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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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...

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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a gambler who won

a gambler who won

And, sitting down, they watched him there, The soldiers did; There, while they played with dice, And, sitting down, they watched him there, The soldiers did; There, while they played with dice, He made his sacrifice, And died upon the cross to rid God’s world of sin....

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

Little boxes on the hillside

Little boxes on the hillside

Little boxes on the hillside… And they’re all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. Malvina Reynolds (1900 – 78), Little Boxes, 1962 song about tract houses in San Francisco.

Getting and spending

Getting and spending

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Don’t it always seem to go

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. Joni Mitchell (1945 - ), Big Yellow Taxi, 1970.

Worthless fame

Worthless fame

 No not to us, O Lord! The praise or glory be Of any deed or word; For in thy judgement lies To crown or bring to nought All knowledge or device That man has reached or wrought. And we confess our blame – How all too high we hold That noise which men call fame, That...

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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View me Lord, a work of thine

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…....

Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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The just man justices

The just man justices

I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps his goings graces; acts in God’s eyes what in God’s eyes he is – Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his to the Father through the features of men’s faces....

Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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A Christian of sorts

A Christian of sorts

I’m a Christian in my way; How it’s difficult to say; I’ve the haziest sort of notion What I mean by my devotion. Clichés clutter in my head, Catch words are my daily bread, Exquisitely undefined is the thing I call my mind.   David Elton Trueblood...

Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

Not Waving but Drowning

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning; I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead. It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was...

I Am a Child of God

I Am a Child of God

When a person acquainted with the music of God appears, one who is wise both in words and deeds (Luke 7:32)… then this person will produce the sound of the music of God, since he has learned from all this how to strike the chords at the appropriate time: now the...

Love is not far to go

Love is not far to go

It is not far to go For you are near, It is not far to go For you are here. And not by travelling, Lord, We come to you, But by the way of love, And we love you. Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867-1951),  Edges of His Ways, 1980.

Is Anybody There?

Is Anybody There?

Prayers like  gravel flung at the sky's window, hoping to attract the loved one’s attention. But without visible plaits to let down for the believer to climb up, to what purpose open that far casement? I would have refrained long since but that peering once through my...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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Two friends: such love

Two friends: such love

Such love I cannot analyse; It does not rest in lips or eyes, Neither in kisses nor caress. Partly, I know, it’s gentleness   And understanding in one word Or in brief letters. It’s preserved By trust and by respect and awe, These are the words I’m feeling for.   Two...

The Mission of God

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Useless

Useless

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent Therewith to serve my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, ‘Doth God...

Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom

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Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

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Love’s fire thou art

Love’s fire thou art

Love’s fire thou art, however cold I be, Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, Nor home, but thee.   Christina Rossetti (1828-82).