James Baker Hall. Poet. Artist. Writer. Teacher. Mentor. Former Poet Laureate of Kentucky, 2001-2003.

Hall has been an inspiration to generations of Kentucky writers and poets. He’s had a deep influence on my son, Clay.

I know that the passing of mentors can be some of life’s most important crossroads. We ask ourselves what we learned from them and how we can keep them alive in our memories and work.

Hall will live on in his wonderful photographs, vivid prose and emotionally adventurous poetry. Take a few moments and discover a little about him. And perhaps share some thoughts about your own mentors and how they have affected you.

Enjoy two of his poems.

The Maps
by James Baker Hall

All those years he was married,
frequenting the map stores.
The eight quadrangles surrounding the house
in which he lived and worked, he saw them in relief:
he pinned them over his desk like messages, justified.
He spent long hours studying them. He fell in love

with maps. At night he would lie on the couch
with his hands, in the dark, memorizing
the mountains. He would lie
on the floor in his son’s room,
in the moonlight, the maps
between them. His hands
loved the waters, an island
at a time. His voice loved
distances. At some point
he quit, I quit

calling myself he.
I fell in love without maps.
I carried everything I thought I needed
in the back of a truck or in a knapsack,
I spent night after night lost in the darkness,
huddled on a beach somewhere, or asleep
on a stranger’s floor. It took years.
I had to go all the way
to the white undersides of the leaves
before I knew that my own veins were shaking,
in the dogs’ ears, in the wind,

and it could occur to me, more often now,
that I need nothing. That I could, even yet,
quit calling myself anything.
___________________

The Mother on the Other Side of the World

a yellow cat from the next field over hungry finds
her way to the feed bowls inside our toolshed atop
the deepfreeze our striped gray lets this happen
then moves low to the ground
into position crouching outside
staring at the only escape
too frightened now
to eat the stray too stares at it
neither can see the other
for the longest time
something dark emerges
almost audibly circles
of their silence their
motionlessness pulse out
into the greater commotions the spins and counterspins
including the entire backyard the neighboring fields
many horses the adjoining areas
each of us moving in God knows
how many different directions at once
these two cats one almost wild
the other almost domesticated
get their version of it
line up perfectly
great longing compacted
their own little seesaw
the whole backyard seesaws
the mother on the other side
of the world
many fears
but only this one silence
the stray’s tail was all I saw
of her when she got out of there
that night beginning the plot of this story
I was to see about that much of her
again the next night in my headlights
at the side of a narrow road
a half mile away
yellow eyes
echoing outward the darkness it was
gonglike and out there in the expanding middle
I was to see more and more of her
in the days to follow
she hangs out in the culvert
I pull off the road and climb down
with a plastic cup of food
emptying it out on a scrap board I took down there
she stays at the other end of the culvert
as though she’d never ever come closer
sweet talk doesn’t run her off
but she prefers quiet it seems
occasionally she’ll have a dead mouse
or chipmunk prominently displayed
a gift for me perhaps or maybe
a reminder of the role
she allows me to play
she never lets me see her
lick herself or sleep

— James Baker Hall, The Mother on the Other Side of the World (Sarabande, 1999)

Some texts related to being “connected” to Jesus in salvation by faith and in growing as disciples into Christlikeness.

Justification by grace, Kingdom discipleship and growth following. No “”Jesus disconnect here”:

Colossians 1:9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

A Detailed description of a Christlike character. No “Jesus disconnect” here:

Colossians 3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:….. seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. …..

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ….17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Coming to know Christ is followed by imitating Jesus Christ. No “disconnect” here:

I Thessalonians 1: 2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, 3 remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord…

The purpose of the ministers who serve the Christian community is to grow believers into Christlikeness. No “Jesus disconnect here”…VERY connected to Christ.

Ephesians 4:11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,

Paul said this was the goal of his ministry with the already-converted Galatians:

4:19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!

To be right with God by the righteousness of Christ is in no way incompatible with a passionate pursuit of knowing Christ AND of becoming like Christ.

Philippians 3:7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 2 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained. 17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

It is difficult to read these passages and see how anyone can separate justification and sanctification so far that Christlikeness is disconnected from the gift of righteousness by grace through faith.

