Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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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...
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Feeling Autumnal?
Mars burns bright and close this October: I watch it through the window, as I lie, too-awake, in the dark. Drawn-in under covers as the cold bites, I shrink, foetal-shaped but old-fleshed, frail. I am autumnal: dry-leaved, mud-under-foot, dark-dayed,...
Harvest Thanks Giving
Thanks be to God for the food on the table; Thank you, our daily cry. Food for today and with more for tomorrow, All of our needs supplied. Crops from the field, fruit from the tree, Vegetables from the ground; Food from the earth, fish from the sea, Plenty to...
War Nearer Home!
Across our planet earth there bleed the wounds of war, With livelihoods destroyed and cherished homes no more; The people flee, abused and scarred and travelling far, Poor refugees. Across our planet earth the wounds of war go deep With generations taught...
Brown Grass
Brown Grass As these tall grasses sway, wind-tossed and tawny, back and then bowing, tumbling and rising, so my life, shaken, blown and suspiring, lurching, it seems, and lifted, feels, as it riffles through me, unseen hand of God. Then for one exquisite moment...
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
The abstract answer and the incarnate mystery
The windless northern surge, the sea-gull’s scream And Calvin’s kirk crowning the barren brae…. The Word made flesh here is made word again, A word made word in flourish and arrogant crook. See here King Calvin with his iron pen, And God three angry letters in a book...
Self-authenticating Wisdom
O take the book from off the shelf, And con it meekly on thy knees; Best panegyric on itself, And self-avouched to teach and please. Respect, adore it heart and mind. How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand, Who reads the most, is most refined, And polished by the...
The Holy Spirit’s two-edged sword
Brandish in faith ‘till then The Spirit’s two-edged Sword, Hew all the snares of Fiends and Men In pieces with the Word; ‘TIS WRITTEN’. This applied Baffles their Strength and Art; Spirit and Soul with this divide, And Joints and Marrows part. Charles Wesley...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
No Shore in Sight
If you can stay in the midst of the turmoil unperplexed and calm because you see Jesus, that is God's plan in your life. Not that you may be able to say, 'I have done this and now it's alright.' We have an idea that God is leading us to a certain goal, a desired...
The Second Coming
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank...
Let me go there too
And God held in his hand a small globe. Look, he said. The son looked. Far off, as through water, he saw a scorched land of fierce colour. The light burned there; crusted buildings cast their shadows: a bright serpent, a river uncoiled itself, radiant with slime. On...
My Morning Star
O Christ, our morning star, Splendour of light eternal, Shining with the glory of the rainbow. Come and waken us From the greyness of our apathy, And renew in us Your gift of hope. Venerable Bede (672-735)
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Twisted Religion
I have pretended long, in loyalty. I had a childhood hurt for five harsh years, I let it wound my good fragility And over decades I've shed many tears And sometimes wished that I were wholly free Of faith because it was to me all fears, Unhappiness and, yes,...
Endless Carnival
The endless carnival... constitutes a dramatic affirmation of power, wealth and virility, in which 'victory' is accomplished by many abusive exploitations, all in the pursuit of winning and being on top of the heap of the money game. Walter Brueggemann (1933 -...
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them from prayers or bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill,...
My Dragon?
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone.... And I not help.... Or what is else? There is your world within. There rid the dragons, root out there the sin. ’’Your will is law in that small commonweal....
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
Sin where I begun
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more. Wilt thou forgive that sin...
I’ll turn my face
O think me worth thine anger, punish me, Burn off my rusts and my deformity; Restore thine image so much, by thy grace, That thou may’st know me, and I’ll turn my face. John Donne (1572-1631)
Love took my hand
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked anything. ‘A guest’, I answered, ‘worthy to be here.’ Love said, ‘You...
Held Fast
I threaten'd to observe the strict decree Of my dear God with all my power and might; But I was told by one it could not be; Yet I might trust in God to be my light. "Then will I trust," said I, "in Him alone." "Nay, e'en to trust in Him was also His:...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Fulfilled
Human persons in every age, always and everywhere, whether they realise and reflect upon it or not, are in relationship with the unutterable mystery of human life that we call God. Looking at Jesus Christ the crucified and risen one, we can have the hope that now in...
Song of a Lesbian
All my life’s been lived in fragments, Just a part of me was shown, A part I shared with friends, And a part I lived at home, A part I showed my work-place And a part the church could share, And a part of me was hidden In closets of despair. Marsha Stevens...
