping us into a spiritual journey that is field guide, psalter, cry, and song. This opening poem wonders ‘was that you Boss / beneath cypress and tupelo.’ In compact lines stripped to the essential, this human voice bluntly addresses a God who is elusive, mysterious, even bewildering, a trickster God whom the speaker knows to be the steadiest of companions.”
“Before I knew the poetry of J. Stephen Rhodes, I knew him as a theologian, educator, and an accidental farmer. I know the tract of land he owned in Kentucky. I even bush-hogged it a few times. But even if I had not already seen it, Rhodes’s poems allow me to ‘see’ that landscape and others where he keeps up a running, honest, poignant, funny, and demanding conversation with Boss. I once read where Rowan Williams said every theologian is beginning in the middle of things. Rhodes’s Boss poems are situated in the Middle, where an imperfect person attempts to have honest conversations with Boss. Rhodes unveils for his readers a landscape we can all see in order to show us the Boss who remains, as always, veiled, while also known.”
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