Watching for the Kingfisher: Poems and Prayers

By Ann Lewin

Ann draws many insights into the nature of prayer from her love of birdwatching, and images from the natural world and from scripture permeate her writing. Wit, warmth and economy of expression characterise her style.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848254336

Book preview

Preface to the New Edition

I am delighted that Canterbury Press has undertaken to publish this new enlarged edition of Watching for the Kingfisher, and I remain grateful to all the staff of the Inspire imprint of the Methodist Publishing House, now discontinued, for publishing the first edition.

Earlier publications of my writing have been used by countless people in prayer groups, retreats and quiet days, and in personal reflection. Sometimes I am asked how the contents should be described: are they poems or meditative prayers? The category matters little, for poetry and prayer have this in common: both kindle the imagination and set it free to explore our inner world, as well as the world around us. Poets and liturgists try to find fresh imagery to express deep truths where well-worn phraseology has lost its cutting edge.

Poetry and meditative prayer have other features in common. Both slow us down. Unlike prose which fills the page with words, poetry leaves a lot of white space on the page. Poetry says that silence takes its place alongside sound as something significant, essential to our appreciation of the whole. We can’t get to the heart of a poem in a hurry. We need time to notice connections, to get a feel for rhythms, to hear resonances. We need to sit with a poem as we sit with any work of art, to let it begin its work in us. This attending, this waiting, is at the heart of prayer too. Both poetry and prayer take us to the space beyond words.

Poets hope to touch the springs of creativity in others. They play with imagery, helping us to see different facets of the truth, setting us free to explore beyond the limits of credal tidiness to find deeper understanding without precise definition. We don’t need to be frightened of exploring new imagery. We don’t turn God into anything by the words we use, but we may be surprised into fresh insights as we explore new ways of expressing what we have always known.

Like the writers of the Psalms, poets and prayer-writers can express wonder and delight in creation and gratitude for the care God has for his people, and they can also articulate lament. Much creativity comes out of negative experience, and lament is a valuable means of responding to it. Lament isn’t whinging or moaning, but the expression of our feelings as we face difficult areas of life and try to find meaning in them. Both prayer and poetry help us to make connections.

The title of Watching for the Kingfisher describes two related activities: birdwatching and prayer. I began to make the connection through the experience of not seeing a kingfisher. Everyone else in the house where I was a guest saw it, but I, the self-confessed birdwatcher, didn’t. It was frustrating to say the least! But one morning, when I was haunting the lake unsuccessfully yet again, I realized I was being told something important about prayer, and the poem ‘Disclosure’ from which the book’s title comes, was the result.

Prayer, the expression of our desire for God and our relationship with God, is not something we control, it is what we are drawn to. It is the practice of being there, ready to receive God’s gift of himself, not being put off if nothing much seems to be going on, or if conditions seem to be distinctly unfavourable, but waiting, alert and expectant.

Birdwatchers are in a sense contemplatives. They spend quite a lot of time waiting. They learn about times and seasons and habitats; they provide themselves with warm clothing and wet-weather gear so that they don’t just give up when the weather is challenging; they acquire equipment to help them focus and identify what they are looking at. Sometimes watchers are rewarded with the sight of a rare bird, mostly they have to be content with more common species, but always they learn something. One of the first things they learn is that birds have their own lives, and don’t appear just because we want them to: sometimes when watchers go out they see practically nothing, and sometimes they see birds they don’t expect.

Birds are always around – we have to get into the habit of keeping our eyes open so that we notice them. We have to be ready to meet God in unlikely places too, as well as obvious ones. God’s coming, like the arrival of a kingfisher, is always a gift. And because God’s habitat is the whole of creation, (not just the church!), our experience and circumstances as well as the more focused times of prayer, Bible reading and worship, are where God comes to us.

In this book I describe some of my moments of encounter and insight – kingfisher moments, flashes of brightness which give encouragement. I hope they will resonate with yours, and perhaps give you some kingfisher moments too.

Ann Lewin

Southampton 2009

Entrance

Pause at the threshold

Of the sacred