{"id":1682,"date":"2021-05-18T04:18:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T10:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedesertsanctuary\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2021-05-18T04:16:44","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T10:16:44","slug":"poets-and-prophets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedesertsanctuary\/2021\/05\/poets-and-prophets\/","title":{"rendered":"Poets and Prophets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Photo by KoolShooters from Pexels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In my book Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity<\/a>, <\/em>I wrote the following in the chapter titled, Being with the Poets and Prophets.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christian Scriptures were written over a period of 1600 years.\u00a0 It is a record of people struggling to understand God.\u00a0 Many of them were prophets and poets.\u00a0 Along with the authors of the Bible, there are probably hundreds of thousands of seekers that have written about their quest to understand God and the Universe and how it all works together.\u00a0 They spoke in different languages and used different methods, but the way to recognize a poet or a prophet is that they don\u2019t come to definite conclusions.\u00a0 When someone writes to a definite conclusion, we can be certain that they settled for an elementary understanding of things and they probably were not a prophet or poet.\u00a0 Poets and prophets are searching for something deeper\u2014something more Divine.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0~<\/em>Karl Forehand, Being<\/p>\n

So, even defining a poet or prophet can be like trying to hit a moving target.\u00a0 I remember seeing videos of people interviewing Dylan and both of them getting frustrated.\u00a0 We love our certainty, and we love putting things and people in boxes, so we know what to expect from them and how to describe them.\u00a0 But in the long run, clearly defining things can lead to limiting our future understanding of what is true of anything.<\/p>\n

It may help to start with the assumption that things are infinitely more complex than we ever imagined.\u00a0 In way, maybe our attempts to define the Divine may only limit our true understanding of the same.\u00a0 When we anthropomorphize God into a reverse image of ourselves, we may be missing many layers of deepness and complexity that we never even considered.<\/p>\n

Scientists are starting to discover that even at the sub-atomic level, there is evidence of intelligence and even communication \u2013 there are clues and suggestions about what is, but no concrete way to wrap it all up in a bow and make a doctrine out of it.<\/p>\n

The poets and prophets give us a way to talk about it without limiting it to just what we understand at this given time.\u00a0 They warn us of dangers ahead, but they may not even understand why.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t an excuse to bypass anything, but rather a charge to keep searching.\u00a0 It\u2019s an encouragement to keep looking over the next horizon for new beginnings and new understanding.<\/p>\n

When I use the word prophet, please understand I\u2019m not talking about the modern, evangelical practice of guessing what will happen next and passing the collection plate when they are accidentally right.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about real prophets who help us interpret the world and easily admit they might be wrong <\/em>because they are still searching for things like truth and justice and unity.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is a poet, each person has a song to sing.<\/p>\n

Everyone is not a prophet, but all humans deserve to be heard.<\/p>\n

Instead of listening to those that are certain and want to recruit us into their herd <\/em>of followers, maybe we could take the road less traveled and look out over horizon for new and challenging insights.\u00a0 There certainly is truth, but it may be bigger (or smaller) than we imagined and we probably won\u2019t find it in the neatly packaged boxes that people have prepared for us.<\/p>\n

May we continue to wander and wonder on this magnificent journey!<\/p>\n

Be where you are, be who you are,<\/p>\n

Karl Forehand<\/p>\n

Support us on Patreon<\/a>\u00a0 *\u00a0 \u00a0The Desert Sanctuary Website<\/a><\/p>\n

Karl Forehand is a former pastor, podcaster, and award-winning author. His books include Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father\u2019s Heart and The Tea Shop. He is the creator of\u00a0The Desert Sanctuary<\/a>\u00a0podcast. He is married to his wife Laura of 32 years and has one dog named Winston. His three children are grown and are beginning to multiply!<\/h5>\n

Order Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity<\/a><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my book Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity, I wrote the following in the chapter titled, Being with the Poets and Prophets. \u201cThe Christian Scriptures were written over a period of 1600 years.\u00a0 It is a record of people struggling to understand God.\u00a0 Many of them were prophets and poets.\u00a0 Along with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[940,943],"tags":[919,100,91,94,944,79,750],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poets","category-prophets","tag-answers","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-prophets","tag-seeking","tag-spirituality","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\nPoets and Prophets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In my book Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity, I wrote the following in the chapter titled, Being with the Poets and Prophets. \u201cThe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedesertsanctuary\/2021\/05\/poets-and-prophets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poets and Prophets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In my book Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity, I wrote the following in the chapter titled, Being with the Poets and Prophets. \u201cThe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedesertsanctuary\/2021\/05\/poets-and-prophets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Desert Sanctuary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-18T10:18:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-05-18T10:16:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1333\/2021\/05\/pexels-koolshooters-6980546-1-200x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Karl J. 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