Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith

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Latest Posts

Jeu d’esprit

Flame-dancing Spirit, come, Sweep us off our feet and Dance us through our days. Surprise us with your rhythms, Dare us to try new steps, explore New patterns and new partnerships. Release us from old routines, To swing in abandoned joy And fearful adventure. And in...

Elections

Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear All that; it is their promises that bring despair. If beauty, that anomaly, is left us still, The cause les in their poverty, not in their will. If they had power ('amenities are bunk'), conceive How their insatiate...

May Magnificent

All things rising, all things sizing Mary sees, sympathising With that world of good, Nature's motherhood.   Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind How she did in her stored Magnify the Lord.   Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89),  The May...

Hardy and Harry’s Seasons

This is the weather the cuckoo likes, and so do I When showers betumble the chestnut spikes and nestlings fly And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at the Traveller's Rest, And maids come forth sprig-muslin dressed, And citizens dream...

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...

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...

Quiet Revival?

I walked abroad in Easter Park, I heard the wild dog’s distant bark, I knew my Lord was risen again,- Wild dog, wild dog, you bark in vain. Stevie Smith (1902-71), Conviction (11),1978.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) – Faith Shaper

George Macdonald was born in Huntly, in the western part of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a farmer and his wife Helen MacKay (1790-1832). He was educated in country schools where Gaelic myths and Old Testament stories were common currency. At King’s College,...

Emily Dickinson (1830-86) – Faith Shaper

Emily Dickinson’s father was a leading local lawyer and treasurer of the well-known Amherst College, founded in 1821. From 1840 she was educated at the Academy and then for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. At the age of 23 she withdrew from most social...

John Milton (1608-74) – Faith Shaper

John Milton rejected the faith of his Roman Catholic father. He became a strongly Protestant Puritan, and a radical Christian with regard to the contemporary culture and powers in the land, including the Crown, Parliament and the Church. Although in 1630, he...

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) – Faith Shaper

Mary Oliver was born and raised in Maple Hills Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Abused as a child by her father and neglected by her mother, she commented ‘I was very little. But I had recurring nightmares; there’s damage.’[1] She described the setting: ‘It was...

Faith-shaping Poets

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Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven

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Tomorrow Morning

Tomorrow Morning

Here dies another day, During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world around me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two?   G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936).

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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My Jesus: God in man made visible

My Jesus: God in man made visible

Earth cannot, with all its trinkets’ Slake my longings at this hour; They were captured, they were widened, When my Jesus showed his power. None but he can now content me, He, the Incomprehensible; O to gaze upon his Person, God in man made visible.   Ann Griffiths...

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

My heart unheedful has puffed up

My heart unheedful has puffed up

Round me whirled a fiery zone And the recoil of my word’s airy ripple My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: Let cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.   George MacDonald...

She lost the parable

She lost the parable

It was sex, sex, sex and money, money, God’s mistake and the devil’s creation, that took the mind of the congregation on long journeys into the hills of a strange land, where sin was the honey bright as sunlight in death’s hives. They lost the parable and found the...

A staircase for waiting in silence

A staircase for waiting in silence

Moments of great calm kneeling before an altar of wood in a stone church in summer, waiting for the God to speak: the air is a staircase for silence; the sun’s light ringing me, as though I acted a great role. And the audiences still; all the close throng of spirits...

A guilty conscience

A guilty conscience

Strange fondness of the human heart, Enamoured of its harm! Strange world, that costs it so much smart, And still has power to charm.   Whence has the world her magic power? Why deem we Death a foe? Recoil from weary life’s best hour, And covet longer woe?   The cause...

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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Come unto Me!

Come unto Me!

Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than he went through before. He that into his kingdom comes Must enter by that door.   Come Lord when grace has made me meet Thy blessed face to see; For if thy work on earth be sweet, What will thy glory be?   Then I shall end...

Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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Ignorant of themselves, of God much more

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more

The worldly wisest Alas! What can they teach, and not mislead, Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, And how the world began, and how man fell, Degraded by himself, on grace depending? Much of the soul they talk, but all awry; And in themselves seek virtue; and to...

Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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God’s latecomers

God’s latecomers

‘Like me,’ she said to them, ‘you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way….’ ‘How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, whereas the shepherds had run...

Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

Restrained?

Restrained?

  The fixed pew in Protestant church buildings has become a symbol of the gaol-like imprisonment of worshippers, so that, contrary to the Protestant insistence on liberty of conscience among individual believers they are finally restrained from taking liberties...

Sainted Glass

Sainted Glass

To one kneeling down no word came, Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips Of the grave saints, rigid in glass; Or the dry whisper of unseen wings, Bats not angels, in the high roof.   Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long And saw love in a dark crown Of thorns...

Deliver us from cant

Deliver us from cant

…He bids us love our enemies, And live in Christian peace, ‘Tis only he can order wars and woes that never cease. Vengeance is mine, I will repay; Beware! Thou shalt not kill: Behold the bloody fields of France, They are God’s holy will….   He is the unknown God...

First Love

First Love

You have broken my heart. I cannot stop thinking about you. I love you even though I have met you only once. Others may have given up on you not realizing your potential but I see something in you. You made me cry but you have helped me to realize what is important in...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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My holy places

My holy places

For the blood of thy martyrs and saints shall enrich the earth, shall create holy places. For wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martyr has given his blood for the blood of Christ, there is holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it though armies...

The Mission of God

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Save your journeying soul

Save your journeying soul

When your ship Long moored in the harbour, Gives you the illusion Of being a house; When your ship Begins to put down roots In the stagnant water by the quay: Put out to sea! Save your boat’s journeying soul, And your own pilgrim soul, Cost what it may.   Dom...

Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom

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Ceasefire

Ceasefire

We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing. We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever. War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour; Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall; And if these poor...

Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

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Build your ship of death

Build your ship of death

Have you built your ship of death? O, have you? O, build your ship of death, for you will need it.   D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930).