I don’t think my poems are especially good, and they are by far the least-viewed posts on this blog—but I publish them here anyway. Why is that?

The reason for me is very simple. I have always had a skepticism—and I think it is a healthy skepticism—of anyone who would write about contemplation this much, as much as I do, repeatedly, constantly, but not try their hand at poetry.

Now, don’t take that the wrong way. I don’t think every contemplative must be a writer. Nor do I think every contemplative writer must be a decent poet. Either of those propositions would be absurd. Most contemplatives don’t write. And most writers are not good poets. Indeed, perhaps the only people who have had contemplative vocations and were really, exceptionally good at writing poetry are—and I display my critical biases here—Saint John of the Cross and Raïssa Maritain (both the French and English poems, in my view). The combination of excellence in poetic accomplishment with contemplative experience is incredibly rare.

Moreover, I’m not a snob. I think poems can be critically unimpressive but still worth it. I do enjoy reading the less competent poems of, say, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, and Marcel Văn. These less critically impressive poems are important, and they do matter to me. I could never say that you have to be a genuinely good poet to be a contemplative writer. Still less could I say that you have to be a writer to be a contemplative.

What I do think is that, if someone were to write as much as I do on the topic, but always remain at the level of prose and ideas, that would raise questions in my mind. If you are talking to me about contemplation in a Christian sense, I genuinely want to know if you have some sort of feel for beauty.

Of course, people who don’t write poems can display their aesthetic sense in other ways. Pope Francis talks enough about beauty that we know it matters to him. Jacques Maritain wrote two books on art. The prose writing of Francis de Sales is packed with outstanding turns of phrase and memorable imagery. We don’t doubt that these people love(d) beauty. Their actions are clear enough.

It’s not just long-term actions that display an aesthetic sense, either. I admit that even one really punchy quote can do the trick. Perhaps the single best example of a quote that removes doubts about a person is one I know from Arturo Paoli. He speaks in a way that captures my idea, or at least part of its scope, really clearly: “Outside of economic categories, an artist or a contemplative is at times able to see things in themselves, as coming from the hand of God.”[1] It’s important that he isolates here just two. Artists, who create beauty, might see things a particular way. Contemplatives, who experience beauty overwhelmingly, have a similar experience and activate a similar capacity. Father Paoli adds right away, “Without this rediscovery, the use human beings make of things by necessity ends up disfigured”[2]—but however true and remarkable, this further dimension is a bit beside my main argument. What matters to me here is, nobody can read Arturo Paoli and doubt that art and contemplation, thus beauty and contemplation, are somehow a duo. He has placed himself in that group we don’t wonder about. We know he has an aesthetic sense. In some ambivalent but concrete way, he pairs it up with his beloved contemplation.

As regards other cases, though, questions linger: Does this person value beauty? Why the silence on the subject of beauty or aesthetic experience?

The point is, I absolutely do not want these questions to remain about me.

Christian contemplation is not an ideology. It’s an experience of divine beauty. That must come across from anyone talking about Christian contemplation. If it doesn’t, something has gone seriously wrong. There is, at the minimum, a communication problem.

The intrinsic link between aesthetic experience and contemplative experience isn’t just a personal idiosyncrasy of mine—though perhaps you could have argued that it was ten or twelve years ago, back when this blog started. Nowadays, it is something that Pope Francis has put into or evolved from within the Magisterium of the Church, too. Obviously, that validates a lot of my intuitions. It develops them in a robust, doctrinal form, and ultimately means a lot to me. I hope it means a lot to you, too—because the exact content of my poems probably doesn’t! But indulge me, and let me say with little Văn these words:

I would often wish to write some verses but I am very poor in poetical terms. (To Father Antonio Boucher, 21 Jan 1951)[3]

I lack poetic terms having sufficient meaning to express my thought, and I am still looking for them. Let me look for them little by little. (To Father Antonio Boucher, 13 Aug 1950)

Yes, let me look. In the meantime, beauty—and contemplation.

Image in header: pathway marker going from the city of Segovia down to the monastery of Discalced Carmelites that has a chapel with the remains of John of the Cross; one of the titles given to John on the marker post is “patron of poets.”

[1] Arturo Paoli, Freedom to be Free, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), 148.

[2] Ibid., 148–149. Translation altered slightly to give a better sense and fluidity in English.

[3] To = Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 3; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).