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
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...
As form in sculpture is the prisoner
As form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind’s tooling. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), 'Emergings', Frequencies, 1978.
God is a Surprise
What is belief? A recognition? Who knows of what? If any say He knows, he lies. Who knows what never was begun And will not end? God is a way, And a surprise. And in that way we cannot choose, For choice deceives us, as it must. We live in sense, Certain at...
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
God’s hidden wisdom revealed
All is best, though we oft doubt What th’unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza...
Water into Wine
These people know me only in the thin hymns of the mind, in the arid sermons and prayers. I am the live God, nailed fast to the old tree of a nation by its unreal tears. I thirst, I thirst for the spring water. Draw it up for me from your heart’s well and I will...
Where has he Gone?
With many tears I went in search of him, Climbing high mountains which did still ascend, And gave me echoes when I called my friend; Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, And high cathedrals where the light was dim, Through books and arts and works without an...
The wise men’s dilemma; a life or death
… were we led all that way for Birth or death? There was a Birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places,...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
For those tears I died
You said you'd come and share all my sorrows You said you'd be there for all my tomorrows I came so close from sending you away But just like you promised You came here to stay I just had to pray And Jesus said, "Come to the water Stand by my side I know you are...
A failure?
O God, can a man find you when he lies with his face downwards And his nose in the rubble that was his achievement? Is the music playing behind the door of despair? Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), From Failure Up, 1988.
Know your enemy
Exaggerate each feature until man is Metamorphosized into beast, vermin, insect. Fill in the background with malignant Figures from ancient nightmares – devils, When your icon of the enemy is complete You will be able to kill without guilt, Slaughter without shame....
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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A stricken deer that left the herd
I was a stricken deer that left the herd, Long since with many an arrow deep infixed. My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by One who had Himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side He bore, And...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
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).
Holy Saturday
Not darkness but twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now. And slowly the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that. We pass our hands over their surface like blind men, feeling for the mechanism that will swing them aside. They yield,...
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
My Trumpetry!
From all my lame defeats and oh! much more From all the victories that I seemed to score; From cleverness shot forth on thy behalf At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh; From all my proofs of thy divinity, Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me. ...
Risky learning
I stepped from Plank to Plank, A slow and cautious way. The Stars about my head I felt, About my Feet the Sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch – This gave me that precarious Gait Some call Experience. Emily Dickinson...
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...
My Signal Box
The signal box sometimes feels like one of those invitation tests: go to the wilds, endure the emptiness of yourself and return reformed. Confront that which is most you: stray to the dark realm of your bruised heart and let the light in, let the grand voice of...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
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...
Anglican clergy called to account
O, when our clergy, at the Dreadful Day, Shall make their audit, when the Judge shall say ‘Give your accounts. What have my lambs been fed? Say, do they all stand sound? Is there none dead By your defaults? Come, shepherds, bring them forth That I may crown your...
Dressed for God
Holiness on the head, Light and perfections on the breast, Harmonious bells below, raising the dead To lead them into life and rest: Thus are true Aarons drest. Profaneness in my head, Defects and darknesse in my breast, A noise of passions ringing me for dead...
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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Seed Planting
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, Knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
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Newspapers?
Why do we buy a newspaper For it’s plain for us to see The pulp that it is made of Was better as a tree. George Knowles (1937- ), Pit to Priest, 2007.
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
Mourning dress
Shall I wear mourning for my soldier? Dead! I, a believer? Give me red! Or give me royal purple for the King at whose high court my love is visiting. Dress me in green for growth, for life made new; For skies his dear feet march, dress me in blue; In white, for his...
I sought to stand for God
I sought to stand for God Tall, straight and proud, An oak of righteousness Head in a cloud. The spirit winds that blew Stripped all my leaf, Broke heavy branches off, Trunk split in grief. The gentle morning sun Shone down on me, My helplessness complete,...
Ungranted God, one with him in me
Faith Unfaithful Mute, with signs I speak: Blind, by groping seek: Heed; yet nothing hear: Feel; find no one near. Deaf, eclipsed, and dumb, Through this gloom I come On the time-path trod Toward ungranted God. Carnal, I can claim Only his known name Dying, can...
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),...