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Go listen to this very fine poet!

St. John of the Ladder Orthodox Church

701 Augusta Arbor Way
Piedmont (Greenville), SC  29673

864-299-1140

St. John of the Ladder Orthodox Church is centrally located in the Greater Greenville Area near the intersection of US 25S and I-185 (the ‘Southern Connector’), and can be accessed via Interstates 85, 185, 385 and US 25.

HIS Resurrection: A Poem

Here is a wonderful poem about the Lord’s Descent to Hell and Glorious Resurrection (in which we share), by the Orthodox poet Scott Cairns, a professor at the University of Missouri.


Into Hell and Out Again

In this Byzantine-inflected icon
of the Resurrection, the murdered Christ
is still in Hell, the chief issue being

that this Resurrection is of our aged
parents and all their poor relations.
We find Him as we might expect, radiant

in spotless white, standing straight, but leaning
back against the weight of lifting them. Long
tradition has Him standing upon two

crossed boards—the very gates of Hell--and He,
by standing thus, has undone Death by Death,
we say, and saying nearly apprehend.

This all—the lifting of the dead, the death of Death,
His stretching here between two realms—
looks like real work, necessary, not pleasant

but almost matter-of-factly undertaken.
We witness here a little sheepishness
which death has taught both Mom and Dad; they reach

Christ’s proffered hands and everything about
their affect speaks centuries of drowning
in that abysmal crypt. Are they quite awake?

Odd—motionless as they must be in our
tableau outside of Time, we almost see
their hurry. And isn’t that their shame

which falls away? They have yet to enter bliss,
but they rise up, eager and a little shocked
to find their bodies capable of this.

--Scott Cairns

Cairns on Answers to Prayer

Possible Answers to Prayer
by Scott Cairns

Your petitions—though they continue to bear
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value—nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you—

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.


From here.

Cairns Explores Reality through Poetry

Scott Cairns is a 2006 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious prize awarded to those recognized with exceptional achievements and promise. The cash prize, which averaged $38,236 in 2005, allows winners to develop their work free from normal monetary constraints.

According to Richard Schwartz, dean of the University of Missouri's College of Arts and Science, “The competition for Guggenheims is keen in the extreme." He says that “The daunting ratio between applicants and recipients actually understates the reality, since this is the most coveted of awards and individuals propose their strongest possible research/creative endeavors for the competition, knowing all others are doing the same.”

Cairns used the award money to travel to Mount Athos, an Orthodox monastic community in Greece. Cairns' first three visits to Mount Athos were integral to starting and finishing his prose memoir. Life on Mount Athos, like life at many secluded monasteries, is not for the casual observer, but for the individual looking to experience the contemplative life.

In Recovered Body, Cairns explores Old Testament texts, attempting to recapture the binary distinctions or supplementary opposites that focus the biblical worldview. Cairns is always exploring Reality through his writing and one can't explore Reality without touching the bases of night-day, male-female, heaven-earth, good-evil, etc.

In an interview with Mars Hill Review, Cairns explained: "I'm not much interested in reducing my vocation as a poet to something like propagandist. I write poems to find things out, not to communicate some previously ossified conclusion. So, when it comes to Satan, I suppose I've come to suspect that there is a mostly malignant, if also banal, force at work in the world. It might be that what we read in the papers is just the end result of centuries of bad politics and bad economics, but it might also be that there is a person who works to cause bad politics, bad economics, and general cruelty."

I first learned of Scott Cairns' poetry from Mother Nectaria McLees, the International Editor of Road to Emmaus: A Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture. I had seen his name months earlier on an online copy of an English translation of Manual of Patrology, which I believe he scanned.

Watch for more from this insightful writer and poet.