With these first few words, I’ve already probably broken several times one of the most important messages of Christian Wimaan in his opening plenary talk the conference, “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church at Yale Divinity School.

Especially in light of the new Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life report, America’s Changing Religious Landscape, Wiman recommended that when we write, we should think of the skeptic in the audience. What are we saying that makes it harder for the increasing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans to access what we are saying, to cross, as it were, the sacred threshold?

I imagine that talking about poetry, a conference at a divinity school, talking about churches, and using words like “bade” is enough to drive off many of my readers, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you, please stick around. I will do what I can to talk about divine mystery in metaphors to make it more accessible.

Instead of focusing on Wiman’s talk, I will focus on compline. Compline is the final church service, a completion of the working day. As my wife and daughter prepared to watch the final two hour episode the current season of SHIELD, I joined with several dozen other voices singing the great hymn, The Day Thou Gavest,

I would describe my singing as that of a weak bass. I like singing the bass part of songs when it is easy to pick out. Unfortunately, like church attendance, harmonic singing seems generally to be in decline. Not so around Yale Institute of Sacred Music. There were several basses around me carrying the part firmly enough so that I could feel comfortable singing along in harmony.

It is interesting to read that the hymn was written for missionary meetings since it is such a wonderful close of day hymn. This idea of the day being given by God seems so foreign to how I believe most of my skeptical unaffiliated friends think of their days. Instead, it seems many of them live lives of quiet desperation, to borrow Thoreau’s words, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, to follow on with words from David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is water” commencement speech.

Before compline, several of us stood outside in the warm May evening, as a strong but gentle wind caressed us and the sun provided spectacular end of day light. Yes, the day, the evening, the compline service, was a gift from God, and it is hard to remember these blessings in our desperate day to day battles. It is hard to remember these blessings as we read the news of man’s continued exploitation and oppression of their fellow men. It is hard to remember these blessings as the pinnacle of beauty or wit is too often thought of in terms of Facebook memes, or at best the season finale of a television show.

At compline, we listened to scripture, to the words of more great poets like Langston Hughes and Denise Levertov. We sang in harmony. We worshiped the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

How do we speak to the skeptical unaffiliated people of our nation? Perhaps, first we reconnect with the beauty of holiness, and then let the Lord speak through us.

When I ran for State Representative, I remember being struck by the importance of the verse from the psalms, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” It struck me that most politicians will say what they think is expedient and not what is rooted in their core beliefs to get elected. I wonder how often people in the church, trying to reach the skeptical unaffiliated do the same thing.

The title, “Love Bade Me Welcome” comes from George Herbert’s poem “Love”.

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

I entered this conference like the guest in Herbert’s poem, guilty of dust and sin, but Love did bade me welcome and made itself manifest at compline on the first day of the conference.