Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
How to use Faith Shapers:
- Click on ROOMS to pick a theme
- Search for an author/poet by name
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USE FAITH SHAPERS FOR:
- Prayer or in time of personal need
- Resource for a group meeting
- Illustrations for a devotional address
- Material for a church study course
Latest Posts
Faith-shaping Poets
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
War
Waste of muscle, waste of brain, Waste of patience, waste of pain, Waste of manhood, waste of health, Waste of beauty, waste of wealth, Waste of blood, and waste of tears, Waste of youth’s most precious years, Waste of glory, waste of God,- War! Geoffrey...
Summer Slaughter
Almost a century, and half a world away The children of Hiroshima were all on holiday; Not dreaming of the holocaust the heavens would release – They weren’t concerned with politics, or even peace. The children of Hiroshima, like youngsters anywhere, Ran out to...
Agnostic
I am deaf or this is dumb, This life and world apart from me To whom betrothed at birth I came, In whose silence most I see A calling soul, calling my scrutiny. You with religious faith, to whom Life speaks in words you understand – Believe, I also with my dumb...
Black Friday
‘You will not sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened your hand and yielded that which is not yours to give or to withhold.’ ‘I cannot’, she (Lilith) answered, ‘I would if I could, for I am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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View me Lord, a work of thine
In thy word, Lord, is my trust, To thy mercies fast I fly; Though I am but clay and dust, Yet thy grace can lift me high. View me Lord, a work of thine: Shall I then lie drowned in night? Might thy grace in me but shine, I should seem made all of light…....
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
Good Friday
…The Carpenter had done his work well to sustain the carpenter’s burden; the cross an example of the power of art to transcend timber. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000).
Uninhabited Cross
Not the empty tomb but the uninhabited cross. Look long enough and you will see the arms put on leaves. Not a crown of thorns but a crown of flowers haloing it, with a bird singing as though perched on paradise’s threshold. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000),...
What the Lord has done for me
Have you no words? Ah, think again! Words flow apace when you complain And fill your fellow creature’s ear With the sad tale of all your care. Were half the breath thus vainly spent To heav’n in supplication sent, Your cheerful song would oft’ner be: ’Hear what the...
The world’s ‘danger’
I saw a stable low and very bare, A little child in a manger. The oxen knew him, had him in their care. To men he was a stranger. The safety of the world was lying there And the world’s danger. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907).
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Certainly bored
Smugness is the first reward befalls impatient certainty – your world and you are in accord of mutual unreality at rest; the last (reward) is being bored. R.P. Blackmur (1904-65).
After a quick bash
And after this quick bash in the dark You will rise and go, Thinking of how empty you have grown, And whether all the evening’s care in front of mirrors, And the younger boys disowned, Led simply to this. Confined to what you are expected to be, By what you are, Out...
Sex in 1963
Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) - Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban And the Beatles' first LP. Up to then there'd only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread...
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...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
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Content with what I have
He that is down needs fear no fall, He that is low, no pride: He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have, Little be it or much: And, Lord, contentment still I crave; Because thou savest such. John Bunyan...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Here is no monarch God
Morning glory, starlit sky, soaring music, scholar’s truth, flight of swallows, autumn leaves, memory’s treasure, grace of youth: . Open are the gifts of God, gifts of love to mind and sense; hidden is love’s agony, love’s endeavor, love’s expense. . Love that gives,...
Pilgrim
There is an island there is no going to but in a small boat the way the saints went, travelling the gallery of the frightened faces of the long-drowned, munching the gravel of its beaches. So I have gone up the salt lane to the building with the stone altar and the...
Thy soul and God stand sure
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).
Yes: uphill all the way
Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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Get a glory
Oh you gotta get a glory! In the work you do, A Hallelujah chorus In the heart of you. Paint or tell a story, Sing or shovel coal, But you gotta get a glory Or the...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Live as I will
Lord, let me live as I will. I need a little wild freedom, A little giddiness of heart, the strange taste of unknown flowers… I love to bound to the heart of all thy marvels, Leaping your chasms and My mouth stuffed with intoxicating grasses; Quiver with an...
Waiting for God
Face to face? Ah, no God; such language falsifies the relation. Nor side by side, nor near you, nor anywhere in time and space... Young I pronounced you. Older I still do, but seldomer now, leaning far out over an immense depth, letting your name go and...
Stripped in my winter
The summer leaves fall from the trees. The branches stark and naked against a grey sky, Yet one day the sap will rise again. You, Lord, will send the Spirit Rushing through our veins, And there will be flowers and fruit And shade on a summer’s day. Ian Bunting...
Morning Preen
Early every morning the eagle preens its feathers for more than an hour. Sitting on the side of its nest, the eagle passes each feather through its mouth, something like steam cleaning while depositing a liquid that makes its feathers water repellent. This is...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
Take ‘prayer’, but they hand back such presents
We stand looking at each other. I take the word ‘prayer’ and present it to them. I wait idly what their lips will make of it. But they hand back such presents. I am left alone with no echoes to the amen I dreamed of. I am saved by the music from the emptiness of this...
Doctrine and life bring a strong regard
Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word? He is a brittle crazy glass: Yet in the temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace. But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie, Making thy life to shine...
Preachers in their majestic, unaffected style
... herein to our prophets far beneath, As men divinely taught, and better teaching The solid rules of civil government, In their majestic, unaffected style, Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome, In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, What makes a nation...
We are the Lord’s last message
Christ has no hands but our hands To do His work today; He has no feet but our feet To lead men in His way; He has no tongues but our tongues To tell men how He died; He has no help but our help To bring them to His side. We are the only Bible The careless world will...
The Mission of God
The purpose of a poem
… to save from death, decay and ruin the actual moment of vision and response, and keep in the real world…. Sophia De Mello Breyner (1919 -2004).
Not another redemption song?
Won’t you help to sing These songs of freedom ? ‘Cos all I ever had ; Redemption songs. Bob Marley (1945-81).
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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Pave Paradise with a Swinging Hot Spot
Don’t it always seem to go. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone…. They paved paradise And put up a parking lot, With a pink hotel, A boutique, and a swinging hot spot. Don’t it always seem to go. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone…. Joni...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Nothing can die
In the book of the earth it is written: Nothing can die. In the book of the Sioux it is written: They have gone away into the earth to hide. Nothing will coax them out again But the people dancing. Mary Oliver (1935-2019), Ghosts, 2017. ...
Living in two worlds
I am the girl of two worlds, My heart belongs to here and there, Two worlds profoundly different, United in my highest regard. Do I live in or between these two worlds? I am the girl of two worlds. My heart is here when BAM! Disaster strikes there. Someone needs me,...
Livin’ for today
Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky Imagine all the people Livin' for today Ah Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Livin' life in...
I am immortal diamond
Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal; beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This jack, poor potsherd,...