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
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...
Feeling the Cold?
I found Him not in world or sun, Or in eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye; Nor through the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun:… A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason’s coldest part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up...
All Things Re-aligned
Christmas sets the centre at the edge. And from this day our world is re-aligned; A tiny seed unfolding in the womb Becomes the source from which we all unfold And flower into being. We are healed, The End begins, the tomb becomes a womb, For now in him all things are...
Walk with God
The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, Sustains, and is the life of all that lives. Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fires By which the mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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The Holy Spirit’s two-edged sword
Brandish in faith ‘till then The Spirit’s two-edged Sword, Hew all the snares of Fiends and Men In pieces with the Word; ‘TIS WRITTEN’. This applied Baffles their Strength and Art; Spirit and Soul with this divide, And Joints and Marrows part. Charles Wesley...
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...
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them from prayers or bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill,...
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
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...
No more solitary confinement
We never left the place where we were born, Have only lived one day, but every day, Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn The grass between our work and home away, Lonely we were, though never left alone, The solitude familiar to the poor Is feeling that the...
My bottom dollar
Two mites, two drops (yet all her house and land) Falls from a steady heart, though trembling hand. The others’ wanton wealth foams high and brave. The others cast away, she only gave. Richard Crashaw (1613-49), The Widow’s Mite.
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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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
I wish I were a tree
Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me None of my books will show: I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree: For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just. George Herbert (1593-1633),...
Our Saving Victim
In making victims we are judged, until we turn to the saving Victim. We are insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted… with a victim who is our victim. When we make victims, when we embark on condemnation, exclusion, violence, the diminution or oppression...
Search me, O God, and known my heart today
Search me, O God, and known my heart today; Try me, O Lord, and know my thoughts, I pray; See if there be some wicked way in me: Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. I praise you, Lord, for cleansing me from sin; Fulfil your word, and make me pure within;...
See Yourself
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone; They waste, they wither worse; they as they run Or bring more or more blazon man's distress, And I not help.... Hope holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
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...
A true hymn ‘if the heart be moved’
The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords Is when the soul unto the lines accords. He who craves all mind, And all the soul, and strength, and time, If the words only rhyme, Justly complains, that somewhat is behind To make his verse, or write a hymn in kind....
How to listen to a sermon
Judge not the preacher; for he is thy Judge If thou mislike him, thou conceivs't him not. God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speak something good: if all want sense, God takes a text, and preacheth...
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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Hiroshima, after the bomb
After the bomb had fallen, After the last sad cry When the earth was a burnt-out cinder Drifting across the sky; Came Lucifer, son of the morning With his fallen angel band, Silent and swift as a vulture On a mountain top stand. And he looked as he stood...
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...