Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
How to use Faith Shapers:
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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
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Faith-shaping Poets
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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Lighten our darkness
Our church generation Out of his spacious, gracious splendour, They prized God and forced Him into their time; And they surrounded and hymned him, So that he all but disappeared Into their darkness. Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926).
He fathers-forth beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings; Landscape plotted and pierced – fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear...
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...
Kintsugi – Broken Beauty
Thus far I did come laden with my sin; Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in Till I came hither; What a place is this: Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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Storehouse of Life
The chief and top of his knowledge consists in the book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, the Holy Scriptures. There he sucks and lives. In the Scriptures he finds four things; precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for...
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
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The words of the prophets
People talking without speaking People hearing without listening ‘Fools’, said I, ‘You do not know Silence like a cancer grows.’ The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. Paul Simon (1942-), 1964.
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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Human rights matter
W’en wi can’t face reality Wi leggo wi clarity; Some latch on to vanity, Some hol’ insanity, Some get vision, Start preach relijan But dem can’t make decision W’en it come to wi fight; Dem can’t make decision W’en it comes to wi rites. Linton Kwesi Johnson...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
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...
Eternity awaits you
I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had the treasure in it. I realised now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not...
The Last Post
It is the last post of this life and the reveille of the next. Death is the end of our present life, It is the parting from loved ones; It is the setting out into the unknown. We overcome death by accepting it as the will of a loving God, by...
Unbelieving Saturday
A solemn, sombre, leaden Saturday – the muscles and joints of the day lie slack. Silence entombed in stillness – dread Sabbath. Who can be a believer on this day? I’ve come so far to shed tears here at last in the city of my heart. No one stirs. Faith creeps...