By Cosmic Design

  109

  Spirit Poems

    (1974-2006)

              

deep speaketh unto deep

             inspiring evolutionary care

     164 pages

     US $9.95

Below:  1. Book Description

   2. Thomas Berry Comments

   3. Other Comments

   4. Preface     

DESCRIPTION

These 109 poems touch on the deeps of the spirit journey. They attempt contemporary expression that honors and yet transcends traditional religious and secular articulation, and that honors creation . . . and spirit at the heart of every event and piece of it. Deep speaketh unto deep inspiring evolutionary care.

   

COMMENTS

In this most recent of his writings John Cock presents his

sense of how human life can be lived in a profoundly

satisfying way. He has himself gone through the deepest

personal and historical challenges of these transitional

years as we moved through the closing moment of the

twentieth century into the opening moments of the twenty-

first century. So “to live, to love, to build the Earth,” “I

am called, I am called, to be.” Such are endless thrilling

phrases to be read in By Cosmic Design. John Cock may

be considered one of our more significant guides into an

exciting future. (from the cover)

~Thomas Berry, cultural historian and author of The

Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story, The Great

Work, and Evening Thoughts (fall 2006)

I have been slowly making my way through your By Cosmic

Design and I am starting to GET it! You are really good. I

have been reading some of these aloud to Richard lately on

a trip and we love what you are doing. In case you have not

heard it lately, keep up your GREAT WORK. We loved

"The Prnice of Darkness."

~Joyce Johnson Rouse, Earth Mama

M.A. Earth Literacy

I've started reading By Cosmic Design and am overwhelmed

by it -- it speaks to me. Beautiful! I can't explain how much

it means to me.

~Megha Merani, Merani Trading LLC, Dubai, UAE

I truly enjoyed your poems. (Your writing gets better and

better.) My favorites are:

"On Their Behalf" (a poem that should be required reading

for America), p. 45

"Nonviolence" (a look at a more responsible response by

a superpower to violence done to the superpower), p. 49

"That Which Wakes All" (just two stanzas but how filled

with meaning and beauty), p. 109

"What Gets Me Down" (describing our behavior and not

minimizing the requirement for a new approach if we are

to survive as a planet), p. 128

~Mildred McGuire, Industrial Engineer, Chattanooga

PREFACE

I’ve been a poet ever since I memorized Psalms in Sunday school and the poem “Trees” in public school. My Granddaddy Cock used to quote poems when we’d visit him at his home or office.

Poetry’s  in the blood. But not only mine. We’re all poets. We’re crazy about songs, secular or religious. Think of all the poetic lyrics swirling in our beings, and at the strangest times popping up into consciousness and straight to tongue.

Later I got attached to the poems of Lao Tzu, Rumi, D. H. Lawrence, Nikos Kazantzakis, Tagore, e.e. cummings, Teilhard de Chardin, Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, and others. These poets tell a lot about me and what I like in poetry: substantial images about the transparent meaning of life, about what makes the world go round.

All language is poetry – even if it’s prose – transmitting conscious reflection upon what’s happening in creation. I like poems that have big contexts, deep insights that lean toward heart over mind – and sometimes poems written in lines that sing themselves.

When I read a Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, I know my spirit has been juiced. When I read a Tagore poem I know I’m bound to the mystery. When I read Kazantzakis’ The Saviors of God, my will collides with the will of my ancestors. When I read Thomas Berry’s writings I think in millennia terms. When I read a Jim Harrison poem I expect an image shower. And, for me, Mary Oliver’s poems jump out of the heart of creation .

My poems are particularly about spirit, the most real thing there is (small “s” to mean we only commune with it in creation – not in some other world – and italicized to differentiate it from my spirit and all the other ways we use “spirit”), and how it occasions our great awakenments; our great preparation; our great work of care for the earth community; our great journey, that never-ending spirit journey we’re all on.

Am I spooky religious? No. Am I “new age”? No. Am I liberal? No. Am I conservative? No. Do I dislike labels? Yes. I was raised in the western Christian tradition. It is my central stake, out from which I now swing in articulating the meaning of existence. But I’m not now traditionally religious, unless I say I’m from all the traditions of all my ancestors – therefore all traditions. 

I’m just a human being who’s aware of being on the great journey and wanting to share what I see and understand as the truth. Do I possess the truth? No. But I’ve received enough to live a rich and full life. Enough to share, I trust.

We can describe the century we’ve come out of as a time of getting clear on existence, life, creation – the way life is. The eye of the needle for us 20th-21st century folk is experience. We have dared to see life as not some pre-created set of meanings to be believed and lived out, but of-the-moment experiences to be reflected upon deeply.

For me, then, good poetry comes out of one’s swirl of experience, called his or her life in relationship with “10,000 things” (Taoism). What is my relationship to what’s going on right here in front of me or way up in the atmosphere, and what do I name that mysterious power at the heart of all relationships in creation? Poetry, in large part for me, is about describing and naming that power as best I can, for it’s the center of my experience and all reality.

You and I have had primal experiences that have revealed what life is all about. I have been convinced by these experiences that life is good, that life is on my side, that I’m especially glad to be here in my skin as who I am, that the total sweep of history has brought me to this point and therefore I’d rather have it as it is than not, and that ongoing, evolving creation gives me hope. This is the stuff of poetry for me, variations on these fundamental themes of truth. It’s easy for me to say poetry is a profound medium.

A word about how this particular collection of poems is stitched together: for the most part, the poems come from my books in order of writing and publication (except the “9/11 Poems,” which have not been printed in my books). Also, some of the poems are revised from their original publication. Some poems are new, born out of the prose of the book in that section.

Finally, these poems are compiled as a legacy for my children and grandchildren – and theirs, for a total of at least seven generations, I trust. I hope the poems will provide them a way to dialogue with the “old man,” all their relationships in creation, and spirit at its heart.

July 2006 John P. Cock

Greensboro NC

USA

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