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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Beginning is the End!

Beginning is the End!

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from…. … A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s...

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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Quiet Revival?

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.

Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

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Not only me

Not only me

No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less; As well as if a promontory were, As well as if a manor of thy friends, or of thine own, were; Any man’s death...

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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Assurance: as wings to the bird

Assurance: as wings to the bird

Faith will make us walk, but assurance will make us run – we shall never think we can do enough for God. Assurance will be as wings to the bird, as weights to the clock, to set all the wheels of obedience running.   Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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Finding God

Finding God

I went to church to find you But found in there instead The people looking inward To find you in their head. George Knowles, Pit to Priest, Hucknall, 2007.

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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The dream is gone

The dream is gone

… When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown; the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb.   Pink Floyd, 1979 in the context of the pop...