Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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USE FAITH SHAPERS FOR:
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Faith-shaping Poets
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Thank you, Lord
… if all the world Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream and nothing wear but freize, The all-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known, and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a...
Affluence or temperance
Imposter! Do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance. She, good cateress, Means her provision only to the good, That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare Temperance. If every just man...
Praying for Lucy
Come down, O Christ, and help me! Reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy Lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, Me heart is in some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my...
Harvest Thanks Giving
Thanks be to God for the food on the table; Thank you, our daily cry. Food for today and with more for tomorrow, All of our needs supplied. Crops from the field, fruit from the tree, Vegetables from the ground; Food from the earth, fish from the sea, Plenty to...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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Self-authenticating Wisdom
O take the book from off the shelf, And con it meekly on thy knees; Best panegyric on itself, And self-avouched to teach and please. Respect, adore it heart and mind. How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand, Who reads the most, is most refined, And polished by the...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
Disappointed Saturday people
Squeezed between Good Friday and Easter, Ignored by preachers and painters and poets, Saturday lies cold and dark and silent – An unbearable pause between death and life. There are many Saturday people To whom Easter does not come.
He’s Gone
‘He’s gone,’ says Joseph, and, with Pilate’s leave Eases the nails and lowers him from the Tree’ Wraps him in reverent and tender thoughts And lays him in the cave called Memory. That cave is deeply hewn in Joseph’s heart: All that’s within will always be his own:...
Not My King! Then Who is?
Love that gives, gives ever more, gives with zeal, with eager hands, spares not, keeps not, all outpours, ventures all its all expends. . Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free, poor in making many rich, weak in giving power to be. . Therefore he...
The Second Coming
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Machines are running
All monsters of the deserts, all demons of darkness are here again. Once again people stand face to face with chaos: and what makes it so much more terrible is the fact that the majority do not comprehend what is at hand. For everywhere scientifically informed people...
‘My birthday wish for you’
See Scandal praying with her sharp knees up, And Virtue stood at Weeping Cross, And Courage to his leaking ship appointed, Slim Truth dismissed without a character, And gaga Falsehood highly recommended, The green thumb to the ledger knuckled down. Greed showing...
The mind has cliffs of fall
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does...
Endless Carnival
The endless carnival... constitutes a dramatic affirmation of power, wealth and virility, in which 'victory' is accomplished by many abusive exploitations, all in the pursuit of winning and being on top of the heap of the money game. Walter Brueggemann (1933 -...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
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I’ll turn my face
O think me worth thine anger, punish me, Burn off my rusts and my deformity; Restore thine image so much, by thy grace, That thou may’st know me, and I’ll turn my face. John Donne (1572-1631)
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
A face that makes simplicity a grace
Give me a look, give me a face That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art. They strike my eyes but not my heart. Ben Johnson (1573-1637).
The dross which men call gold
Non nobis Domine!— Not unto us, O Lord! The Praise or Glory be Of any deed or word; For in Thy Judgment lies To crown or bring to nought All knowledge or device That Man has reached or wrought. And we confess our blame— How all too high we hold That noise which men...
Stand apart and together
Sing and dance together and be joyous But let each one of you be alone Even as the strings of a lute are alone Though they quiver with the same music. Stand together yet not too near together, For the pillars of the temple stand apart And the oak tree and the...
Song of a Lesbian
All my life’s been lived in fragments, Just a part of me was shown, A part I shared with friends, And a part I lived at home, A part I showed my work-place And a part the church could share, And a part of me was hidden In closets of despair. Marsha Stevens...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
My unburied spark
Cold in the dust this perished heart may lie, But that which warmed it once will never die! That spark unburied in its mortal frame With living light, eternal, and the same. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844).
Pure beauty
The memory of a glorious moment, My soul was stirred And once again you came, A passing vision, A glimmer of beauty pure. In fullness beats my heart, feeling once again The resurrection of divinity, And inspiration, and life, And tears, and love. Alexander...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
An unaccustomed wine
I bring an unaccustomed wine To lips long parching next to mine, And summon them to drink…. And so I always bear the cup If, haply, mine may be the drop Some pilgrim thirst to slake, - If, haply, any say to me, “Unto the little, unto me,” When I at last...
Is Anybody There?
Prayers like gravel flung at the sky's window, hoping to attract the loved one’s attention. But without visible plaits to let down for the believer to climb up, to what purpose open that far casement? I would have refrained long since but that peering once through my...
Captain aboard!
With thee on board, each sailor is a king, Nor I mere captain of my vessel then, But heir of earth and heaven, eternal child; Daring all truth, nor fearing anything; Mighty in love, the servant of all men; Resenting nothing, taking rage and blare Into the Godlike...
Big Decision
To every man there openeth A Way, and Ways, and a Way. And the High Soul climbs the High way, And the Low Soul gropes the Low, And in between, on the misty flats, The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth A High Way, and a Low. And every man decideth...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
Alone together
Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort Of feeling safe with a person, Having neither to weigh thoughts Nor measure words, But pour them out, just as they are, Chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand Will take and sift them, Keeping what is worth...
There is always another story
At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell the intimate friend; Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my friend, there's never smoke without fire. Behind the corpse...
People not without a history
A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England. With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We...
Heaven in ordinary
Prayer the Church's banquet, Angels age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth; Engine against the almighty, sinners' tower, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing...
The Mission of God
Worth more ‘real’ than life’s ‘illusion’
This poet parasite of grief Lives on the falling, leaf by leaf, Of life’s illusion, glad to see The nakedness of misery. He probes his pen deep down within, To make a sonnet of a sin. A Realist, revealing less Life’s beauty than its bitterness. Yet purer eyes than his...
A poet’s crown of thorns
Poet, you are the life of this life, and you have Triumphed over the ages despite their severity. Poet, you will one day rule the hearts, and Therefore, your kingdom has no ending. Poet, examine your crown of thorns; you will Find concealed in it a budding...
The poet’s prophetic task
The figure a poem makes; No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. Robert Frost (1874-1963), 1939.
An old age is out, time to begin a new
All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. ‘Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new. John Dryden (1631 – 1700), The Secular Masque, 1700.
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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Escaping a recession
I am spending my way out Of a recession. The road chokes On delivery vans. I used to be Just looking Around, I used to be How Much, and Have You Got it in Beige. Now I devour whole stores – High speed spin; giant size; chunky gold; De luxe springing....
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Reason, master of what I fancy
Fancy next her office holds but know that in the soul are many lesser faculties, that serve reason as chief. Among these fancy next her office holds; of all external things, which the five watchful senses represent, she forms imaginations, aery shapes, which reason,...
Sweet dreams
O let my soul, whose keys I must deliver Into the hands of senseless dreams, Which knowing thee, suck in thy beams And wake with thee for ever. George Herbert (1593-1633).
Life is rounded with a sleep
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all...
Two deaths: here and hereafter
Hark, how the birds do sing, And woods ring. All creatures have their joy; and man hath his, Yet if we rightly measure, Man’s joy and pleasure Rather hereafter, than in present, is…. Not that he may not here Taste of the cheer, But as birds drink, and straight...