Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith

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He Died Climbing

On the throne of emptiness I sit and wait To see wings of freedom appear From a land enthronged with gold – Such a beautiful state – As to put a mind at rest And throw away my fear.   Arthur De Kusel was killed climbing in Chamonix in July 1970. ...

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...

Catching the Sun

The Spirit breathes upon the Word, And brings the truth to sight; Precepts and promises afford, A sanctifying light.   A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic, like the sun: It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.   The Hand that gave it...

Wrack of mortal things!

Man at the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak, Subject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, Each storm his state, his mind, his body break, From some of these he never finds cessation, But day or night, within, without,...

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.

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...

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...

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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Disappointed Saturday people

Disappointed Saturday people

Squeezed between Good Friday and Easter, Ignored by preachers and painters and poets, Saturday lies cold and dark and silent – An unbearable pause between death and life. There are many Saturday people To whom Easter does not come.    

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

A nothing person

A nothing person

They do not lie; they just neglect to tell the truth. They do not take; they simply cannot bring themselves to give. They do not steal; they scavenge. They will not rock the boat; but did you ever see them pull an oar? They will not pull you down; they’ll simply let...

My gift is me

My gift is me

Persons are the gifts of God to me. They are already wrapped, Some beautifully and others less attractively, Some have been mishandled in the mail; Others come ‘special delivery’. Some are loosely wrapped; others, very tightly enclosed But the wrapping is not the...

Machines are running

Machines are running

All monsters of the deserts, all demons of darkness are here again. Once again people stand face to face with chaos: and what makes it so much more terrible is the fact that the majority do not comprehend what is at hand. For everywhere scientifically informed people...

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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The dross which men call gold

The dross which men call gold

Non nobis Domine!— Not unto us, O Lord! The Praise or Glory be Of any deed or word; For in Thy Judgment 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...

Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

When we have nothing to offer

When we have nothing to offer

When we are weak, we are strong. When our eyes close on the world, then somewhere within us the bush burns. When we are poor and aware of the inadequacy of our table, it is to that uninvited the guest comes. R.S. Thomas (913-2000), , Counterpoint.

The other one who is awake

The other one who is awake

There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl calling far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic rising and falling, rising and falling wave on wave on...

I wish I were a tree

I wish I were a tree

Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me None of my books will show: I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree: For sure  then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just.   George Herbert (1593-1633),...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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There is always another story

There is always another story

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell the intimate friend; Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my friend, there's never smoke without fire. Behind the corpse...

The Mission of God

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Worth more ‘real’ than life’s ‘illusion’

Worth more ‘real’ than life’s ‘illusion’

This poet parasite of grief Lives on the falling, leaf by leaf, Of life’s illusion, glad to see The nakedness of misery. He probes his pen deep down within, To make a sonnet of a sin. A Realist, revealing less Life’s beauty than its bitterness. Yet purer eyes than his...

Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom

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Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

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Reason, master of what I fancy

Reason, master of what I fancy

Fancy next her office holds but know that in the soul are many lesser faculties, that serve reason as chief. Among these fancy next her office holds; of all external things, which the five watchful senses represent, she forms imaginations, aery shapes, which reason,...