I spent some time this morning with poet Katherine T. Owen. No, we didn’t have breakfast together. Katherine lives in England and I’m in Los Angeles. I happened upon her small collection of poems via my Kindle. I have an Internet relationship with Katherine, of sorts. We met through a writing contest for spiritual authors and felt a kinship, though we’ve never exchange a word. With little fanfare Katherine has published Be Loved, Beloved—14 Spiritual Poems. I spent my morning quiet time seeped in Katherine’s words.
Her poems were forged in the midst of deep personal struggle. As a young woman Katherine was incapacitated through a disease known as M.E.—Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. In her words “I…spent fourteen years bedbound with little movement and little speech…My life took on two sides: the difficult circumstances in which I was living—fighting to survive, and the rich, although initially also grueling, spiritual journey.”
While the doctors may have called Katherine’s disease M.E, her poems reveal a major blockage of divine love as her true dis-ease. For whatever reason, Katherine deemed herself unloveable. From her sparse words emerges the picture of a woman who had the wall between God and herself removed, one revelation at a time. One poem at a time.
One thing that struck me was the stripping of ego in the work. Most of us have a comfy ego façade, but weakness and disease tore Katherine’s away. Her poems come from the heart.
It’s a short piece, easily read in half an hour, but the beauty of poetry is its ability to be fresh with each reading, like listening to a favorite song over and over. Be Loved, Beloved is a precious little tome to be revisited time and again.
