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...

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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As form in sculpture is the prisoner

As form in sculpture is the prisoner

As form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind’s tooling. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), 'Emergings', Frequencies, 1978.

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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Water into Wine

Water into Wine

These people know me only in the thin hymns of the mind, in the arid sermons and prayers. I am the live God, nailed fast to the old tree of a nation by its unreal tears. I thirst, I thirst for the spring water. Draw it up for me from your heart’s well and I will...

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

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A failure?

A failure?

O God, can a man find you when he lies with his face downwards And his nose in the rubble that was his achievement? Is the music playing behind the door of despair?   Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), From Failure Up, 1988.

The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting

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Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living

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Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience

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Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful

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They also serve who stand and wait

They also serve who stand and wait

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 to serve therewith my maker, and present my true account, lest he returning chide, Doth...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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Dressed for God

Dressed for God

Holiness on the head, Light and perfections on the breast, Harmonious bells below, raising the dead To lead them into life and rest: Thus are true Aarons drest.   Profaneness in my head, Defects and darknesse in my breast, A noise of passions ringing me for dead...

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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I sought to stand for God

I sought to stand for God

  I sought to stand for God Tall, straight and proud, An oak of righteousness Head in a cloud.   The spirit winds that blew Stripped all my leaf, Broke heavy branches off, Trunk split in grief.   The gentle morning sun Shone down on me, My helplessness complete,...