Poet's insights light up our lives

"Most of us may not be able to define 'spirituality' in a satisfactory way," writes author Eugene Peterson, "but few of us fail to recognize its presence or absence."

For many years, I felt its presence in Bill Stafford, the Kansas poet and Quaker, who became a giant of American poetry. Stafford would cringe at being called a "giant," of course. Anything large and smacked of power, glory and honor made him very nervous.

He also had what I think of as "WIT": warmth, intelligence and talent, laced with humor.

He was one of the wisest men of his generation.

Bill Stafford has been on my mind this week because I'm finally digging into "Early Morning," a Stafford biography written by his son, Kim, and published by Graywolf Press. And as I've read along I've thought of the hours I spent with the man. I was a "Friend of Bill" — an FOB, to borrow some shorthand from the Clinton era. There must have been 10,000 of us.

And reading that biography, I realize I spent my time with him asking all the wrong questions. I asked him about poetry, politics and personalities when I should have been asking him about enlightenment.

I should have asked him about all those times he used the word "light" in his poems. It was never the grand and glorious light of the sun, but the small, personal light he carried with him. Bill Stafford's favorite hymn would never have been "All Glory, Laud and Honor." It might have been "This Little Light of Mine," however.

On the first page of Kim Stafford's biography, he quotes one of his father's poems:

Your life you live

by the light you find

and follow it on

as best you can,

carrying through darkness

wherever you go

your one little fire

that will start again.

That was Bill Stafford: humble, unassuming, shuffling along with a lantern in his hand. He always reminded me of the wise virgins trimming their lamps and waiting, or the soul at the beginning of a procession who leads by carrying a candle. He was the candle on a candlestick, giving light to the whole house.