My bottom dollar
Two mites, two drops (yet all her house and land) Falls from a steady heart, though trembling hand. The others’ wanton wealth foams high and brave. The others cast away, she only gave. Richard Crashaw (1613-49), The Widow’s Mite.
Ring it Out and In
... The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
Unless I catch fire
Unless the eye catch fire The God will not be seen. Unless the ear catch fire The God will not be heard. Unless the tongue catch fire The God will not be named Unless the heart catch fire The God will not be...
Pure beauty
The memory of a glorious moment, My soul was stirred And once again you came, A passing vision, A glimmer of beauty pure. In fullness beats my heart, feeling once again The resurrection of divinity, And inspiration, and life, And tears, and love. Alexander...
Pure beauty
The memory of a glorious moment, My soul was stirred And once again you came, A passing vision, A glimmer of beauty pure. In fullness beats my heart, feeling once again The resurrection of divinity, And inspiration, and life, And tears, and love. Alexander...
Hope in the storms of life
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without words, And never stops at all. And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chilliest...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Reborn
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night. George Herbert (1593-1633). The...
Big Decision
To every man there openeth A Way, and Ways, and a Way. And the High Soul climbs the High way, And the Low Soul gropes the Low, And in between, on the misty flats, The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth A High Way, and a Low. And every man decideth...
Caged Skylark?
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - That bird beyond the remembering his free fells, This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.... Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -...
The Flower
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers of spring; To which, beside their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such thing. Who would have thought my...
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
The way into church!
I see a door, a multitude near by, In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all! Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall, But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.... But see, one comes; he listens to the voice; Careful he wipes his weary dusty feet! The...
Heaven in ordinary
Prayer the Church's banquet, Angels age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth; Engine against the almighty, sinners' tower, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing...
How to listen to a sermon
Judge not the preacher; for he is thy Judge If thou mislike him, thou conceivs't him not. God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speak something good: if all want sense, God takes a text, and preacheth...
Low Sunday?
Often I try to analyse the quality of its silences. Is this where God hides from my searching?... These are the hard ribs of a body that our prayers have failed to animate. Shadows advance from their corners to take possession of places the light held for an...
The Mission of God
Remember
Do not face us, O living God, with the future of a world without justice or a future without mercy; in your mercy, establish justice, and, in your justice, remember your overflowing mercy in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen Michael Vasey (1946-98). ...
An old age is out, time to begin a new
All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. ‘Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new. John Dryden (1631 – 1700), The Secular Masque, 1700.
Let all the world sing
Let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King ! The church with psalms must shout, No door can keep them out ; But above all the heart Must bear the longest part. Let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King ! George Herbert...
Caged Skylark?
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - That bird beyond the remembering his free fells, This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.... Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
Hiroshima, after the bomb
After the bomb had fallen, After the last sad cry When the earth was a burnt-out cinder Drifting across the sky; Came Lucifer, son of the morning With his fallen angel band, Silent and swift as a vulture On a mountain top stand. And he looked as he stood...
Escaping a recession
I am spending my way out Of a recession. The road chokes On delivery vans. I used to be Just looking Around, I used to be How Much, and Have You Got it in Beige. Now I devour whole stores – High speed spin; giant size; chunky gold; De luxe springing....
Betrayed by Your Lifestyle
I was hungry And you were overweight. I was thirsty And you kept watering your lawn. I was a stranger And you called the police. I was naked And you went shopping for the latest fashions. I was sick ...
Human Being!
Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot retain. Sa'adi Shirazi (d. c.1291/1292), On the wall...
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
A little boat adrift!
Adrift! A little boat adrift! And night is coming down! Will no one guide a little boat Unto the nearest town? So, sailors say, on yesterday, Just as the dusk was brown, One little boat gave up its strife, And gurgled down and down. But angels say, on...
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...
Born among the trees and leaves
O who will show me those delights on high Echo. I Thou echo, thou art mortal, all men know. Echo. No Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves? Echo. Leaves. And are there any leaves that still abide? Echo. Bide. What leaves are they? Impart the matter wholly....
Son Worship
To long for the unsettling, unsetting Son is dangerous. Saints and Starets, sinners and seekers have found that Christ takes them at their word who say that they want, or would like, to know him. Holy Fools have met him in the derision of sophisticates....