Beautiful Lightning

Beautiful Lightning, as the subtitle (Spiritual Poems in a Difficult World) indicates, includes poems that face often challenging, if not unpleasant, events, but can still exhibit the sudden brilliance of lightning. Lightning can be dangerous, but it can also enlighten and demonstrate a beauty of its own.
These poems, composed by an experienced and award-winning poet, lead the reader through an array of moments seen through a spiritual prism. That the spiritual dimension of a poem is not always explicit fits human experience, as the divine is not only present in obvious places, such as houses of worship, but also in the most commonplace of locations and moments. There is spirituality in a young girl in a doctor's office pointing at something no one else sees, in spring mud, in sun shining in one's hair, in a mother making bread pudding for her family. Something as common as rain recalls God's refreshing and strengthening grace.
Conversely, the overtly religious can call us to make a connection we have not made before. For example, a poem about Barsabbas, rejected as a replacement disciple, summons readers to consider their own rejections and what they can make of them.


""These poems illuminate spirit in the material world. A baby's small fist, one tear, a lone lost sheep, a mosquito's bite, the drive-thru line for coffee. Nothing exists outside one source of creation. 'Coming home is always a family affair,' and Ed excludes no one and nothing. Spiritual life is a means of resisting exclusion and alienation. From farm boy to professor, Ed mines the 'mortal coil' for simplicity and mystery.""
--Anna Bat-Chai Wrobel, historian, teacher, poet

""Dr. Rielly's Beautiful Lightning, a multifaceted window into mystery, is a tour de force of poetic expression. Readers will delight in sharing in the author's story narratives, including his mother's making bread pudding, and reflections on topics such as birth, aging, and death. The poems in this collection serve as exquisite entryways into spiritual reality embedded in the ever-changing seasons of human experience.""
--Marilyn Sunderman, RSM, Professor of Theology, Saint Joseph's College of Maine

""'What does He ask of us?' begins Beautiful Lightning, and the question echoes throughout this elegant book. What, indeed? The gentle dignity of Rielly's language and graceful symmetries of form and imagery create a safe, sacred space where readers can explore the answers. I love how Rielly trusts us to find God and maybe a little bit of ourselves in his work.""
--Lora Homan Zill, writer, artist, publisher, Time of Singing: A Journal of Christian Poetry


Edward J. Rielly, professor emeritus and former director of the writing and publishing program at Saint Joseph's College in Maine, is the author or editor of approximately thirty books, including the memoir Bread Pudding and Other Memories: A Boyhood on the Farm, children's picture books, biographies, cultural histories, literary studies, and collections of poetry. His Answers Instead received the Mildred Kanterman Memorial Award from the Haiku Society of America in 2016.