Welcome to Proost!

Here is the first one. The very first blog on a new platform.

It feels a bit like one of those new school jotters that we used to get handed out. (I wonder if that still happens?) All of the years learning is up ahead, all of the margins are still empty, no scribblings. More scary is that there is no red pen in there from teacher… perhaps here I am taking the analogy too far!

How we use this blog platform—like all the Proost activities—will depend on how our community develops.

Perhaps the first substantial use will be for our up and coming Lent collaboration series. (We are collecting items and offerings for this from right now.)

It seems right to start this new jotter off with some scribblings. With some creativity. So here is a brand new poem.

Spirare, by Chris Goan

The Latin word for “breath” is spirare. This root word is also the origin of many English words, including “inspire”, “spirit”, “respiration”, and “expire”.

Breath inside each fragile breath
Like a tree inside a tree
I plumb the pool inside your eye
The she inside of she

The heart that beats in broken hearts
Like the deepest me in me
It is light behind the ancient light
The tea in pots of tea

The sound that sounds inside a sound
Like the child that plays in child
A soul beneath this broken soul
The wilderness in wild

There’s substance inside empty space
Like dog inside of dog
There’s poem that makes a poem sing
There’s an end to epilogue

The fire inside a forest fire, and
Beginning inside end
It’s the deepest truest part of me
The friendship in my friend

The broken and the beautiful
Both singing in this skin
Our wounded ways of being whole, and
Endless space within