Bishop J.C. Ryle did an exceptional job teaching how justification and sanctification are related. I wish Bishop Ryle would have used the concept of discipleship in his description, but it won’t be hard to make the application to those parts of the Gospels where Jesus teaches us how to live in the Kingdom we’ve been given as a free gift and how to live out the call to discipleship that is the Christian’s journey to Christlikeness.

Here is Ryle on the difference in justification and sanctification, followed by some other comments by Ryle on the subject.

(a) Justification is the reckoning and counting a man to be righteous for the sake of another, even Jesus Christ the Lord. Sanctification is the actual making a man inwardly righteous, though it may be in a very feeble degree.

(b) The righteousness we have by our justification is not our own, but the everlasting perfect righteousness of our great Mediator Christ, imputed to us, and made our own by faith. The righteousness we have by sanctification is our own righteousness, imparted, inherent, and wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, but mingled with much infirmity and imperfection.

(c) In justification our own works have no place at all, and simple faith in Christ is the one thing needful.

(d) In sanctification our own works are of vast importance and God bids us fight, and watch, and pray, and strive, and take pains, and labour Justification is a finished and complete work, and a man is perfectly justified the moment he believes. Sanctification is an imperfect work, comparatively, and will never be perfected until we reach heaven.

(e) Justification admits of no growth or increase: a man is as much justified the hour he first comes to Christ by faith as he will be to all eternity. Sanctification is eminently a progressive work, and admits of continual growth and enlargement so long as a man lives.

(f) Justification has special reference to our persons, our standing in God’s sight, and our deliverance from guilt. Sanctification has special reference to our natures, and the moral renewal of our hearts.

(g) Justification gives us our title to heaven, and boldness to enter in. Sanctification gives us our meetness for heaven, and prepares us to enjoy it when we dwell there.

(h) Justification is the act of God about us, and is not easily discerned by others. Sanctification is the work of God within us, and cannot be hid in its outward manifestation from the eyes of men.

Later in the same article, he makes several applications, including these:

(3) For another thing, if we would be sanctified, our course is clear and plain— we must begin with Christ. We must go to Him as sinners, with no plea but that of utter need, and cast our souls on Him by faith, for peace and reconciliation with God. We must place ourselves in His hands, as in the hands of a good physician, and cry to Him for mercy and grace. We must wait for nothing to bring with us as a recommendation. The very first step towards sanctification, no less than justification, is to come with faith to Christ. We must first live and then work.

(4) For another thing, if we would grow in holiness and become more sanctified, we must continually go on as we began,, and be ever making fresh applications to Christ. He is the Head from which every member must be supplied. (Ephes. iv. 16.) To live the life of daily faith in the Son of God, and to be daily drawing out of His fulness the promised grace and strength which He has laid up for His people—this is the grand secret of progressive sanctification. Believers who seem at a standstill are generally neglecting close communion with Jesus, and so grieving the Spirit. He that prayed,”Sanctify them,” the last night before His crucifixion, is infinitely willing to help everyone who by faith applies to Him for help, and desires to be made more holy.

Colossians 1:12 …giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Comments: The work of the Father is the focus of this passage. Paul invites all Christians to worship the Father for what he has done for his family. He has taken the orphans and offscourings of the universe, the disenfranchised, the no-names and the worthless, taken them and qualified them for the inheritance of the saints, God’s holy ones who live in God’s light. An inheritance is always received, in this case from the same Father, and indisputably belonging to all of his children. With his name and his son’s blood on the paperwork, no accuser or enemy can take away this inheritance.

The motif changes, now to deliverance. Here is a Father whose children are captured and held prisoner in a dungeon of darkness. But this Father does not forget them. In their darkness and chains, all men may forget them, but God does not. They may be humiliated, but he is the lifter of their head. He comes and delivers the slave and the captive in free grace. He sets the prisoner free. The Father sends a rescue force captained by the Lord Jesus Christ into the darkness of a spiritual Mordor and delivers us from the forces of spiritual darkness and sin’s captivity.

Now all of those loved, adopted and rescued by the Father are transferred into a new Kingdom. Their chains are replaced with freedom. The Son of God is more than a liberator; he is a King who reigns over the Kingdom of his love. This is the Kingdom of light, the home of the saints made complete in Jesus’ liberation and love. We are triumphantly brought into this new Kingdom, with all the rights and privileges of citizens and sons/daughters. As the children of the Father, gifts and trophies of his Son, Jesus, we have seats of honor at his table.

