Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith

How to use Faith Shapers:
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USE FAITH SHAPERS FOR:
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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...

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...

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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Agnostic

Agnostic

I am deaf or this is dumb, This life and world apart from me To whom betrothed at birth I came, In whose silence most I see A calling soul, calling my scrutiny. You with religious faith, to whom Life speaks in words you understand – Believe, I also with my dumb...

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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God’s hidden wisdom revealed

God’s hidden wisdom revealed

All is best, though we oft doubt What th’unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza...

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

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For those tears I died

For those tears I died

 You said you'd come and share all my sorrows You said you'd be there for all my tomorrows I came so close from sending you away But just like you promised You came here to stay I just had to pray   And Jesus said, "Come to the water Stand by my side I know you are...

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday

Not darkness but twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now. And slowly the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that. We pass our hands over their surface like blind men, feeling for the mechanism that will swing them aside. They yield,...

Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

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We freely love

We freely love

… That thou art happy owe to God; that thou continuest such, owe to thyself, that is to thy obedience; Therein stand…. This was that caution given thee; be advised. God made thee perfect, not immutable; And good he made thee; but to persevere He left it in thy power,...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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Anglican clergy called to account

Anglican clergy called to account

O, when our clergy, at the Dreadful Day, Shall make their audit, when the Judge shall say ‘Give your accounts. What have my lambs been fed? Say, do they all stand sound? Is there none dead By your defaults? Come, shepherds, bring them forth That I may crown your...

The Mission of God

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Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom

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Glory: Now and Then, Here and There

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Mourning dress

Mourning dress

  Shall I wear mourning for my soldier? Dead! I, a believer? Give me red! Or give me royal purple for the King at whose high court my love is visiting. Dress me in green for growth, for life made new; For skies his dear feet march, dress me in blue; In white, for his...