Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
How to use Faith Shapers:
- Click on ROOMS to pick a theme
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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
Dayspring
At heaven's gate, at break of day, Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think of thee - and then my state (like the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate ; for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, that...
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...
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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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...
Rich and weary
When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by; Let us, said he, pour on him all we can; Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie Contract into a span. So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure; When...
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
The Singing Christ
Who is this that comes in splendour, coming from the blazing East? This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ. Airy, in an airy manner in an airy parkland walking, Others take him by the hand, lead him, do the talking. But the Form, the airy One,...
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...
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...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
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We grow accustomed to the dark
When light is put away - As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye - A Moment - We uncertain step For newness of the night - Then - fit our Vision to the Dark - And meet the Road - erect - And so of larger - Darknesses - Those Evenings of the Brain -...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Longing to believe
While faith is with me, I am blest; It turns my darkest night to day; But, while I clasp it to my breast, I often feel it slide away. What shall I do if all my love, My hopes, my toil, are cast away? And if there be no God above To hear and bless me when I...
A Falling Leaf
… My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me. My life is like a faded Leaf’ My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud or greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall – 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.
Caged Skylark?
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - That bird beyond the remembering his free fells, This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.... Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
Choosing a pastor
They chose their pastors as they chose their horses for hard work. But the last one died sooner than they expected; nothing sinister, You understand, but just the natural breaking of the heart beneath a load unfit for horses, ‘Ay, he’s a good ‘un’, Job Davies had...
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...
Pray with the most
Though private prayer be a brave design, Yet public hath more promises, more love: And love's a weight to hearts, to eyes a sign. We all are but cold suitors; let us move Where it is warmest. Leave thy six and seven; Pray with the most: for where most pray, is...
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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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
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...