Poems and readings to reflect on and shape your faith
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Latest Posts
Our Father: Hallowed on Earth as in Heaven
Almost a Successful Failure
It was the first failure (Mons Officer Training Unit, Aldershot) I’d ever had, but it was salutary. I had begun my National Service as a committed Christian, a Conservative and, I’m sure, a prig. Now priggishness apart, I was none of these things quite, and though I...
What Now?
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 the sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze...
Thank you, Lord
… if all the world Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream and nothing wear but freize, The all-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known, and yet despised; And we should serve him as a grudging master, As a...
God’s a Phone, Maybe
...say God's a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone, but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be. You don't want to talk, so you pull out the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery metal bits....
The Bible: Bestowed Word of God
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The Bible is dynamite
You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, to turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature. Mahatma Gandhi...
Jesus Christ: Crucified God in Person
Love nailed Jesus
O God, Nails would not have held your Son to the cross Had not love held him there. Make us truly thankful for his great love shown on the cross; And grant that it may fix and steady us In those situations and places Which we might happily desert. After...
A new small-rented lease please
Having been tenant long to a rich Lord, Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, And make a suit unto him, to afford A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old. In heaven at his manor I him sought: They told me there, that he was lately gone About some land, which he...
Christ’s passion
And now, O Father, mindful of the love that bought us, once for all, on Calvary's Tree, and having with us him that pleads above, we here present, we spread forth to thee that only Offering perfect in thine eyes, the one, true, pure, immortal Sacrifice. Look, Father,...
Happy Tree
There was a bright and happy tree; The wind with music laced its boughs; Thither across the houseless sea Came singing birds to house. Men grudged the tree its happy eyes, Its happy dawns of eager sound; So all that crown and tower of leaves They levelled with...
Humankind: Sinful, Rebellious and Faithless
Story of a hotel room
Thinking we were safe – insanity! We went in to make love…. … someone should have warned us That without permanent intentions You have absolutely no protection - If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous, The concurring deep love of the heart Follows the naked...
I wonder
Men go abroad to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. Augustine (354-430),...
My move
… The saint knows That the spiritual path Is a sublime chess game with God And that the Beloved Has just made … a Fantastic Move…. Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think You have a thousand serious moves. Hafiz...
My 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...
The Grace of God: Justifying and Converting
Saved to save others
Are you content, have you no higher aim Than just to gain admittance at the door, In faintest characters to trace your name Among the list of those who die no more? Do you not feel that you are saved to live? Do you not know you are saved to save? Forgiven that you...
For me another morning
Here dies another day, During which I have had eyes, ears, hands And the great world around me; And with tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two? G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936).
Christ died for God and me
Christ died for God and me Upon the crucifixion tree For God a spoken Word For me a Sword For God a hymn of praise For me eternal days For God an explanation For me salvation. Stevie Smith (1902-71), 1978.
Naked in Your Sty
Take off the business suit, the old school tie, the gown, the cap, drop the reviews, awards, certificates, stand naked in you sty, a little carnivore, clothed in dried turds. The snot that slowly fills our passages seeps up from hollows where the dead beasts lie;...
Christ-likeness: Progressive Christian Living
Put out to sea
When your ship Long moored in the harbour, Gives you the illusion Of being a house; When your ship Begins to put down roots In the stagnant water by the quay: Put out to sea! Save your boat’s journeying soul, And your own pilgrim soul, Cost what it may. Dom...
Liz Truss ‘I will deliver’ But…
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction Of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying That the kingdom always lies beyond us: No statement says all that can be said. No prayer fully expresses our...
Wash my Feet
Swift, tired, true, headstrong, tender, merciless – your feet have more persona than your head: born for earth that you may be freed for sky – Does anything that serves you serve like this? So why should someone say, ‘Not my feet, Lord – far rather wash my hands or...
Not My King! Then Who is?
Love that gives, gives ever more, gives with zeal, with eager hands, spares not, keeps not, all outpours, ventures all its all expends. . Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free, poor in making many rich, weak in giving power to be. . Therefore he...
Holy Spirit: in Christian Experience
My name is ‘I am’ not ‘I was’
I was regretting the past However dark it be; And fearing the future. Suddenly my lord was speaking; ‘My name is I am.’ He paused. I waited. He continued’ ‘When you live in the past, with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I was’....