No matter how we are treated in the Kingdoms and prisons of this world, the Kingdom of the Son is our true home. Our names may be despised and forgotten, but they are known to our Father and our King. He never forgets our faces. We are always before him. In Jesus we have redemption from slavery and forgiveness of the sins that gave the evil one right and power over us in the first place. Our identity, our inheritance and our deliverance are all sure in Jesus.

This belongs, completely, to all of us who trust in Jesus to save.

Prayer: Father, your salvation is a great salvation. It is never just one thing, but reveals itself eternally as gift within gift within gift. I worship you that you would give me a single thought, and kneel in praise and worshipful prayer for the abundance of blessings revealed in your salvation. I especially praise you for the sure and certain promise that this story of redemption, adoption, rescue, delieverance and forgiveness becomes the story of all those who belong to Jesus. He has given to us this salvation by giving us himself. It is all him, and he is ours in his fullness. As he is beloved by you, so we are loved in him, secure in him, forever yours in him. So in Jesus I pray.

Isaiah 40:25 To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

Comment: This is OUR God.

Prayer: Father, in all our endless searches, our many disappointments, our failures and our darkness, you are our God. We contemplate the wonder of your existence, of your creation of the universe and your sustaining of that universe; we see the details and designs that delight you, and we are amazed and over-awed. There is no comparison, for there is no other thought like you, no analogy that does a micro-second’s justice to the greatness that is you.

From you, all things derive their existence this very moment. And to you, all things gladly return. To you is due endless worship from all that you have made. In you, through you, for you is all the glory that is glory, all the worth that is worth, all the good that is good.

How, O Lord, can we comprehend that you would take notice of us? How, Lord, can you bend low to pick up what, alone in all your creation, has risen to defy you? How can you show the kindness of a father to those who have taken your image and marred it with trash and perversion? How can you love what is so unlovable, so unlovely, so determined not to love or be loved?

So unlike us, yet so ready to love us as only a perfect Father can love us. You have given us your Spirit and made us alive. You have crucified your beloved for our forgiveness. You have given us legs to walk, eyes to see, hearts to feel. We are alive from the dead. It’s all your doing. We should be the dust of the earth and less than that in your eyes.

Your ways are truly past understanding, Father. Why did you not walk away from us? Why have you not walked away from me? Why the second, third and three-hundred thousandth chance to live, love and worship again? Why walk with us and pick us up? Why hold us when we are faint? Why not let us fall, and let the gravity of our sinful humanness take us to the bottom of the ocean of your forgetfulness?

Somehow, it is because of who you are. For your name’s sake. For your glory. Not to us, not for us, not because of us. You. You! YOU!! You are God, and there is none like you. Show me how to worship such a God, such a friend. There are no words.

Father, forgive us when we say you have forgotten us, that you have disregarded us. Our smallness of gratitude is our shame.

O Lord, YOU are a God like none other.

In Jesus, Amen.

Galatians. 3:23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave* nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

Comments: All who are in Christ are God’s sons. All who are God’s sons have that relationship through faith. Baptism is the visible enactment of faith’s “putting on” Christ. (Note: In baptism, we put on Christ. We are the actors, whereas in faith, we are passive and Christ is active. This is why baptism and faith are inseparable and should never quarrel.) In Christ, all other distinctions, including nations, cultures, denominations, divisions and theological teams, give way to being “in Christ.” Belonging to Christ is the fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham that, in him, “all the families of the earth would be blessed.” Christ is that blessing and those who, like Abraham, belong to Christ are the people of God. All this rests on God’s promise. We are justified through faith and all that justifies us, now and in the future, is in Christ.

Prayer: Thank you Father, that all those who, through faith, “put on” the Lord Jesus Christ belong to you in that most intimate of relationships: they are your children. I praise you that no other identity is more true, and that nothing can separate us from the love you have for us in Jesus. May all of us who belong to Jesus, who are the children of God and the heirs of Abraham’s promise, be one people, both in our earthly journey and in the Kingdom that is coming. In Jesus, Amen.