Jeanette Hardage greatly admired Kathleen Norris, author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, a book which Jeanette reviewed for two magazines in 1999. In her meditation on Truth, Norris says that “poetry, like prayer, tends to be a dialogue with the holy.” Jeanette seemed to approach a lot of her poems in this frame of mind, especially in Faith and Other Matters. In her poem below, based on Psalm 139, she took a well-known entry in a book of Hebrew poetry, and re-interpreted it in a way that was meaningful to her. Let’s listen in on this “holy dialogue.”
Psalm 139
You know me inside and out,
awake or asleep.
Your ways are too deep, too deep.You know my words
from brain to heart to lips.
Your ways are too deep, too deep.I can’t escape You if I try—
You protect me high and low.
Your ways are too deep, too deep.You cradled me before my birth,
the finest craftsman.
Your ways are too deep, too deep.Keep looking deep in me
and lead me, save me.
Your ways are too deep, too deep.