A Curious Contingency

Confessions of a wordsmith.

Christianity Today April 1, 2004

Editor’s note:

Holy Week reminds us, in case we’re in danger of forgetting, that Christianity is a historical faith, its claims embedded in the messy particulars of time and place even as it transcends them. To celebrate that “curious contingency”—and to mark the beginning of National Poetry Month—here is a poem by T. M. Moore:

A Curious Contingency

Confessions of a Wordsmith

The modern order is largely    a product of contingency. – Stephen Jay Gould

The fruits of my vocation blossom from a kind of cosmic soup of latent power: books, note cards, memos, shreds and shards of some fresh-excavated pile or file; an hour on this, an hour on that—the only plan a loose and highly opportunistic scheme, a kind of curious contingency more than a plan: so my haphazard style must seem to some—things finished, in the works, or just not ever put away, the sediment of labors past now buried beneath the dust of new endeavors. An unlikely bent    for one whose work insists on forms, designs,    and arguments tight as a sonnet’s lines.

T. M. Moore is the author of many books, includingEcclesiastes: Ancient Wisdom When All Else Fails—A New Translation and Interpretive Paraphrase (InterVarsity).

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Books & Culture Corner appears every Monday. Earlier editions of Books & Culture Corner and Book of the Week include:

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History Repeats Itself, Sort of | How the fate of Eugene McCarthy’s insurgency against LBJ sheds light on the 2004 presidential campaign. (Feb. 16, 2004)

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Wholly, Wholly, Wholly | Calvinists and conga drums in Grand Rapids: a report from the seventeenth annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and the Arts. (Feb. 02, 2004)

The Doom of Choice | Fate, free will, and moral responsibility in Tolkien. (Feb. 02, 2004)

A Rose Among Thorns | A new novel by the author of Father Elijah illumines the spiritual consequences of our simplest decisions. (Jan. 26, 2004)

Baptized in Fire | A new book on Martin Luther King, Jr., emphasizes his spiritual transformation. (Jan. 19, 2004)

O’Connor v. the Antichrist (Jan. 12, 2004)

Moody, the Media, and the Birth of Modern Evangelism | A cautionary tale. (Jan. 05, 2004)

A Few Coming Attractions from 2004 | Plus: What to buy with those gift cards, and some of the books in my to-read stacks. (Dec. 29, 2003)

The Top Ten Books of 2003 | Plus: The Worst Book of the Year, more good reading, digital books, and a little Christmas music. (Dec. 22, 2003)

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Urban Eden | In City: Urbanism and Its End, a new history of New Haven, Connecticut, the city (in its late 19th-century form) is an ambiguous heaven-and the suburbs that relentlessly followed are hell. Which leaves us where, exactly? (Dec. 01, 2003)

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