How Haiku Can Deepen Christian Spirituality

April 17 is International Haiku Poetry Day. What is the history of haiku? How can Christians benefit from this simple practice?

Many of us learned haiku in school as a way of creating poetry with little pressure. The pattern is simple: three lines of simple verse. Five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third line. That’s it. As an exercise in creative writing, it stretches the imagination. But have you considered how haiku can benefit Christian spirituality?

Haiku’s Origins

In the United States, April is National Poetry Month. It’s a good time to read poetry and, if you’re adventurous, try your hand at writing verse. But where to begin? You might start with perhaps the simplest form, haiku. According to Poets.org, haiku got its origins in a more complex form of poetry:

Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally a hundred stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth century and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku:

     An old pond!

     A frog jumps in—

     the sound of water.

If you’re reading carefully, you may be saying, “Wait—that isn’t 5-7-5!” Look how observant you are! But it does follow this pattern in the original Japanese:

furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

This form expects nothing from you but simplicity. It asks you to carve away extraneous thoughts and focus on the bare essence of what you’re trying to say. In seventeen syllables, there’s not a lot of room for blabber. While Bashō’s poetry blended natural themes with elements of Zen Buddhism, Christians too can find depth of meaning in haiku’s minimalism and grace.

Poetry in the Bible

Thumb through the pages of any Bible and you’ll notice the prevalence of poetry. It’s a form of art, a way of expressing human emotion, and a spiritual practice that connects human hearts with the Divine. Here are a few genres of poetry you’ll find in the Bible:

Songs of lament
Praise and thanksgiving
Wisdom poetry
Love poetry
Prophetic poetry/oracles
Victory songs and liturgical poems
Acrostic poetry
Hymnic or poem-like passages in the New Testament

While English poetry relies primarily on rhyme and rhythm for its catchy nature, Hebrew poetry employs parallelism for its artistic turns of phrase. (Click here for more than you ever wanted to know about understanding Hebrew poetry.) Haiku, on the other hand, does not need rhyme, rhythm, or parallelism. Instead, simplicity makes this poetry form clean, modest, and effortlessly elegant.

If Biblical Poetry Were Haiku

If the Bible’s Hebrew poetry were haiku, it might look something like this:

Genesis 2
Dust opened its eyes.
God bent low and shared a breath.
Earth became a soul.

Exodus 14
Water stood aside.
Fear became a road of mud.
Slaves walked into dawn.

Leviticus 19
Leave grain on the edge.
Holiness looks like enough
left for someone else.

Psalm 23
Through shadowed valleys,
love prepares a quiet feast—
I fear no dark night.

Isaiah 40
The tired rise up,
borne on more than feathered wings—
strength comes while we wait.

Micah 6:8
Do justice with love.
Walk humbly, step after step.
Mercy knows the way.

If you turned New Testament passages into haiku, it might look like this:

Matthew 5:3–10
Blessed are the bruised,
the hungry, the peacemakers—
heaven grows in them.

Mark 4
Teacher still asleep.
Yet one word stood up in wind
and the sea grew calm.

Luke 15
Dust on his bare feet.
The father runs before shame
can finish its speech.

John 1
Before breath and light,
the Word leaned into the dark—
and the world awoke.

Hebrews 11
Faith walks toward what is
not yet visible, but felt—
like dawn behind hills.

Write Your Own Haiku

As a spiritual practice, you might consider writing your own haiku. You could base these on scripture, your observation of nature, or your own experience of the sublime. The beautiful thing about haiku is you don’t need to be a poet to try it. Haiku doesn’t rely on rhyme or rhythm, but just needs depth of insight and simplicity. Here are a few examples:

If rocks would cry out

when we cease to praise him,

what else has a voice?

Angels shine like stars.

We are made of vulgar stuff.

He became like us.

Toddler clutching bear

needs mother’s love to ground her.

Fear fades with a touch.

Death rattle as life fades.

Nothing will be the same—but

He makes all things new.

Sand between my toes

Is what my weary heart needs—

Beach is therapy.

Haiku can be anything you want it to be. It can be funny, profound, or a reflection on everyday life. The 5-7-5 pattern allows you to trim the fat of overused words and reduce your thoughts down to what matters most.

You don’t need to wait for International Haiku Poetry Day to give it a try. Get a pen and some paper, and write some haiku today. You’ll be surprised how liberating it feels.