Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time’s wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure Robert Browning (1812-89).
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
The newspaper
Why do we buy a newspaper For it’s plain for us to see The pulp that it is made of Was better as a tree? George Knowles, Pit to Priest, Hucknall, May 2007.
A billboard lovely as a tree?
I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash (1902 – 71), Song of the Open Road, 1933.
Second Pentecost
Suddenly after long silence he has become voluble. He addresses me from a myriad directions with fluency of water, the articulateness of green leaves: and in the genes, too, the components of my existence. The rock, so long speechless, is the library of his poetry. He...
The cloistered rose
And God is the weight that bends the bough of the young tree gently as spring snow. He is the lightness of the summer flower, of the bee’s touch, and his the power that tames the sea and poises like a feather or a loose leaf the world. He threads together the stars...
The poet must carve a path out of the world’s stone
The poet must carve a path out of the world’s stone that leads up to the word of God. And this without knowing whether his words have the fine engraved edges of words in a monument or the movement you see in the travelling stars or opening flowers. In a child’s...
What I can say to you, my God?
Shall I collect together all the words that praise your holy name? Shall I give you all the names of this world, you, the unnameable? Shall I call you, “God of my life, meaning of my existence, hallowing of my acts, my journey’s end, bitterness of my bitter hours,...
Love is not far to go
It is not far to go For you are near, It is not far to go For you are here. And not by travelling, Lord, We come to you, But by the way of love, And we love you. Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867-1951), Edges of His Ways, 1980.
Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush aflame with God But only he who sees takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61), Aurora Leigh.
Missing?
Missing God, His grace is no longer called for before meals: farmed fish multiply without His intercession. Bread production rises through disease-resistant grains devised scientifically to mitigate His faults. Miss Him, during the civil wedding when, at the blossomy...
OMG
My God I could not see. I sought my soul; My soul eluded me. I sought my brother; And I found all three. David Adam, The Edge of Glory.
My God, where are you?
Just are the ways of God, And justifiable to men, Unless there be who think no God at all, If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of a fool, And no man therein doctor but himself. John Milton (1608-74), Samson...