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...

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.

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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Father’s Day

Father’s Day

Then, kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays: Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing," that thus they all shall meet in future days; there, ever bask in uncreated rays, no more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear; together...

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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Not My King! Then Who is?

Not My King! Then Who is?

Love that gives, gives ever more, gives with zeal, with eager hands, spares not, keeps not, all outpours, ventures all its all expends. . Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free, poor in making many rich, weak in giving power to be. . Therefore he...

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

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The mind has cliffs of fall

The mind has cliffs of fall

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does...

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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No more solitary confinement

No more solitary confinement

We never left the place where we were born, Have only lived one day, but every day, Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn The grass between our work and home away, Lonely we were, though never left alone, The solitude familiar to the poor Is feeling that the...

Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

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Search me, O God, and known my heart today

Search me, O God, and known my heart today

Search me, O God, and known my heart today; Try me, O Lord, and know my thoughts, I pray; See if there be some wicked way in me: Cleanse me from every sin and set me free.   I praise you, Lord, for cleansing me from sin; Fulfil your word, and make me pure within;...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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A true hymn ‘if the heart be moved’

A true hymn ‘if the heart be moved’

The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords Is when the soul unto the lines accords. He who craves all mind, And all the soul, and strength, and time, If the words only rhyme, Justly complains, that somewhat is behind To  make his verse, or write a hymn in kind....

The Mission of God

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A poet’s crown of thorns

A poet’s crown of thorns

Poet, you are the life of this life, and you have Triumphed over the ages despite their severity.   Poet, you will one day rule the hearts, and Therefore, your kingdom has no ending. Poet, examine your crown of thorns; you will Find concealed in it a budding...

Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom

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Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

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Sweet dreams

Sweet dreams

O let my soul, whose keys I must deliver Into the hands of senseless dreams, Which knowing thee, suck in thy beams And wake with thee for ever.   George Herbert (1593-1633).