Christina Brown on the poet's—and our—cathedral-shaped journey toward union with God.

By Christina Brown

I had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to read and write a review on Betsy K. Brown’s newest collection of poetry, but I fell in love. I recommend this book to every poetry lover I encounter, because Brown’s City Nave offers an incredibly stunning perspective on what it means to traverse in unity as a people of God into His coming Kingdom. Every poem is a reflection on what it means for us to be pilgrims on this earth bound for the same place – the altar, the ultimate meeting place of God and man, restored to us.

What makes this collection both so cohesive and compelling is the theme Brown uses: a cathedral. Entering her poetic collection through the stairway into the Church, we walk with her through the narthex and the nave, and then ultimately we end together at the altar – the easternmost part of traditional cathedral architecture that looks to the promise of Christ’s return. In short, she marries the secular to the sacred in sacrament, a union at the altar.

Now allow me to whet your appetite with a quick overview:

The first section of the compilation, Stairs, begins and ends with two poems sharing the theme of building – or climbing, if you will, towards a wholeness not yet found but yearned for. 

“Dark Ages,” a simple six-line poem, inaugurates the collection with the question we all ask of the youngest generations: “Will they, at last, be the ones to mend the world?”[1] The poem leaves the question unanswered, while the poem that closes the section, “To My Brother-in-Law in Kiev from a Plane over Texas,” offers a partial answer in the following stanza:

Everywhere people are breaking, and
Are building, and are toasting. Here’s to
All the things that must break, scattering
Light like seeds from time zone to time zone,
From year to year, from life to life.[2]

And yet, as those who climb stairs, that last poem does not offer the answer in full. So here, Brown takes her collection into the Narthex: the portion of the Church where the sacred place is at last encountered, where the sojourner has entered in.

The opening poem in the Narthex section is one of wrestling. Here the reader might ask herself, Is this the journey we really want to take? Does it end where we hope it does? Were these stairs worth climbing?

Brown lives, as we all do, in the aftereffects of 19th- and 20th-century scientific discoveries, in which science is often wielded as a tool to divorce God from His creation and, ultimately, disprove His existence altogether. In “Eulogy to the First Ms. Brown,” Brown takes her readers to the inevitable intersection of truth and doubt. In this first-person approach, she addresses her aunt, a children’s science teacher, begging the truth of Ms. Brown’s occupational experience; “Did it ever seem too vast to you, Aunt Lin, that map that curses, blesses us with endless, shining roads?”[3] And yet, Brown answers her own question through the lens of the children’s eyes in the science lab, who catch “a flash of something true, something grand.”[4] In this poem, she writes truth back into the practice of science, and in doing so, gives the readers a glimpse of paradise.

Yet it is important to note that this poem ends with another question: where did Ms. Brown go? “…the children want to know…. Is that where we’ll go?”[5]

The close of this section reveals that, while we all linger together in the narthex, questioning, wondering, and yearning to walk forward, our hesitancy abates in our communal lingering. 

A “Sonnet by Those Who Stay Behind” walks the readers from the narthex into the gathering place of the nave, that part of the Church where the followers of God worship, pray, petition, rejoice, grieve and hope, as one. 

“I ask you,” Brown writes to her departed, “to leave your echo for me to gather up while you are gone, like wildflowers, or penny after penny into a jar of moments I won’t let go of till again you fill this room with song.”[6]

In Nave, Brown brings poems of all perspectives, experiences, ages, and walks of life, tying together those looking back and those looking forward. She weaves them in and out like a long, connected line of cursive. (See her poem, “Cursive.”) In this compelling section, Brown employs the binding theme of love – of unity in disparity. She reminds us of the difficulties of loving like Christ until He transforms us through community and communion at the altar. “Poetry and Postulancy,” “To a Cutter, Age 14,” “The Art of Loving,” “Cursive,” and “City Nave” are a few of my favorites from this section. “City Nave” centers on the meeting place of Christian theology itself. (No spoilers – you must read that one for yourself!)

At last, Brown brings her readers into the final section of her collection, Altar, a world of symbolism and sacrament where our blindness has bought our sight. (See the opening poem of this section, “Eclipse Glasses.”) Here we take the final step to the altar of our own souls where we finish her collection with the poem, “Buying a House on the Feast of Saint Francis.” This poem finds us where our homeward longings meet our true home – Love Himself. It is a brilliant offering on an altar that reminds us that, like Saint Francis, we must love all and claim nothing. For “…We will know that for a thing to be ours we cannot love it too much. We will know to be home in a thing, it must all be love.”[7]

As I journeyed with the author through this book, I felt surrounded by the many souls who have gone before me, those who are with me now, and those who will come after, all collected into a proverbial church. Brown’s words build a house of holiness for the weary soul to come for refuge and a habitat where hope is rekindled. Join me in immersing yourself in this collection. It is my hope that you will not leave unscathed by the flame – that “flash of something true, of something grand.”[8]

Christina Brown and her husband, Brian, are the founders of the Anselm Society, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian imagination. She serves as the director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and is the garden columnist for Cultivating magazine. Her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.

1Betsy K. Brown, City Nave (Wipf and Stock ) 2024, 3.
2Ibid., 17.
3Ibid., 21.4
Ibid., 22.
5Ibid.
6Ibid., 34.
7Ibid., 62.
8Ibid., 22.