A flash of rare delight
Enjoyment is a flash of rare delight, While only Christ illuminates for me The fear and darkness of this Earth’s strange night. Audrey Milner (1924-2017), Southwell.
Mysteries yes: look with astonishment
Truly we live with mysteries too marvellous to be understood…. Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say ‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment,...
Ageing happily
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they together All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown…. And now in...
Believers: Assured, Called and Prayerful
Sing Without Need of Reply
Sing a new song to the Lord, sing through the skin of your teeth, sing in the code of your blood, sing with a throat full of earth, sing to the quick of your nails, sing from the knots of your lungs, sing like a dancer on coals, sing as a madman in tongues,...
Unwrap our Darkness
We can scarcely believe it, God, this story of your birth in the world. We rationalize and reason, we read the headlines and we doubt, and still, we hope, desperately, that it just might be true. If we have lost faith in the promise of change, unwrap our doubt to make...
First Love
You have broken my heart. I cannot stop thinking about you. I love you even though I have met you only once. Others may have given up on you not realizing your potential but I see something in you. You made me cry but you have helped me to realize what is important in...
Grow Younger
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety....
The Church: Provisional but Necessary
The English Reformation: more political than dogmatic
If one has to choose between the sole authority of the Bible and the sole authority of the Church, in Heaven’s name let us have the Church, which is alive, and, because plainly subject to error, is also capable of truth. And above all, let us be profoundly...
Time for Christianity to vanish?
On the whole Christianity I suppose is kinder than it was, Helped to it, I fear, by the power of the civil arm. Oh Christianity, Christianity, That has grown kinder now, as in the political world The colonial system grows kinder before it vanishes, are you...
Sublime words for our hearts and minds
I see them working in old rectories by the sun’s light, by candlelight, venerable men, their black cloth a little dusty, a little green with holy mildew. And yet their skulls, ripening over so many prayers, toppled into the same grave with oafs and yokels. They left...
Darkness Comes
What isolates me here in frozen clay But that same tidal shock which fell First upon England in your day? Betrayal of the truth is no new thing Within the fellowship of Christ, yet new Was the cold glare whence alien ripples flashed.... The darkness comes as...
The Mission of God
Pull up the ladder Jack!
Deal not with me God as I have dealt with Man In the prosperity which thou hast given me Helpless in his need a careless course I ran And now O Lord that thou hast driven me To my last gasp, I pray for all I am not worth Deal not with me as I have dealt on earth....
Dangerous Day Dreaming
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it is vanity; But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act with open eyes to make it possible. T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935), Seven...
Practical thanks for God’s amazing grace
God’s amazing grace The Scriptures received as God’s word. People who are alive to God Ideas which are new to me A need to which I am fitted to respond A new achievable challenge Confidence reposed in me The family together and in harmony Graham Greene (1904 –...
Far From Home
All day long we’ve walked, my little boy so fretful, turning in my arms to stare behind us, back along that dusty road. It’s as if he hears a distant sound, he’s listening, it seems, but much too young to know the dreadful things we’ve heard. Now it’s...
Moral Justice: a Vision of God’s Kingdom
God Bothering
If you were content, Lord, You would not bother with us. But you are restless: Through anger, through excitement, and through love, You will all things to change and be made new. So we praise you That your restlessness has been born in us: As the pain of the world The...
Injustice
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...
Wasting the earth
O shame to men! Devil with Devil damned Firm concord holds; men only disagree Of creatures rational, though under hope Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming peace, Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife Among themselves, and levy cruel wars, Wasting the earth, each...
Too close to the shore?
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true, because we have dreamed too little, when we have arrived safely, because we sailed too close to the shore....
Glory: Now and Then, Here and There
God’s Music: Now and Then
Since I am coming to that holy room Where with thy choir of saints for evermore I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before. While my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers,...
Hopeful New Year
Sunshine of surprise enlightens the bridge of sighs O God who givest songs too sweet to sing, Have mercy on thy servant’s feeble tongue, In sacrificial silence sorrowing. And grant that songs unsung, Accepted at thy mercy-seat may bring New light into the darkness of...
Time: 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,...
No Eulogy Please!
There was something defiant about his funeral, as if he had decided from the start to resist the eulogy.... The eulogy would be merely what he did in the waiting room: life's see-sawing of one foot onto the other, which is nothing, in comparison to the light so...