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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The cloistered rose

The cloistered rose

And God is the weight that bends the bough of the young tree gently as spring snow. He is the lightness of the summer flower, of the bee’s touch, and his the power that tames the sea and poises like a feather or a loose leaf the world. He threads together the stars...

The Bible: Bestowed Word of God

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Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person

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Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless

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A  strange and bitter crop

A strange and bitter crop

Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from poplar trees.   Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet...

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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Am I talking to myself?

Am I talking to myself?

They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you, Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream One talker aping two.   And so it is, but not as they Falsely believe. For I Seek in myself the thing I meant to say, And lo! The wells are dry.   Then, seeing...

The Church: Provisional but Necessary

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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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Asleep in my Hand

Asleep in my Hand

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie, Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand, Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry – Meadows and gardens running through my hand. Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring, Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,...